Two Thumbs Up
I’ve long been enamored with the idea of hitchhiking as a mode of travel. Moving from place to place by relying on the generosity and whims of strangers strikes me as an exercise in both free will and fate. It is just the kind of duality, perhaps even a paradox, that foretells of genuine experience, a promise of existential authenticity. Given this conclusion, hitchhiking transforms from a simple manner of transit into a methodology. It becomes less an end than a means.
My infatuation first emerged in midnight soirees with a few literary iconoclasts: the beat prose of Jack Kerouac, who hitched from North Carolina to California in The Dharma Bums; the philosophical rage (always cooled with humor) of Edward Abbey, whose hitching first introduced him to the Canyonlands of the American West; and Jon Krakauer’s posthumous account of the life and travels of Chris McCandless, an Emory University graduate whose travels and death were immortalized in the book and movie Into the Wild.
When hitchin’, I imagine myself in the footsteps of these vagabonds, eager to ditch any belongings which could not be carried over my shoulder, stick my thumb to the sky, and venture forth into the uncertainty of life on the road, prepared only for the changing of landscapes. These mental meanderings, residing in the back alleys and side streets of the American consciousness, occupied the fore of my mind for countless hours in my formative years.
But by the time I arrived in Juneau, Alaska, in the summer of 2005, I had resigned myself to the likely fact that my first experiment in hitchhiking would be exquisitely less dramatic, challenging and enlightening than experiences worthy of novelistic rendition. But I was committed to the exercise just the same. Even the most itinerant writers would have trouble stacking up to the recollections I have of someone, whose name is lost to time.
One night, at the age of 17, I was working my usual nightshift in a fast-food restaurant. A man in his late twenties entered and approached the service counter with a steady, composed gait. His face appeared slightly weathered, sunken behind his dark, bushy beard, and his eyes were deep-set below his soft brow, at once penetrating and distant. Tattoos inched out from under his shirtsleeves–the fine, delicate detail seemed to outline a tale. I had recently gotten inked for the first time, so my attention narrowed on his arms. Stealing glances while preparing his sandwich, I silently studied what I could make of his tattoos. I finally revealed my interest in them as I rang the man up.
Most everyone I’ve met who has taken the plunge into the permanency of tattoos is happy to report the inspiration for them. After all, part of the appeal is the chance to share the personal relevance and meaning of the art with those who hold a similar and familiar fondness for this masochistic commitment. I am no different. Neither was this man. His tattoos, intricately designed with people and landscapes, brought to mind the storyboard images found in cave paintings and stained-glass windows. The figures seemed etched into his skin in choreographed sequences, as if capturing some esoteric ritual or practice in action. The man said they were narratives of his hitchhiking and rail-riding days across America, like graphic memoirs, I supposed. I imagined a theme of wanderlust tying the loose images together, a disconnected script bound by the thread of lived experience.
I sat with this man as he briskly devoured his club sandwich like he hadn’t eaten in days. Perhaps the road weary vagabond had grown accustomed to eating more out of necessity than for taste. Or perhaps he was tiring of my presence. If so, his kindness didn’t betray him. The man told me he had returned to Atlanta, his only known home, less than a month before. He had abandoned his college studies in search of something indefinable eight years prior, as if being called by the forlorn ghosts of the road, promises of both pleasure and pain whispered into his ear. When I asked why he decided to return now, he simply said, “It was just time.” Specify he could not. These choices are bound to the emotions, I reasoned, not the head.
Wanderlust, as those who delight in it know, is a difficult feeling to explain with the words provided by language. It is both a compulsion and deliberate act. Searching for equilibrium between the two, it is perhaps the practical consequence of an insatiable curiosity.
I shared with this man my desire to follow in his footsteps, though, of course, on a different path in a different time. He encouraged me onward, but parted ways with two caveats: “Always talk to the locals if you want to get where you’re going. And a week on the road feels like a year at home. The days are long, and the nights longer.”
I’ve spent considerable time behind the wheel, pointing out hitchhikers as I blithely saw America speed by, coast to coast, in the spontaneous excesses of Road Tripdom. In Alaska, however, I had finally arrived on the other end, exposed to the currents of my own two feet as I shouldered my few possessions.
