The Dirtbag Award: A Winning Application

On June 15th, we announced the winners of this year’s two Dirtbag Grants. One went to Rachel Babkirk and Lucia Robinson, for their "Down for the Down and Out" trip to climb, camp and collect used gear to distribute to the homeless.

The second award went to Australian Simon Clissold, "an overqualified dirtbag" and slow-living activist who plans to hitchhike (and/or go by bus) from his organic-olive farm in Spain to the "Tian Shan mountains (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), where I will base myself for the winter and explore the epic peaks of this wild range using only my split snowboard."

We wanted to reproduce here Simon’s entire application – for its wit, force of argument (especially against our own injunction to "do more with less") and exemplary dirtbag spirit.

We hope to hear from all the winners during their travels and we’ll post their reports here when we do.