A Hitchhiker's Tao; Thumbing Your Way to Enlightenment

A Hitchhiker’s Tao

Thumbing Your Way to Enlightenment

by

Stan Kahn

Copyright 2011 Stan Kahn

(Formerly A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Enlightenment)

Smashwords Edition 2013

Also by Stan Kahn

Y3K

A Novel of Ecotopia

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Cold Feet

Chapter 2 - Walking on a Country Road

Chapter 3 - Liberation

Chapter 4 - Commune Days

Chapter 5 - Northbound

Chapter 6 - Relationships

Chapter 7 - Cannabis Capers

Chapter 8 – Kid’s Play

Chapter 9 - On the Road Again

Chapter 10 - Eat Drink and be Merry

Sample Chapters - Y3K

Chapter 1

Cold Feet

Walking along a lonely rural highway in the middle of the night in north-central Wyoming near the Montana border, my feet felt like blocks of ice. The temperature, I guessed, hovered around five degrees Fahrenheit (-15°C), typical for mid-February in this part of the world. I, however, was dressed for cool, rainy Oregon with a thermal shirt, flannel shirt and unlined denim jacket on top, jeans on the bottom with no thermal layer, no hat, no gloves, a single pair of socks and thin, unlined boots; plenty enough for me in western Oregon at that time of the year - but this was the frigid high plains. Fortunately, the air was still. Any significant amount of wind would’ve tremendously shortened my staying power.

The almost bright, cloudless sky was covered with a crystalline blanket of stars in the wide-open vistas found in this remote part of America. The combination of dry air, few people – Wyoming, one of the largest states in area, has had the lowest population of the fifty states for some time – and nearly nonexistent pollution gave the starshine an intensity one rarely experiences. The beauty of the scene, however, stood in stark contrast to my predicament: I was trudging along like a zombie, body stiff with the cold, no idea when I might get picked up. The shivery, teeth-clenching, bone-creaking air was overwhelming all of my senses and especially the extremities; my feet were frozen, fingers were numb, ears were frosty and big nose was red as a radish.

I wasn’t especially concerned about death, staying somehow aloof from that concern, but nonetheless knew I was treading a fine line and understood my end could be a distinct possibility. That’s where I was, that’s the hand the cosmos had dealt me; there was nothing I could do about it except keep on trucking and hope for respite from the worst. In any case, regardless of the circumstances, you do what you must, one step following the previous. The spark of life is not easily extinguished; even when you know you are doomed, you fight till the end, till the last impossibly remote opportunity for life has been exhausted. I was still far from that ultimate moment in spite of my exceedingly precarious situation.

There hadn’t been a car on the road since a little after midnight and it wasn’t clear how long I could last. My sleeping bag, fine at freezing wasn’t worth much at 5°F, so I knew I had to keep walking and just figure all would work out in the end. No matter what the good people of Wyoming might’ve thought of a long-haired hippie back in 1972 when the counterculture was still an anomaly and we were razzed as freaks (they thought they were insulting us; we took the appellation to heart) when you live in a place of extreme cold, you’re beholden to come to the aid of stranded wanderers – at least many locals felt that way. Nonetheless, the likelihood of anybody coming by, let alone someone who would pick me up, was decidedly slim.

Wyomingers are a hardy bunch, proud of the adversity inherent in their environment and their ability to partake of and enjoy it. It’s a private place open only to the few who are willing to subject themselves to its harsh climate and stark, rocky, infertile land, which, although it has its beauty, yields very little in the way of sustenance. It’s good for grazing or hay crops used to feed cattle over the winter. Aside from the many people who come to enjoy the spectacular natural wonders of Yellowstone and the Grand Teton mountains and those who pass through on its two interstate highways, it’s there for the chosen few who know how to take care of themselves; there are no homeless people in Wyoming, at least not in the winter. Survival outdoors is not an option during that time.

So there I was out on that forlorn highway moving along as well as I could trying to stay warm. It would’ve helped my feet a bit if I had had time to lace up my fair-weather boots. A little bit of tightening up would have slightly eased my plight. But no such luck, I had to move as fast as possible to get out of that woman’s sight. It had been a very slow day hitching through rural Wyoming and I had wound up in a little town called Frannie, close to the Montana border. It wasn’t unpleasant being outside most of the day even though the temperature was only about 25°F since the air was calm and the winter sun, thin and wide-angled though it might be, was out doing whatever it could to take the hard edge off of the cold. As the day waned, however, and the sun went down the air started to seriously chill and after quite a long time unsuccessfully trying to hitch a ride out of town I couldn’t resist walking back a little ways to drop into a little tavern to warm up.

