Hitchhiking and the Unexpected

How do you identify a good person?  Is it, "the cut of their clothes or the length of their hair," the car they drive, their wealth, their smile, their fruit?  Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said that the line dividing good from evil runs not through governments or social institutions but right through the heart of every human being.  Good and evil are in each of us.  Sometimes one is more apparent than the other, but they are both there, waiting to come out.

My travels, especially through hitchhiking, have challenged my assumptions of what makes a person good, especially the outward signs.  Many persons who showed me much kindness and hospitality were folks who on first appearance seemed the least likely to do this.  I think of a guy who picked Jack and I up in North Carolina.  He was an atheist and was dressed like Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy, from a party the night before.  He had recently been to a Grateful Dead reunion concert where the band told the audience, "Do good," so he thought he should pick us up.  I think of Richard, who wore a Nirvana T-shirt and recited memories from his days as an aspiring musician.  He took us through Indianapolis then left us parting gifts, jewelry he had been wearing because this was a tradition of his music counter-culture.  I think of Brendan and Sheila, who saw on Facebook that two hippies were hitchhiking in Springfield and needed a ride so they came and drove two hours out of their way to take us a bit farther down the road.  They bought us dinner too.  Brendan talked of friends hopping trains and Sheila smoked in the passenger seat.  They too saw themselves as deviants in the town we left together.  I think of Jim Beanblossom, an arborist who wore long hair, a scruffy beard, and a pink birth mark over his right eye.  His first words to us in his thick southern accent were, "Get in the truck boys, I can take you fifteen miles then I'm giving you twenty bucks."  He did, and also bought us smoothies.  I think of the anonymous man who pulled over on the side of the road to see if we needed a ride.  He drove a truck and looked like a construction worker on his lunch break.  We didn't and so declined his offer but he handed us a lottery ticket worth $200 and drove away. 

The list goes on.  So much kindness and hospitality have been shown to me so far, it is overwhelming.  Many of these folks appeared lower class based on their vehicles, many were hippies or former hippies, Dead-Heads or some other ragamuffins who defied the stereotypes I consciously or subconsciously put them in.  Despite the apparent evil which seems to plague our culture, much good is out there too.  I suppose trust, hope, and vulnerability have allowed me to see this more now than in other seasons.  This is not a bad life.  

1. Johnny Cash, "What is Truth," Johnny Cash's America.
2. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Ascent," The Gulag Archipelago. 

I will travel to Cincinnati tomorrow, there I will part with Emma, a friend who has traveled with Jack and I on and off for the past month, then in a week I'll part with Jack, surely this will be sad.  Afterwards, I will begin heading more directly west, living on a farm in Iowa for a bit then arriving in Denver towards the middle of September.  Keep Jack, Emma, and I in your prayers.  Peace!