faring thee well now
let your life proceed by its own design
nothing to tell now
let the words be yours i'm done with mine

John Barlow has moved on. His health had been shot to shit over the past several years, and Wednesday he at last vacated the corporeal container.

Barlow spanned worlds from Neal Cassady to Aaron Swartz. He was born into a wealthy Republican Mormon Wyoming cattle-ranching family; it took all of his life to shake off that imprinting, but in the end he managed all of it. A key moment came when, in conversation with Mardy Murie, he understood that money is an illusion, while the planet is very Real indeed. "Environmentalists can be a pain in the ass," Murie told him. "But they make great ancestors.” Barlow decided: "I want to be a good ancestor."