I know I’ve linked to this hitch-hiking poem elsewhere, but not for many months. Here it is again, “reaching.”
The poem comes from a time in my life when I frequently hitch-hiked around western Canada. Usually in the warm and (occasionally) friendly Okanagan Valley, and around the Shuswap Lake. Sometimes in the Kootenays and the Lower Mainland; a few times between southern British Columbia and Edmonton, or other points in Alberta. (Apologies if you’re not familiar with the geography.) My longest single trip would be about an 11-hour drive under optimal conditions - I did it a couple of times and somehow always managed it in a single day! Other, much shorter trips sometimes took disproportionate amounts of time and energy, for example once I was stuck in the mountains for hours in a snowstorm trying to get to Nelson. I only finally got a ride when a trucker pulled over, seeing my long hair (it was quite long once, and not at all thinning) believing I was a woman! At least one of us was happy.
Hitch-hiking: reaching. There’s something about the open road, I know it’s a terrible cliche, but the road really is open when you’re out there. The season, the weather, the air, the scenery; the trees or the houses, the mountains or the wide open sky. The weight of your pack on your shoulders. The walking. Cars zooming past (averting one’s eyes at the last minute to avoid the flying gravel), people behind windshields meeting your eyes and staring at you for just a split second before they’re gone and already a hundred miles away. People never even noticing you. Family cars, big rigs, sports cars, pickup trucks, buses, vans. Vehicles roaring and whirring and rattling by. You start to daydream, you start to talk to yourself and sing out loud, you start to curse the people leaving you (literally) in the dust.
You start to make statistics: which vehicles are most likely to stop? Which to speed on past? Generally speaking: work trucks, vans in rough shape, and big 70s and 80s model “boat”-type cars are the most likely; newer and flashier sports cars are the least. Anything expensive, anything small, anything with children on board: not likely. Or so I’ve found. The presence of rust on a vehicle seems to improve the odds for a lift, which must say something about our society. I’m not sure what.
Strategy. I knew a fellow hitch-hiker who tried out various props to test their effectiveness. Baseball cap? Too suspicious-looking. Let them see your face. T-shirts yes; tank tops no. “Try eating an ice cream cone,” he suggested to me once, “it makes you look young and innocent and they’ll be more likely to give you a ride.” I never tried it. I once knew a guy who insisted on walking, constantly walking while hitch-hiking: “Never stop! Never stand still and you’ll always get a ride.” Walking backwards, basically, for miles on end, thumb out, facing the oncoming traffic. This was my practice too. It doesn’t pay to look lazy, right? Besides, even if you never get picked up at least if you keep on walking you’ll get somewhere. Eventually. Of course, all the strategies in the world may or may not get you anywhere. And most of the guys you see out there trying to thumb a ride certainly don’t seem to be that worried about their appearance! Yet presumably they get picked up sometime, by somebody.
All the frustrations in the world won’t get you anywhere either. Who knows? It’s all luck of the draw anyway, isn’t it? But nothing beats the gratefulness you feel when you’re tired, sore, and sweaty (or cold) and you’ve been walking for miles - and then someone finally pulls over and offers you a ride! You forgive all the people in their shiny fast cars, who you had been cursing only moments before; you forgive the hours of flying rocks; you forgive yourself for setting out on this ridiculous adventure in the first place. For a little while, your damp arm crooked out the open window (or your numb fingers warming up on the dashboard heater, one), for a while you watch the scenery zoom past and you just feel alive.
