Travel By the Book: A Hitchhiking Odyssey

July 24, 2000 -- 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.

His traveling companions belie easy notions about Middle Americans, many of whom seem to share Brookes’ romantic ideals, even at their most cynical. “Everybody had come to want things to be larger than life,” one truck driver muses. “Our faith in the value of the ordinary had been lost.”

Brookes notes the events and concerns of a nation where national politics is barely mentioned, where people reinvent their lives at the drop of a hat, and where visionaries can create a replica of Stonehenge using wrecked cars.

Brookes proudly acknowledges how his own optimism is rewarded by the enlightening events that transpire, while remarking upon prejudices and fears — his own included — that stand in the way of forging friendships, even those that are most fleeting. Brookes has a keen eye, but also an ability to look into himself unflinchingly, an admirable trait for a memoirist, as when he wrestles with homophobia upon discovering a cachet of gay cheesecake shots in one trucker’s glove compartment.

Brookes’ greatest asset, and perhaps what helped him maintain his sanity during his trip, is his sardonic sense of humor, as when describing an event of indescribable surprise: “It was like being attacked by a fried egg.”

Moments, Sometimes Hours

The narrative goes back and forth, from conversations between rider and driver, to moments (sometimes hours) of solitude, waiting for someone to pull over.

The few passersby stared. The sheriff prowled past. “People are strange when you’re a stranger,” Jim Morrison said.

In order to get past this unease, I tried a tactic I’d never used before: I nodded once, briefly, at everyone who passed. A nod is a simple thing, far less demanding than a smile or a wave, and almost impossible to resist. I nodded, and everyone nodded back: the guys in the Nevada Highways Department pickups, the little old ladies, even the sheriff. After half an hour, I found myself warming to Beatty more than virtually everywhere else I passed through. It was a wonderfully hospitable little town. Everybody nodded.

Brookes also sought out people he had met on his 1973 journey, and strangely enough found many of them. Their conversations evoke the passing of years and of a generation.

Hitchhiking has always offered a chance for young people to prove ourselves. If at any given period the way to personhood and respect is to get a steady job or start a family, then working in a bank is a way of proving ourselves. Hitchhiking rose rapidly at a time, and in a constituency, when we needed to prove that we were not good citizens, capable wage earners, good parents, good team players, loyal employees, because those qualities seemed to lead to the problem, not the solution. We proved ourselves on the opposite scale — as travelers and individualists, paupers, and outsiders.

A Hell of a Place to Lose a Cow (a title which derives from one settler’s understated impression of Bryce Canyon) is recommended for the optimist who would be grateful to have his beliefs in human nature corroborated, and for the pessimist who can get a thrill from partaking in Brookes’ grueling journey without leaving the comfort of his own home.