In my last post I wrote that I’m looking forward to when I run out of money. My mom was worried and sent me fifty bucks. “You know you can always count on me for help if you need it, right?”
My brother was more critical. “The only reason you’re excited to run out of money is because you know that you can always get more if you need to from mom and dad.” (how prescient of him)
I was peeved. “Hey now, wait a second – I’m an independent, self propelled adventurer! I’m not about to cave in and ask ma ‘n pa for help now.”
But my brother Shaun is on to something. He’s right that the only reason I can be excited to run out of money is because I’ll still be pretty far from anything resembling genuine poverty. I come from a loving and wealthy family. I’m young and healthy and have a university degree from a respectable school. I wore braces when I was fifteen and now have straight, clean teeth. I speak English. I’m white. A privilege beyond how much money is in my bank account seeps out of my every seam.
When I was sailing a luxury yacht across the Pacific it occurred to me more than once that I probably wouldn’t be if it weren’t for my pedigree. Yacht clubs aren’t exactly known for embracing those from the lower rungs of society. How many black men from the ghetto have ever been invited out for a jaunt on a sailing yacht? I certainly didn’t meet any.
After a while the influence of my company started to rub off on me. In casual conversation at the yacht clubs I found myself adopting the yachties’ infectiously aristocratic air.
“Wow, your summer home in Alaska sounds simply wonderful! Yes, the homeless here in Honolulu are just dreadful! And yes, please, I will have another glass of the cabernet sauvignon, thank you very much.”
No, these are not the type of people with whom I could relate the intangible joys of eating free food from the dumpsters with some scraggly punks. These people will never understand the quiet satisfaction of finding a hidden spot to pitch a tent behind a highway truck stop. They’ll never see the homeless people in Hawaii as anything more than a mild nuisance, a visual blight, something unifying to talk about along the lines of “oh, hasn’t the weather been just terrible?”
Then there was China – where I experienced the closest thing to celebrity I’ve ever felt. I was offered a job teaching English nearly every day. In Yunfu, if I’d decided to, I could have had a free apartment and still earned five times what a native teacher would. Who cares that I have neither a teaching certificate nor a work visa? It’s Yunfu! Wherever I went people wanted to know who I was, what I was doing, and how they could help. Everyone wanted to take a picture with me. I was the guest of honour at more than one dinner. One night I got paraded around this guy’s Karaoke bar, going into room after room, like I was some sort of VIP making the rounds for a photo-op.
I’ve never been more aware of my privileged position in society than I have on this trip. I know that even when my bank account dries up I can always draw upon the ineffable bank of education, class, and race.
—
Maybe I was wrong to say that I’m looking forward to when I run out of money. I’m not looking forward to the moment when I go to withdraw money from the ATM and it says insufficient funds. Nobody looks forward to that.
What I’m looking forward to is this – closing the door to comfort. After five hours of waiting by a toll gate in China I don’t want to give up and pay for a bus ticket out of the country. I want to sleep on the grass next to the freeway and start walking early the next day. I don’t want to even have the temptation to do otherwise.
I don’t want to find myself making conversation in a hostel with some Dutch women who think black people should be grateful to be allowed to live in Holland. I don’t want to shoot the shit with some American guys I just met. I don’t care how much Thai whisky they drank last night or how fat the chick their buddy finger banged was. I don’t care how ripped they got or how many mushrooms were in the smoothies they drank on the Nam Song river. I don’t want to ride an elephant, take a photo with a lion, or visit the “long neck people”.
I want to talk with people who care about the world. Who don’t think it’s weird to bag someone else’s leftovers or read a book at night instead of partying. I’ll party when I meet people worth partying with. I want to find a Sikh temple and eat my meals there. Maybe I’ll be allowed to stay the night. If not, I want to sleep outside under my tarp – next to a river, a lake, in a forest, wherever. I want to get picked up on the highway because I look tired and it’s hot out. I want to stay in a punk squat in Poland and stand up to the cops when they try to evict us. I want to care that we’re getting evicted. I want to check the labour section of craigslist every morning to see if anything new has been posted and finally get a job digging fence posts or painting a house for a few days.
—
I’ll finish with an anecdote.
A few years ago a friend and I were hitchhiking down the west coast of the United States. One evening, in fading light, we were dropped off on an isolated stretch of northern California’s coastal highway. We started walking down the windy road, dwarfed by the tall fir and cedars growing all around us. Our eyes were open for a discrete place where we could pitch our tent for the night but, before we found anything, someone else appeared on the road, walking toward us.
He was a skinny blonde guy about our age with a pack on his back. It seemed pretty unlikely to see someone else walking in that quiet part of the country.
“Hey, we’re looking for a spot to set up camp for the night – want to join us?” We asked.
The three of us walked a few hundred meters further and soon found a dirt road branching off the highway that petered out into nothing. We set up our tent, started a fire, and put a pot of rice over it. Once the rice was soft and steamy we took out some smoked salmon that someone had gifted us earlier in the day. It was pretty obvious that our new friend had no food so we offered him some of the salmon too.
As we ate he told us his story. He’d been in and out of juvenile detention for the past few years. The details of his living situation were a bit sketchy, and further obscured by the haze of time, but he’d decided that he needed to get out. He didn’t know where to go and all he had was an old tent and a backpack – that was it. No money and no food. Still, he’d walked all the way from Washington state to California without much more than the belief that what he needed would manifest itself. He never asked for anything – he didn’t even hitchhike. Sometimes people would see him walking on the road and invite him to their homes, give him clothes, cook him meals. I suppose if he hadn’t met us that night he just wouldn’t have eaten.
I can’t remember the details so well anymore, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we happened to have a bottle of cheap red wine with us and we happened to stay up late into the night, drinking and cracking jokes as our fire crackled in the dark woods.
That’s why I’m travelling. Not to talk about finger banging with some pumped up dudes from the States.
Gnarly Travels 