[Ibon]

Getting to the trailhead took days hitchhiking. Looking back 45 years later the wilderness and the road have fused, the diversity of stories of the lives of drivers is woven together with the diversity found in wilderness. The stillness deep in the wilderness the same as the stillness when dropped off on the side of the road and empty flat horizons enveloped one in silence. Sleeping under bridges where big tractor trailers would thunder overhead, you would see the lights approaching then the massive bulk of steel vibrating and roaring overhead. Light and then boom, just like a thunderstorm. Waking up to the dawn chorus the same whether 40 miles deep in wilderness or at the side of the road, the same feeling of expectation of the day ahead, wide open spaces, the unknown mysteries of the day unfolding. What herd of elk will surprise me, what strange story will the driver share today.

There was still a trusting whole back then, it was mutual, both the driver and the hitchhiker trusted to share a space for awhile on the road. A recently divorced man would open his heart over the tragedy of his love life one minute and the next a schizophrenic riding with open windows in the freezing cold would monologue about how he was Jesus Christ and the postman was Satan, hitchhiking was the greatest surfing experience, each ride a different story, ending at the trailhead where a 14 day backpack deep in wilderness would take you to that quiet baseline in wilderness where every bird song, every rush of wind through the leaves would quiet the mind and allow you see yourself as part of a whole.

Looking back now whether in a tent or sitting in a car life was the greatest adventure. 5 years of my life where lived thus, I could not endure the chains of domestic life or being employed, my visits back to parents and friends and seeing their harnessed lives was all I needed to itch to hit the road again, to canoe down some new wild river. Years went by in my 20’s on the road and in wilderness which looking back today seem like the greatest mystery tour. I am grateful for that time.

Musing over this time now in 2018 I cannot help but reflect how sad society is today, how distrusting, fragmented and splintered. How much anger and tribal angst occupies the minds of agitated souls. What happened in these 45 years? I feel much the same, the wilderness still surrounds me, nature hums with the same base note. In this wilderness retreat we host many guests who make a pilgrimage to find that essential contact with nature, so there still are many individuals who search to find some spiritual nourishment in nature, but the glue that holds culture and society together no longer binds.
I still trust the wilderness, but I would not trust to put out my thumb out at the side of the road, and few would stop to pick me up today. I find no barometer more telling than this simple fact that the levels of distrust in our culture no longer hold us together to give someone a lift a ways down the road. Especially when considering that most folks are alone still in their vehicles and would enjoy a couple hours to share stories.

[Newfie]

Nice Ibon.

I never had tech hiked much but I do enjoy the wild.

There were times when you could sail around the world fairly unmolested. You had to be careful where you went. Today you can still do it, but you are molested by government rules and regulations.

If you care there is a wonderful book about 19th century world travel written by an Austrian widow named Ida Phieffer. I found the Indian leg especially interesting.

[Outcast_Searcher]

a schizophrenic riding with open windows in the freezing cold would monologue about how he was Jesus Christ and the postman was Satan

As an "old guy", I'll remark that technology has changed things re the possible schizophrenics and identification.

So last night when I'm picking up Chinese takeout and the old Chinese guy (who I think is the father of the owner/manager) is incessantly rambling in Chinese, but frequently bursting out in English, uncomfortably loudly "Shut up! Shut up!" as he mops the floor -- is this guy crazy, or just using a cell phone?

Context (that he's done the same thing three times in a row over the past month or so) tells me "crazy". (Sadly enough, because he was a nice old guy. We would say hi and exchange bows for years).

Or another time I had an apparent street person sitting next to me at some counter in a diner, babbling away. I was ignoring him. It slowly dawned on me that maybe this guy wasn't on his cell phone but just stark raving mad, based on flashes of phrases I'd hear. The waitress later confirmed the crazy but apparently harmless street person ID.

But the point is with technology, one can never tell, without context, whether someone babbling away and apparently talking to themselves is just an offbeat person on a cell phone, or completely out of his/her head.

....

I say this as someone who two-ish decades back for a few years at night at my apartment complex would think some young person approaching me was speaking to me, and then realize they were on their earpiece cellphone, and just apologize saying something like "Sorry, just a stupid old man here."

I keep thinking about how FAST MANY things are changing now due to technology. It's Toffler's prediction of "Future Shock" coming true, IMO, and it keeps speeding up. If one can't even tell what is going on in context (i.e. identify likely "friend or foe" when meeting a stranger), is it any wonder we're less trusting?

