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

[jolson at olc.edu]

(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