The streets of Juneau, sullen under the permanently overcast sky of late summer, were a lingering menagerie of one-stop tourists who had been pardoned from their cruise ships for a meager three or four hours. They bobbed in and out of the shops, which were in convenient walking distance of the docks. The stores hawked dream catchers, miniaturized totem poles and other kitschy Native American memorabilia. I weaved my way through the chattering, easily amused throngs toward the south end of the city with a delighted sense of self-satisfaction. The reverie in mind was having spent the past three weeks mountain climbing and camping on a glacier outside Haines–a small town perennially named to top ten lists of best places to live, located a few hours north of Juneau along the Marine Highway circuit. The cruise tourists around me, I thought, had only been introduced to the tamed city dwellings of Alaska, while I had felt the interior and heartbeat of the state pounding breathlessly under the heavy weight and constant plow of ice and storms. Beyond the surface streets is a land of rugged beauty, its magnitude enhanced by its smaller, sublime parts–the footprints of grizzlies on sandy river shores; the call of the raven in mid-afternoon; the sky’s dreamy hue under the midnight sun, marking the horizon with shades of purple, blue and orange. My pace quickened, my separation from the pack growing larger by the second. I was in search of a campground I knew to be a couple miles down the road, perched on the forested slopes along the Gastineau Channel.
I had tried my thumb at hitching when I was camping north of Juneau in the days prior to my climbing expedition. My campsite then was located a mile and a half from the bus line, at the edge of the Mendenhall Glacier. One morning, the campground hosts approached in a truck as I walked to the bus stop, on my way downtown for a reload on supplies. I figured they’d surely give me a lift, at least to the main road, but they complained about the lack of space in the cab. I suggested I could ride in the bed, at which point they looked at me with the suspicious eyes normally reserved for a homicidal maniac. On they went without me.
I didn’t have hitching in mind when I left the cruise tourists to their claim, but when it started raining, I thought it the perfect excuse to try again. The first car passed without hesitation, but the second abruptly skidded to a stop about twenty feet past me. I ran to catch up with it, my backpack unbalanced on my shoulders and slinging from side to side. I opened the passenger door and cast a glance at the driver, a smiling woman in her fifties, with white, short-cropped hair and an unhesitant voice. “Hop in,” she said.
Hitchhikers are driven by a number of motivations. Some wind up on the end of an outstretched thumb out of sheer necessity. Perhaps their car has broken down. Perhaps a scorned lover has stranded them by the roadside. Some do it for the sense of adventure, while others simply find it a cheapskate way to travel. But hitchers, I have come to realize, are no more unique in their intentions than those who pick them up. Drivers can think over the prospect of picking up a hitcher, can size them up and calculate the reasons for pulling off or continuing on. Perhaps some drivers stop in the service of favor. I have done so in my hometown. I’ve even gone out of my route to help a stranded neighbor. Some likely stop out of sheer boredom, perhaps looking for company during the long miles ahead. And there are certainly those who share in that inexpressible, and irrepressible, sense of adventure that the road conjures. They are intrigued by the same prospects–human interaction, chance experience, an unknown destination ahead. Of course, we’ve all heard the urban legends, and sometimes real-life tales, of the lunatic hitcher who buries a knife into an unsuspecting stranger. We’ve also heard the same stories in role reversal. But these instances are rare, and if we lived in fear of dire oddities occurring none of us would make it very far down the road of life, much less the driveway. Still, I wondered why this woman, given all the pretenses of men and gender relationships, would, without much thought it seemed, offer me a lift. I guess I never have been able to pull off the “tough guy” look.
I introduced myself and she told me her name. We pulled off the shoulder back onto the two-lane road, and Pat said she knew exactly where I was headed. Just as the satisfaction of having dethroned my hitching virginity began to set in, we rounded a curve and arrived at the campground. I had been in the car less than a minute. We had traveled no more than the length of a football field. I tried not to let my embarrassment show.