[Newfie]

Funny, my Wife the psychoanalyst made the same comment years ago; you can no longer ID the schizos because of cell phone use.

[Ibon]

If you care there is a wonderful book about 19th century world travel written by an Austrian widow named Ida Phieffer. I found the Indian leg especially interesting.

Thanks Newfie. I downloaded it today on my Kindle. In German, her native tongue. I already started reading it. That early 19th century Goethe style writing about wandering in foreign lands is lovely. I am enjoying it.

[Plantagenet]

If you care there is a wonderful book about 19th century world travel written by an Austrian widow named Ida Phieffer. I found the Indian leg especially interesting.

Wandering the world can still be very interesting today, although the explosion of mass market tourism and waves of new Chinese tourists over the last ca. 10 years has degraded the experience, especially in the most heavily visited areas of Europe.

I've been lucky to do most of my travel during the winter, when tourist numbers in Europe are very low. Hotels and Restaurants mostly close in the winter, but there is almost always one open, and there just aren't many people around which makes it a lot easier to meet and talk to local people. Sometimes I've been the only person in the hotel or restaurant, or the only person in a museum. Last winter traveling through Normandy the WWII tours were all shut down, so my girlfriend and I took a city bus from Bayeaux along the regular bus route that ran by the D-Day beaches. My girlfriend and I were the only people on the bus, and the bus driver saw we were Americans and we were interested in the WWII cemeteries and such along the bus route. So the bus driver swore us to silence said he would give us a private tour, and he took the bus off the normal bus route and drove us down to Utah Beach and drove the city bus out to Point du Hoc to show us the sites. The bus driver didn't speak English but my girlfriend speaks French well and I have a little French and we had a grand time touring around in the city bus driving past the sites of this historic slaughter battle from WWII.

This kind of thing happens all the time with winter travel. When I travelled to the Dodecanese Islands in far eastern Greece, the tourist business was basically shut down but one hotel was open...I was the only guest...and because the regular bus going up to the ancient monastery wasn't running the mayor beckoned me over to a bus filled with Greek school children in traditional costumes and a brass band he was taking up to the monastery for Greek Island Independence Day. We got to the top and the band played, and I joined the small audience of parents watching as the children sand and danced and saluted the Greek Flag.

I've hitchhiked a bit in Europe--on one trip I hiked hut to hut and climbed the Glittertind and I had hitch hike to get to trailheads in the remote National Parks in that part of Norway where the bus didn't go, but usually you can get just about anywhere with cheap local mass transport.


This way to climb the Glittertind

Cheers!

[Ibon]

Reading the book of the woman traveler Ida Pheiffer Newfie recommended. Travel then held the risk of never returning. No communication for months or years with family and loved ones.

I caught the tail end of that. I hitch hiked from Ohio to El Paso in 1978 and passed into Mexico when I was 20, worked in an orphanage for a year in Morelos, fell in love with the kids and immersed myself in a new language and culture. A phone call to the USA was $ 5 a minute back then in 1978. My parents received during that year 3 or 4 postcards. That was it.

In 1981 I was in Spain and I hitchhiked from outside of Barcelona to Andalusia, a frenchmen picked me up in his Citroen van and by the time we got 100km down the road he convinced me to join him crossing the staight of Gibralter into Morroco. I ended up staying 3 months with him and we crossed the Sahara through Algeria and I departed from him in Niamey Niger. Got on a bus to go to the National Park W, named W for a bend in the Niamey river that formed a big W. The bus was the wrong one and the last stop was a dusty village in sub saharan habitat, the sun going down, round dwellings looking like inverted cups dotted the landscape. The bus disappeared and I stood alone literally in the middle of fucking nowhere. About 20 minutes later a car approached, I stuck out my thumb, and the car pulled over. He had a brother in the small village that was at the entrance of the national park. We drove through the night arriving at 11:00pm. I set up my little pup tent behind his brothers house, the next morning they shared breakfast with me and I walked to the entrance of the park. A bored ranger said I could not enter without a guide and a car. Now what? I walked around the dusty village, say two white dudes in a hut and wandered over. They were peace corp workers from the US, wildlife biologists who where doing work with elephants. They invited me to stay with them, told the guard I was a biologist so I could enter the park, they had field guides of mammals and birds and they lent me their motor bike. For the next two weeks I entered free into the park with a motor bike and parked myself up a tree near a watering hole and watched the wildlife come to drink. One late afternoon I ventured alone on foot into the dry savannah. Tall reeds along the river, wary of lions and crocodiles I felt vulnerable to these huge predators. Then I heard a rumble and coming over the rise of the hill, a herd of Cape Buffalo at full charge. Fortunately, they veered off to the side and spared my hide.

