Date: 2006-07-14
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

I had a revelation the other night while riding the subway home from a friend¢s bohemian birthday party clad in ill-fitting borrowed clothing and carrying my sleeping pad under my arm: I have a perpetual fear of becoming destitute and homeless. It seems as though the condition is always a matter of one bad personal decision or poor administrative move away, a large fear for someone who feels as though she is grossly cheating the class system. I was riding the subway home from my friend¢s place after the infamous dinner with my wet clothes and sleeping pad under my arm and I realized that I looked homeless. Thru-hikers have long referred to themselves as ¢the other kind of homeless¢. A funny term, since this sort of homelessness involves choice rather than an element of victimization on behalf of the existing system. For most, it¢s a light hearted sense of homelessness, made somewhat safer by the presence of parental homes or impending returns to school, family, or spouses. For me, it¢s more finite. I¢m giving up everything; my home, my job, all of it. I¢m a wanderer, and that¢s all I have, burning my bridges as I go.I¢m reminded of Jurgis, the beaten down blue collar worker in Upton Sinclair¢s _The Jungle_. Jurgis was a disillusioned worker, victim of the abuses of the meatpacking industry in Chicago, of industry in general, who went on a long multi-month long hobo trek after an episode of intense disillusionment:¢He had never asked where he was nor where he was going: the country was big enough, he knew, and there was no danger of him coming to the end of it. And of course he could always have company for the asking¢everywhere he went there were men living just as he lived, and whom he was welcomed to join. He was a stranger at the business but they were not clannish, and they taught him all their tricks¢what towns and villages it was best to keep away from, and how to read the secret signs upon the fences, and when to beg and when to steal, and just how to do both¢¦¢ That passage reminds me of thru-hikers, of their word-of-mouth wisdom, the community they create; their rejection, however unintentional, of a world that doesn¢t quite fit their needs. In deciding to hike, I¢m giving up my stability, my income, and, most importantly, my concrete and traditional sense of home. I¢ll have no mailing address or any of the other accoutrements of the landed folk. This is HUGE. I can¢t believe that I haven¢t fully considered it before now. My boss, who lived amongst the African Bushmen for a year when her husband was doing sociological research, said that I am just like them; I can pick up my belongings and move off in a moment¢s notice. I am free.As far as my physical possessions go, I can pick them up on my back and go at any time. And, oddly, this has given me a deeper sense of being rooted in my community, with the people I love. How can this be, I wonder? Because, in place of curtains and cutlery, my sense of physical and material restlessness has given me a sense of place with the people I¢m around on a daily basis.Lose the curtains and gain the world¢¦I came face to face with a bobcat this past weekend. The creature was wild and beautiful and gazed at me with an intensity that I¢ve never before experienced with another living thing. I was alone in the woods, a poor skinny defenseless soul with only my pack on my back. I returned the cat¢s intense gaze and realized that I was home.