Travel By the Book: A Hitchhiking Odyssey

July 24 -- Common sense sometimes stands in the way of wisdom.

For example, many people would find it foolhardy to hitchhike, given the general opinion that allowing yourself to be picked up on barren interstate highways leaves one open to being robbed, raped or killed. But making oneself vulnerable, as one is when alone in the wilderness dependent upon the kindness of strangers, can be a path to self-truth.

As described by Tim Brookes (a commentator for National Public Radio, and a professor at the University of Vermont), hitchhiking is a Zen exercise of giving yourself over to serendipity. And it is only in that state that one can be free to discover a new place, get to know people, and test oneself.

A native of Britain who blindly challenged himself to hitchhike across the United States in 1973, Brookes recently decided to retrace his route, intent not only to recapture a glittering fragment of his past but also to find an America thought lost. Against the advice of his friends, Brookes embarked on an ambitious trek, with regrets that this new era of travel is more safe, more convenient and more predictable than ever before. “Everyone travels, but not everyone explores,” he laments.

A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow: An American Hitchhiking Odyssey (Adventure Press) is an entertaining chronicle of Brookes’ expedition, and a bold refutation of the notion that thumbing it has lost all its romantic connotations.

‘I’m Only Going 400 Feet’

Beginning in New York, Brookes traversed an industrial East, a flat Midwest, a deserted Southwest, and the lush terrain of the Pacific Northwest before heading back to his New England home. Accompanying him here and there on his journey, just a phone call and a Buick Skylark away, was a National Geographic photographer from Poland, Tomasz Tomaszewski, who cheerfully captures the American scene while constantly complaining about how little the light cooperates.

The rides Brookes nabbed ranged from several hundred miles to 400 feet, and his travels introduced him to a wide cross-section of Americans: truck drivers, students, artists, ex-convicts, a psychologist, a high tech millionaire who retired in his 30s, a legendary guitarist, a young venture capitalist who keeps a shotgun and saber in his trunk, even (in a nod to flashbacks past) a hippie couple in a VW bus.