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hitch-hiking written for a zine currently being compiled by Todd Legler i tend to find myself spending a lot of time sitting with bored proffessional drivers in the cabs of white vans or humungous lorries, thundering up and down identically grey and linear stretches of motorway. bit of a funny situation, really, for somebody so opposed to roads, to car-culture, to petrol-driven transport in general. particularly funny, since the very reason I'm there is my oppositional stance - hitch-hiking, paradoxically, is the only zero-impact way of travelling i know, beyond walking, or cycling, or sailing - none of which offer much potential for speedy long-distance inland travel. so i find myself sitting next to people whose unfulfilling (in most instances) lives consist mainly of driving up and down the country, delivering either commodities to supply the over-stimulated consumer society, or, in many cases, due to the anomalies of capitalist economics, ridiculously small quantities of super-expensive courier freight. and any mention of the political reasons for my being there is likely to insult and offend. so i stick to the personal. i like to travel cheaply (that one everyone can understand), to meet different people, and have someone to chat with on my journey. i like to see the land passing by as i go, to know where i am, where i get to, and how i arrived there. not for me the abstract and disorientating experience of aeroplane travel. i like the exhilaration of dawn skies, the smell of the tarmac in the sun (but not the hours choking on exhaust), the nights camping in the woods, the fun of being outside it all, existing on the edge for a while. i like the other people i meet, their stories, their lives. i like to demonstrate by example that it is possible to be free, to do things differently, your own way, to live life as a constant adventure and never submit to the drudgery of slavery to the capitalist system. and if that's just my youthful naivety, still it carries a grain of truth, and still maybe it can inspire someone to take a risk and enjoy themselves, for a while. and when they tell me it's hypocritical, to use the cars and the motorways and then turn round and try to oppose them - well, there's a wealth of sound answers. if people didn't use cars, we could set up a sustainable rail network in its place. then i wouldn't have to hitch. if even just half of all road travellers hitched instead of driving (most cars are three-quarters empty), that'd already cut emissions by nearly 50%. and we could stop manufacturing more cars, stop building more motorways. not to mention the most pragmatic answer - in this current situation, the most sustainable way to travel (the one with the smallest eco-footprint) is to parasitise the existing, poorly exploited traffic. The day they propose to stop all road traffic, forever, dismantle the roads and plant trees among the rubble - i'll happily surrender my seat and pick up a spade… |
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