You don’t see many hitchhikers today. Likely due to too many exposés on axe-murderers in our media. It creates a lack of trust of our fellow man lowering the probability of getting picked up.

When I was a kid, I hitchhiked to both coasts from Minnesota. I traded the inconvenience and uncertainty for the possibility of adventure, and what I thought was freedom at the time. I met Thelma and Louise on the road then, before they were a thing. Thelma had just gotten out of a sanatorium for trying to kill her husband, but she drove her gold 1965 Cadillac convertible with skill at 105 miles per hour. Top down. Yet I rarely see people looking for a ride today.

Last spring I was driving west out of Cortez late one afternoon along McElmo creek in a pretty little valley where I had rented a casita. The sun lowering, it was still summer hot. About a mile past the junction of 461 and Road G, a man was walking briskly along the side of the road. His back turned, he held his thumb out on his left hand. From experience, I know he didn’t expect a ride, but crappy weather makes a difference, and getting a ride is easier when it’s too hot or too cold, or in rain and snow. So I pulled over. I moved the detritus of too long a road trip off my passenger seat and he jumped in.

Pulling back on the road, I told him I was only going about six or seven miles. He was glad to have the ride, AC and all. His name was Vernon, not a Ute name, but he was Mountain Ute and something else. He had no possessions, and when I asked him where he was coming from, he said, prison. That might be a conversation killer, but he added, he was only there for six months. I told him I’d spent 2 days in the Burleigh County jail in North Dakota. I didn’t like it much. Didn’t think I could do six months. Too claustrophobic, and I couldn’t breathe. He said, try doing 10 years.

The road winds up the valley with a few small hardscrabble farms and ranches on both sides. To the north is Canyons of the Ancients National Monument where I spent the morning hiking among the ruins of the past. To the south is Sleeping Ute Mountain and the Ute Tribal Lands. We passed a ranch with horses, and he said he’d been in Montana breaking and wrangling. I knew that the Ute had been proud horseman for as long as there were horses on the continent. Maybe there was some work here. Then somehow we got to talking about bears.

He volunteered that the bear was a sacred animal to his people. They descended from bears who were here before humans. The Ute spiritual practice is a type of Shamanism based on the belief of nature and healing. I told him that seemed to make some sense and came as close to anything I ever believed. I said, I grew up in the lakes and woods of Minnesota and respected bears. Once, when I was 14, I was deer hunting and had just killed my first and last deer, when a bear came running across a swamp and stopped on a small hill 40 yards away. He rose on his hind legs, and steamed the air. Having read too many stories, I placed the crosshairs of my rifle on the bear. But then the bear said something to me. It wasn’t with words that I understood then, but I lowered the rifle, and then the bear came charging past me a few yards away. It was frightened, like someone had shot at it. After it passed, I pointed my rifle skyward and pulled the trigger, allowing me to tell my hunting party that I had missed the animal. I told Vernon that I’ve seen other bears over the years. There are fewer of them now. When I do see them, maybe it’s my imagination, but there is recognition in them. They walk close by. They are respectful. He nodded.

Our conversation continued past my turnoff. Vernon was going back to his second wife and two kids. They were young boys and he missed them. Ten miles further, I turned off the tarmac onto a rutted clay road. I could see a few trailers scattered like metal hogans across the dry dessert hills. My hatchback got about 100 yards toward his trailer and couldn’t go any further, so he got out.

I asked him if he had anything for his kids. He didn’t. So I gave him some bread and sandwich meat, and also a bag of Tootsie Rolls my waist didn’t need. We said goodbye. And I thought about the bear as I drove back. Hitchhiking or not, we’re all just passing through.

We are all connected. Savor the Earth!’™

– Hobie,

L. Hobart Stocking
SkyWaterEarth.com
hobart@skywaterearth.com
Substack: SkyWaterEarth – Hobie Stocking