BUT, based on Ruut Veenhoven’s Database of Happiness (http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/index.html) people like the Danes and Icelanders are the happiest folks on earth – right behind the Bhutanese, a kingdom whose monarch dispensed with the notion of Gross National Product as a gauge of well-being and decreed that his people would aspire to Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead – AND THEY DON”T HAVE A BEACH!Now keep in mind that Ruut also lists the Fins at the top of the happiness heap and I believe they have one of the highest rates of suicide in Europe.

I think this idea of happiness being tied to how integral you feel to your community resonated with me because of how I got the inspiration to go on this trip. After seeing Into The Wild I felt like I was living a life of marking time. We could argue the finer points of this move for days, and should, over beers and cigars. My point here is, if you remember at the end Chris writes something like ‘Happiness is nothing if its not shared”. This blog in my American right to excersize my pursuit of happiness and share it with you, my community. Even if you happen to live blissfully smoking mullet while oranges rain down.

In short, without the ability to cast-net for mullet in February, Great Britain turned to imperialism and Immanuel Kant wrote the Critique of Pure Reason.

But then, as a warm-climate dude, I am far from objective.