I ordered a beer with the dollar I had left from my get-out-of-jail money. That was another highlight of the trip. I was going from Cottonwood, Arizona to Winslow, Arizona and the only reasonable route between the two took you through Flagstaff. It’s a pretty, high-elevation town in the midst of pine forests. Being sited at 7000 feet gives it a tolerable temperate climate in spite of being surrounded by hot, low-elevation desert. It then had decidedly middle-class aspirations and pretensions and was renowned as hostile territory for hitchers. In fact, there was a backcountry road through the desert that I could’ve tried, but that didn’t have a single town on it for more than a hundred miles. I’d seen those kinds of roads before and knew they sometimes didn’t have a dozen cars a day passing by – getting stranded there could be a distinct possibility. Flagstaff’s terrible reputation for hitchhikers made it a big gamble, but weighed against the possibly of being stuck out in cactus and sage land for several days, I opted for the main road through Flagstaff.

I made it successfully through the city, but sure enough, on the edge trying to thumb out of town the police stopped by and asked for ID. Sorry, I replied, I don’t have any. ‘No driver’s license?’ No, don’t drive. ‘Social security card?’ Nope, not working. That flustered the cop a bit – what kind of person travels around the country without ID? (Today, with the War on Terror and all, a strange looking guy on the road without ID would get thrown to the ground, kicked, punched, truncheoned and tasered just in case, or just for fun, by every cop within hailing distance, and the more the merrier. But this was the good old days when cops still could be decent fellows and didn’t need to show their manliness or sadistic bent by doing things like pepper spraying guys that were already subdued and in handcuffs.) ‘Okay then,’ he says, ‘how much money do you have?’ I pulled a penny out of my watch pocket – not even remembering where it came from - to show him. ‘I’m sorry,’ the cop says, ‘I’m going to have to take you in for vagrancy.’

Going through my backpack at the station they found about 50 marijuana seeds and 4 peyote buttons. The seeds I’d picked up from a pot-dealer friend in San Francisco. I’d painstakingly gone through his seed stash and picked out the biggest and best looking ones I could find to be planted next season back in Oregon. The four psychedelic cactus buttons were a gift from a friend in Cottonwood. I was booked on possession charges.

When granted by the judge my few moments to plead my case I remarked that I understood exactly how Flagstaff felt about my kind and that I really didn’t want to come that way. I said I was sorry, but offered in my defense that since I was going from Cottonwood to Winslow there was no alternative to passing through Flagstaff. His Honor took pity on me as it turned out - I might have been a long-haired hippie and a vagrant, but I was not a threatening figure - and fined me only $30, or ten days in jail if I couldn’t pay, which of course I couldn’t. On the way back to jail from the court, the bailiff who was escorting me said he was surprised I’d gotten off so easy, that the judge usually gave 90 days for that kind of offence.

I used my free telephone call to ask a friend to send the thirty dollars. Since it took four days for him to get it together and the money to reach the jail I got a twelve-dollar discount. That lasted more than a week and came in handy for occasional morning cups of coffee and the wherewithal to duck into places where I could take a little time to warm up. My first stint behind bars was quite an eye-opener. My fellow inmates were mostly Native Americans and Mexicans on drunk and disorderly charges. In the beginning I enjoyed hearing their stories, but that got old really fast. Those four short days of incarceration and another 10-week sojourn in a county jail in Oregon relating to a marijuana cultivation charge that I got busted on later that year gave me a profound appreciation of what it means to be free. Since then I always feel sorry for people sentenced to long periods in prison even when they really deserve it.

And so it came that I spent the last dollar of my get-out-of-jail treasure on a beer in the tavern and got talking with the locals. They of course were completely taken by having a real-live hippie in their midst; such an unlikely place and in the dead of winter no less. I finished my beer and began making noises to go, saying I needed to get back on the road, but one fellow in particular, a local middle-aged denizen, took a liking to me and insisted on buying me a couple more beers.

