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

Thu Nov 21 01:50:36 CST 2013

The modern day hobo, yeah, that's pretty much what life on trail is.  My
first experience of hobo life was as a hippie, living with my thumb out,
hitching all across this wonderful land, living off the road.  They were
summers of freedom and amazing experiences, trail angels even though we
didn't have that word for them, and a life that was as simple as it was
complex.  Nothing to think about except did we have food and where we gonna
get rained on.

I finished college and had a career for years that allowed me to work with
people and that's always good, but I've found the road again in retirement
and its face is the Trail.  Nothing reminds me more of the '60s and that
life I lived on the road as the life of being certifiable hiker trash.  The
caring for each other on trail and the spirit of almost everyone associated
with the long trails reminds me of those early, rebellious, and wonderful
days when it seemed half the youth of the country were hitching from the
East Coast to the West and us Westerners on our way back East.  It was
good, and the PCT is good and brings out the best in people and some of the
best experiences you'll ever have.  But for me it's the first place I
kissed the face of the '60's again and found I still loved her.

Shroomer

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 9:58 PM, Jeffrey Olson <jjolson60 at centurylink.net>wrote:

> I wrote this about five years ago in the midst of the economic "crisis"
> that now seems, I don't know - I don't know  how to put it into a bigger
> picture.  I do know that the thoughts I had about hiker trash and a
> slacker lifestyle still reign.  Let the dweebs think we're slackers.
> They'll never get it...
>
> jeff
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
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