[pct-l] Hiker-trash lifestyle and the Future...

[At Rerunner]

The 'code of the road' adopted 120 years ago sounds alot like HYOH, etc.
 http://www.hobo.com/hobo_code1.htm

fenu

On 12/29/08, jolson at olc.edu <jolson at olc.edu> wrote:
> (If this has come through before, I apologize.  I'm seeming not able to
> compose to the pct-l through thunderbird...)
>
> The break between semesters is about 3 and a half weeks for me.  My folks
> are in their mid-eighties and I spend the time with them, my sister and
> her husband, and visiting old friends.  Lately - the last couple years -
> the issue of retirement has become something that is on the front burner
> for me and my friends.  Most of us took hits to their retirement portfolio
> due to the venality and dishonesty of corporate America, and well-laid
> plans are in disarray.
>
>
> I think this is a wonderful opportunity for those of my generation to give
> up the corporate created American dream of retiring at 58 and traveling
> and puttering til death for something more authentic.  I am the last to
> judge what another does, but I am quick to judge that socially generated
> goals for individuals and families are pretty shallow and empty.  I have
> rich friends and poor friends, and when materialism in large degree
> determines what is meaningful it doesn't matter which social position a
> person inhabits - both create lifestyles that don't generate
> self-consciousness or personal responsibility.
>
>
> Each of us may differ with the statement and point to our own lives as
> examples of how this generality doesn't apply.  Regardless, materialism in
> some degree determines what each of us finds meaningful.
>
>
> The middle class lifestyle is a dream, a set of "golden handcuffs."  It
> was based on the promise that if you work hard, hold certain values, and
> do your best to better the system, retirement will bear the fruit of
> "heaven on earth."  The "golden years" of mortgage paid off, steady
> retirement income independent of social security, the ability to travel
> and experience different cultures and have experiences that will continue
> to let us lead interesting lives has revealed itself to be a corporate
> construction that is crashing about us as we go about our day to day
> lives.
>
>
> Now that the economy is crashing and the fantasy of the middle class life
> is revealed to be just that - a fantasy, the responsibility to create
> meaning is being thrust upon us, the responsibility to be aware of what we
> do and why, the responsibility to be conscious - no fantasy here...
>
>
> I applaud those for whom appeal to God's will makes sense of our world,
> and in a small way, envy you.  However, I don't have this security.  I've
> always rejected the "adult" path of religion, family, career, retirement
> and death that following the rules generates.  In a real sense, I've been
> waiting for this epoch to validate my now 40 years old adolescent
> rebelliousness.
>
>
> I don't have any answers, but the oft spoken-of path of "hiker trash" has
> captured my imagination.  I try on different hats now - what will I do
> when my commitment to my job ends in 2010.  There are so many more
> apparent opportunities now at 56 than when I was in my 20s, or 30s, or 40s
> for that matter.  And it's all because the social generated uncertainty we
> are experiencing now in one sense frees me from the vestiges of my
> parent's middle class dreams for me that have guided my life's choices.  I
> am better able to see my way to living in a way that not only is socially
> responsible - giving back to others what I have been given (true working)
> - but is personally satisfying - I want to hike and raft and bike and
> play.
>
>
> Maybe I can base my life in hiking/biking/rafting/playing first (the hiker
> trash lifestyle) and slowly build working into it.  I think the
> hiker-trash lifestyle is trans-materialist - accumulation of worldly goods
> and the status that comes with them is pretty inconsequential and silly.
>
>
> How many thrus have re-entered the materialist world and lost the learning
> the trail offered?  I picture person after person sinking into their
> cubicle chair, screaming silently with ever lessening intensity.  The
> "busy-ness" of the materialist world co-opts and renders trail lessons
> about life into memories of events and people.  Nothing wrong with this.
> Just pointing out that it happens.
>
>
> I think it's easier for me at 56 to consider the hiker-trash lifestyle to
> be the foundation within which I make my way in the world than does
> someone younger.  (I don't know this of course)  I've paid my dues, earned
> the PhD, established a reputation, have a very comfortable place to do
> meaningful work.  I just wish I'd've had the wherewithal to do it in my
> 20s or 30s, or even 40s - find a productive life in the hiker-trash
> lifestyle.
>
>
> I don't know why it took so long, and an economic depression to spur me to
> think more in this direction.  Maybe we have to jump through life's hoops
> to establish this independence, and its eventual interdependence.  I hope
> that those younger than me don't have to spend so long doing it - the
> "jumping" to someone else's music...
>
>
> There are arguments that the social class of people that most benefited
> from the Great Depression of the 30s, and the Long Depression of 1873-
> 1896 in which there were two four year spikes, was the hobo.  The hobo
> used the railroads as the foundation for a lifestyle.  They developed
> their own signage, language, and patterns of being.  There are estimates
> that there were upwards of 500,000 hobos during the Great Depression, .6%
> of America's population.  If our current crisis continues for any length
> of time, the unemployment rate creeps into the double digits, and
> industrial-based jobs continue to de-materialize, we may have another
> emergence of hobos.
>
>
> I'm thinking of course, that the hobo-elite will be those who find ways of
> living based on the thru-hiking mentality.  The new railroad is the trail.
>  The misfits that made up much of the hobo population in olden times won't
> be attracted to the new hobo/hiker-trash lifestyle.  It's too much work.
> Substance abuse, petty theft, etc., amongst the hobo populations that gave
> voice to previous  era's social despair simply couldn't exist amongst the
> hiker-trash community.  Part of it is that the hobo-elite of the 2010s and
> 2020s will have come from the educated working and middle classes.  Who
> else would think that hiking for five months on end is even an option???
> (This is debatable of course!!!)
>
>
> We'd be scheming on how to move the world forward into a new era, and as
> we fell asleep at night in our encampments, we'd dream our way a new path
> back into the world.  America's "future leaders" would be born in the
> dialogues carried out on America's great trails.  A new American hero
> would emerge.  What this hero would look like is a vision yet to be
> crafted.  I just hope that enough of us are open to new ways of thinking
> and living to let materialist values go and model a different way of
> being-in-the-world so that a vision is created that develops its own
> momentum.
>
>
> This is my thinking on the verge of another Christmas Day, and both the
> wonder it provides in bringing family together, and its alienation in
> being tied to business success and failure.
>
>
> Jeffrey Olson
> Martin, SD/Santa Rosa, CA
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pct-l mailing list
> Pct-l at backcountry.net
> http://mailman.backcountry.net/mailman/listinfo/pct-l
>