Going out in the dark to hitch most likely would’ve been fruitless in terms of getting a ride, but someone might have seen me and offered a place to stay, which had just happened two nights previously. I’d gotten a ride to Rawlings, Wyoming and arrived just before dark. It’d been freezing in the back of a VW bug; you know, the kind with near worthless heaters, for many hours. I stopped into a gas station to warm up and after I felt I was intruding and couldn’t stay any longer, went out to hitch again. In that part of the state it’s always windy. At zero °F with a biting and bitter 30 mph wind I couldn’t have lasted more than an hour out there, if that. Fortuitously, within a few minutes of walking, with my guardian angels obviously smiling on me, a good Samaritan driving in the other direction saw me and turned around to pick me up. ‘Where you heading?’ he asked. Just traveling, I responded, but I sure could use a place to stay tonight. He was happy to oblige.

The next day he happened to be heading in my direction and gave me a ride of a couple hundred miles and suggested I stop at friends in Worland, a town about another hundred miles further on. The friends were a young couple, really nice people, doing the hippie thing but with difficulty since they were living in a cultural backwater; that is, a small town at the end of nowhere that was laden with hostile forces: ranchers and rednecks. Imagine their surprise when I appeared at their door, a genuine freak from Oregon showing up like an apparition from a faraway planet. They were good company and treated me well. They asked me, even entreated me to stay a second night, but I had already been out on the road for nearly five weeks and was antsy to get home.

I was nearing the end of my longest-duration hitch. In six weeks’ time I visited all eleven states of the West, stopping to see every friend along the way and every commune I’d heard about. Though obviously not shy about going to the coldest spots, most of the trip, more than 4 weeks was spent in easier climates: Oregon, California and Arizona.

When I have a destination in mind, I have a strong propensity to keep moving. I’m pushed by a drive that won’t let me rest much until I reach my goal. Hot, cold, hungry, tired, I rarely like to break my pace or slow down until I’ve gotten where I wanted to go. Just offhand and with fading memories I can think of several times I missed out on friendships and fun and good contacts because of that restlessness and the need to move on. In this case it would’ve been good for me to take a day off and for them to have some time with a genuine West Coast hippie, to catch up with the currents of the counterculture – but I couldn’t rest, I had to be on my way.

It was a quiet and pleasant Sunday and a good day for thumbing considering the relatively warm temperatures and calm windless air. High desert valleys with their clear, clean, long distance vistas have a sharp bright beauty on cold sunny days and I always enjoy being out on the road in that environment. I set out mid-morning on a pleasant day for thumbing, all things considered, but barely made 100 miles. Maybe it was something about hitching on a Sunday. I’d gotten the impression previously that it was not a good day to be out on the road. Was it bad karma to be trying to get somewhere on the Sabbath – a time to rest instead of being on the move? As it turned out the only thing I gained by leaving that morning instead of staying another night was having this great story to tell.

So I had made it to Frannie with a couple hours to spare before dark and walked right through the one-horse town to the far edge to hitch but nothing was happening so not long after nightfall I couldn’t resist heading over to the tavern to warm up. What I needed was a place to crash. Considering the cold and my pitiful lack of preparedness for it, a place to sleep was an imperative. Hitching at night is not a big deal on a major highway but on a rural byway that’s lightly traveled at the best of times, getting a ride at night would constitute a rare stroke of luck.

So I am at the bar drinking a couple of friendly beers and wondering how I’ll manage to get through the night. At one point my newfound friend offered to play a game of pool for a dollar which, of course, I didn’t have in case I lost but the fellow was quite drunk and insistent so I felt obliged to play and, as luck would have it, I won. It would provide a desperately appreciated cup of Java the next morning.

Well, it being Sunday in Wyoming the bar had to close at 8 o’clock. My friend though, was far from finished drinking and suggested we go the few miles across the border to Montana where the bars stayed open later. How could I refuse? I had nothing better to and the idea is to go with the flow, only hesitating when you feel positively threatened or weirded out. The fellow lived in a trailer not far behind the tavern so we went over to his pickup truck. However, being a little drunk, he got it stuck in a snow bank and after several fruitless attempts to free it gave up and said he was going home to sleep. I asked him, even entreated him, to let me crash in his house; sofa, floor, I didn’t care. He adamantly refused; I couldn’t budge him. Well, how about if I sleep in the truck? It seemed a small matter to me, but he was very reluctant. It took a while, but he finally agreed.