Because I never knew I was going to Africa back in Spain when the frenchmen Serge picked me up in his Citroen Van, I never got a single vaccination for that trip. Villages passed had many kids with Polio. I remember a night of crazy music and dancing in a village, Serge was in a small hotel, I headed back to the Van with a local lady, gorgeous blue black skin, who I met at the dance. I didn't have a condom. It was 1981. Aids was just emerging. I never got tested. For years I had this dread I caught the disease that night.

This was all before the internet. Still, what I did was nothing compared to Ida Pheiffer in the 19th century venturing into Madagascar.

Let’s compare that to Plantagent in Bali signing on to Peakoil.com and dissing Obama right after looking at all those ladies doing the downward Dog?

Kind of pathetic aren’t we?

[asg70]

"Kind of pathetic aren’t we?"

In varying degrees. Not everyone is as shallow and brazenly hypocritical as Plant.

[Plantagenet]

Still, what I did was nothing compared to Ida Pheiffer in the 19th century venturing into Madagascar.

Let’s compare that to Plantagent in Bali signing on to Peakoil.com and dissing Obama right after looking at all those ladies doing the downward Dog?

Kind of pathetic aren’t we?

You can think of yourself as pathetic for not having the same kind of travel adventures as Ida Pheiffer in the 19th century if you want to, but I don't share that viewpoint. Personally, I don't think the point of travel is to compare who did the most dangerous, foolhardy things or who suffered the most, or who got infected with the worst disease (although all those things are part of travel). I'm more interested in exploring other cultures and having new and different experiences.

I'm very happy with my travel adventures, and that includes doing yoga on a mountaintop on Bali surrounded by attractive women in yoga pants doing the downward dog. Doing Yoga in Bali is a big part of the current cultural scene there, and its not for sissies. You have no idea of how difficult it is to get up before dawn and hike up the mountainside on trail illuminated only by tiny meditation candles, and then doing an hour of yoga ---without coffee!--- as the sun rose over the Bali Straights and lit up dozens of volcanoes all the way to Java. Sure it wasn't as dangerous as your hitchhiking trip through Africa, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an equally valid travel experience. I travel to learn about landscapes, art, architecture, cultural nuances, local politics, history, and religion. And if there are beautiful women there, then that is a definite plus. You clearly have different goals when you travel, and god knows what Ida Pheiffer's goals were or what she was seeking when she travelled.

But everybody isn't the same, and not everybody is interested in the same things, and everybody doesn't have to do the same things when they travel. Thank god.


Did Ida Pheiffer ever screw up her courage enough to get up before dawn and put on semi-transparent yoga pants and do yoga in Bali as the sun rose? My guess is no. (just kidding!)

Cheers!

[Newfie]

Next read about her trip to Iceland!

[Cog]

Never picked up hitchhikers except when I was in the military living off base and there was a person hitching in uniform. But after I got out, I would sometimes stop if there were people broken down in their car. My company forbade us to do it but I ignored that. Put on a spare tire for an old lady in a parking lot while we were having lunch and she told me she was going to call my company and thank my boss on my behalf. Told her not to do that but she did anyway.

I got chewed out royally for doing it. Liability issue they said. Screw all that noise, if someone is broke down and in trouble, especially if they are elderly, I'm going to help if I can.

[Ibon]

Screw all that noise, if someone is broke down and in trouble, especially if they are elderly, I'm going to help if I can.

Yep. One of the things I like about where we live is that it is a bit of a frontier culture here in far western Panama in the Chiriqui mountains. Like in Patagonia or Alaska there is a frontier understanding among the locals that if someone is stuck with the car in the mud or in trouble everyone comes to help. It is common in frontier places around the world for local cultures to have this mutual understanding of giving aid. This is certainly not the case in Panama City or even the provincial capital in David.

It is all the more noteworthy when folks who are lost in the anonymity of urban living still keep that pioneer virtue of helping those in need. You have my respect Cog.