Pat said she’d wait to make sure a campsite was available for me. I went looking for the owner and discovered the campground to be little more than a homeless outdoor shelter. Like most Alaskans, these residents sought a simpler and more peacefully visceral existence in the woods. Or at least that’s how I liked to imagine it. In truth, they were here because drug pushers, card cheats and petty thieves were not. During my stay, I overheard constant grumblings about the loud, filthy, volatile downtown shelter.
The owner of the grounds happened to be in town. I didn’t mind waiting around until he returned, even with the rain intensifying. I had grown accustomed to the steady downpours of Alaska’s Inside Passage, an area of lush, dense maritime rainforests. But Pat had another option in mind. “I’m house sitting for a friend,” she said. “I’m on my way there now. Why don’t you come along? You can shower and clean up. I’ll make you lunch.” These promises sounded nice and much needed. I was hungry for a homemade meal and had gone weeks without bathing, but the reasons why I accepted had nothing to do with either. Always talk to the locals. I could hear the tattooed man’s voice in my head, imparting his advice years ago in that fluorescent-lit, Clorox-scented fast-food restaurant. I knew I must go with Pat. And, besides, it would have been impolite to deny her gracious offer.
The A-frame house looked modest from the front but hid from view its true expense. Pat and I entered and she immediately led me into the living room, where the back wall consisted of three windows stretching from floor to ceiling. Looking out them cast my eyes upon the Gastineau Channel, the water’s edge rippling just 15 or 20 feet from the nearest corners of the house. Hundreds of books lined the shelves running just above the baseboards of the other walls in the room. Paintings nearly consumed every available inch in the house, from the bedroom walls to the halls and stairwell. The kitchen was equipped with new appliances, and the bathroom sprawled with his and her sinks, and a marble-floored, glass-encased shower. Being in the home sent me into a subdued form of culture shock. Having spent the better part of the last month living out of a backpack and tent, my mind had been detoxified of memories regarding hot water, leather recliners and spacious shelter from the elements. I certainly hadn’t come to Alaska looking for what was so commonplace back home, but I wasn’t compelled to complain. This unlikely encounter with Pat presented me with a pleasant change of pace, something essential to keeping travel fresh and unpredictable. Never grow too comfortable, even in comfortable surroundings.
After I showered and ate, Pat and I sat around and talked for a about an hour. I told her why I had come to Alaska, and she told me why she made her home there. We shared our interests, and the bond between hitcher and hitcher-picker-upper developed smoothly. It was, however, tinged with a maternal quality. Single and without children, Pat wanted to care for me, make sure I was fed, safe and got where I needed to go. In fact, she became a kind of chauffeur to me during the final three days of my travels. She dropped me off at trailheads, returned me to the campground after a day of hiking, and even drove me to the airport to see me off. One afternoon, she plucked me from downtown and showed me how she spent most of her week–volunteering for the Juneau Raptor Center. The Center was nothing more than the basement of a two-story house owned by the director, but in it were bald eagles, owls and other birds. Most were being restored to health. A great horned owl named Hootie had had his right wing shot off by a hunter in California. After this incident, he was used to attract and capture goshawks, a fierce enemy of the owl, for tagging and research purposes. Hootie lost his left eye for his efforts. It should come as no surprise that he was more than slightly irascible and foul-tempered. I really took to him. He traveled far, endured pain and hardship, and yet he carried on, flightless, with ironically inadequate vision for an owl and a calculated distrust of humans. There was something relatable here, both in travel and life. And yet, despite his crankiness, Hootie peaceably let me rub his grayish-brown feathers.
Pat and I hugged and took a few photographs at the airport. I thanked her for the hospitality and she made me promise to contact her when I returned home to Atlanta. On the flight, my thoughts kept returning to the simple happenstances and timing that brought us together. It was only then that I realized how mutually beneficial our acquaintance had been. While she granted favors, and showed me a slice of local life, I unknowingly provided her desired companionship. This explains her willingness to scuttle me around Juneau after the initial pick-up. And so it was that free will and the fortunes of fate converged harmoniously.
Like every journey, hitching isn’t so much about arriving someplace as it is enjoying the ride there–even if it only lasts a minute or so. It’s worthy of not one, but two thumbs up.
