Coachella Valley meet the Hermit of Palm Springs - William Pester
A photograph taken near Palm Springs, California, depicts a long-haired, bearded man sitting on a tree stump playing slide guitar. He’s barefoot and wears a loose wrap around his waist. Behind him is a simple hut he built himself, covered with palm fronds. The man is William Pester. He’s been living in the desert for years, making his own sandals and subsisting on a diet of mostly raw fruit and vegetables. Despite all this, it isn’t 1968. It’s 1917. And he’s German.
Pester, known as the ‘hermit of Palm Springs’, left Germany in 1906 to avoid military service. He settled in Palm Canyon, a couple of hours drive east of Los Angeles, where he took long solitary hikes in the bronze San Jacinto Mountains and sold homemade postcards at a roadside stand. These cards featured health tips gleaned from the philosophy of Lebensreform (life reform), the late-19th century German cultural movement that endorsed a return to nature through practices like vegetarianism, natural healing, and nudism.
A photograph taken near Palm Springs, California, depicts a long-haired, bearded man sitting on a tree stump playing slide guitar. He’s barefoot and wears a loose wrap around his waist. Behind him is a simple hut he built himself, covered with palm fronds. The man is William Pester. He’s been living in the desert for years, making his own sandals and subsisting on a diet of mostly raw fruit and vegetables. Despite all this, it isn’t 1968. It’s 1917. And he’s German.
Pester, known as the ‘hermit of Palm Springs’, left Germany in 1906 to avoid military service. He settled in Palm Canyon, a couple of hours drive east of Los Angeles, where he took long solitary hikes in the bronze San Jacinto Mountains and sold homemade postcards at a roadside stand. These cards featured health tips gleaned from the philosophy of Lebensreform (life reform), the late-19th century German cultural movement that endorsed a return to nature through practices like vegetarianism, natural healing, and nudism.