I took off my boots and got into my light-duty sleeping bag with all my clothes on. I was very cold but still better off than sleeping by the side of the road. At about 11 or 12pm a woman, undoubtedly his wife or girlfriend, who for some reason had a premonition that something was amiss, opened the pickup door, saw me and went ballistic. She ran into the trailer with loud and angry sounds ensuing: my friend was getting a tongue-lashing. I was groggy, half-asleep and freezing so wasn’t sure what was happening or how to react, but found out soon enough: she came to the door of the trailer holding a rifle and told me to get out on the double or she was going to shoot.

I slipped on my boots on as fast as I knew how, yelling ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. I’m leaving,’ and high-tailed it to the road. I was a bit shaken; the serious, even precarious situation I was thrust into just beginning to dawn on me, but stoically just started walking. If I had had the time to tighten up the laces while my hands were merely cold, my feet would’ve been just a bit better off, but by the time I had gotten to a safe distance, only a few minutes later, my fingers were stiff and frozen and useless for the delicate task of lacing boots and tying knots.

‘Cold feet’ is an apt metaphor for giving up in the face of difficulty. Like the times I’d debate endlessly with myself wanting to call a gal up to ask for a date but give up in fear of rejection. Cold feet: not being able to carry through with a plan or intention because of insecurity or weakness; losing your will, resolve, determination when the going gets rough. Hands can also be problematical but feet, being farthest away from the heart and closest to the cold ground, are what go first, what determines a person’s staying power.

I’d had plenty of experience with cold previously, having been born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio and later spending six winters in New York City. In those places, however, you could always get in out of the cold and couldn’t really dress very warmly in the first place since once you got inside you’d roast if you were wearing thermals underneath.

I’d also previously hitched in the chilly Northwest several times – though not always in the heart of winter. During those times I’d always pump the people who picked me up for information and insight into traveling the cold country. One guy talked about how all you needed was a long sleeve shirt and a thin windbreaker to be out in subfreezing cold, which I scoffed at. At the same time, as I was passing through towns with the temperature somewhere around 35°F or 40°F I’d see kids out only in T-shirts and marvel at their ability to acclimatize to the cold. Of course, if you’d just experienced a long winter with lots of days below zero, even down to minus twenty, then 30 above would feel really warm. For the people who live in the frigid Northwest, hitching in the winter is no big deal.

I’d heard stories of people who’d been brought to the edge by extreme cold. One super-outdoorsy, hippie type woman I knew recounted a story of how she had gone by herself to camp in the mountains of Idaho in winter and gotten hit by severe weather so cold she could not venture out of her sleeping bag for three days. A local Wyoming denizen who picked me up on one of my hitching tours told of a time when he was barely able to traverse the 200 feet from his car to his home through a foot of snow in a minus 40 blizzard; he almost didn’t make it. He mentioned how you have to be very careful when the temperature goes down that low: if you breathe too heavily you’ll frost your lungs. I talked to a fellow who lived cabin-rough in central British Columbia, who related how temperatures would sometimes dip down to minus 50 or 60 at night and how you had to be totally prepared to have a good fire going within seconds of waking up and exiting your warm blankets. He told of how he would line up his matches, paper and perfect kindling so as to create that hot fire the first time or there might be trouble.

At the same time that I sucked up all the information I could about living and traveling in the cold, I was also a ‘Whatever, man’ type hippie ultimately dependent on the cosmos for sustenance and protection. Almost as a carefree flower-child I assumed I could challenge the gods as well as the weather and all would be ‘cool, man’. Besides, I went hitching wearing all the cold weather clothes I owned and didn’t think about or felt I needed to ask others to lend me theirs.

I was always into living in cold places as a stronger, more fulfilling lifestyle; invariably finding the warm places to be kind of vapid, mostly fluff, easy to a fault. Twice, at the ages of 18 and 23 (in 1959 and 1964) I moved from LA to New York to escape what I considered the great emptiness of Southern California, the ultimate pastel, suburban lifestyle. Every day the media there would crow about how great it was to live in a warm place and deride those hapless souls mired in the freezing, sleety weather of the East Coast, as if the weather was the only important consideration of where to live. I wanted to be someplace cold, real, grimy: the only thing LA offered along those lines was smog. New York was real; it was down and dirty, it had soul and spirit; it had an energy and intensity that couldn’t be found in languid LA, especially the suburban part I was living in. In LA I felt stifled and half-alive.

In a hot place all you really need is a roof