The Philosophy of the German Hitchhiker
What I learned from a chance encounter in the rain
Jasper, Alberta is a postcard picture perfect tourist town in the Canadian Rockies. It’s where I was born. We moved away when I was seven, and my memories of it are vague recollections of ice and snow and people tying my skates at the local ice rink which was where all the kids hung out after school. Any other memory I have from there is either based on a picture in a family photo album or from one of the few visits we made to Jasper after the move. One of them involves my father doing something that we were always taught not to do. He picked up a hitchhiker. To be clear, as kids we were taught not to accept rides from strangers and, when we turned 16 and got drivers licences, we were taught not to pick up hitchhikers. Tachnically, and in my father’s defence, the man we picked up wasn’t a hitchhiker. He was a backpacker, and kept his thumbs to himself while walking along the Jasper-Banff parkway with his back to the traffic. It was pouring rain.
When my father pulled to the side of the road, my mother asked what was wrong.
“That guy had a German flag on his backpack.”, my father answered.
Dad stepped out into the rain and asked the man if he wanted a ride.
“Yes, thank you.”, he said.
His backpack was loaded into the trunk of what I can only imagine was our 1967 Pontiac station wagon. That made for six of us in the car, which might have been legal because I think the Pontiac had a “bench” front seat. I can’t remember who sat where, but it was a relatively short drive to the campground we were going to stay at.
My father suggested the hitchhiker could pitch his tent beside our camping trailer instead of paying for a spot for himself.
“Yes, thank you.”, he said.
Once we were set up, my father offered the hitchhiker dinner and, I hope I remember this correctly, a beer or two.
“Yes, thank you.”
I can’t recall much about that evening. I was only 11 or 12. My mother was with us, so my lack of memory can’t be blamed on the drink. In our family folklore, or at least in the made up memories in my mind, the hitchhiker came from a relatively well to do family. They had visions of him becoming a lawyer, doctor or businessman that could take his share of the family fortune and continue to build their empire. This was the early 1970’s though, so the hitchhiker, with his long hair, longer beard and scruffy jeans was not doing what his parents told him to. He was a free-spirit. Maybe it’s because he was trained in the vocation or maybe it’s because North Americans automatically thought that anyone from Europe would be a good handyman, but I believe he was earning his keep by building cabinets while wandering the world from place to place.
What I do remember clearly was the hitchhiker’s philosophy. It was also the reason why he didn’t have his thumb out like a normal hitchhiker when we found him walking down the highway in the rain.
“I don’t ask for anything, but I try to accept anything that is offered to me.”
I’m not sure how he came to have this philosophy or even how well it served him, but I do remember that I immediately felt attracted to it.
We kids were probably sent to our sleeping bags while there were still flames in the campfire and cold beers in the hands of the hitchhiker and my father. They probably talked about the hitchhiker’s next destinations and I’m sure Dad told him where we lived and to look us up if he ever wandered down Highway 97 into the central Okanagan valley.
The next morning, the hitchhiker was gone from our campsite. Tent, backpack, German hippie and all had vanished without trace.
I know for a fact that my father told him to look us up if he was ever in our area because three or four years later, just as my parents were getting set to go out to dinner, or go somewhere without us kids, the phone rang.
“It’s me.”, the hitchhiker said. “You picked me up in the rain near Jasper a while back.”
“Oh, yes...”, whoever answered the phone probably said as the wheels of memory started spinning to try to remember the voice, the person and the episode in the National Park.
“I’m here.”
“Where?”
“Here. In Kelowna. At the bus station.” (Obviously he had moved up in the world and wasn’t walking everywhere anymore.)
Whether it was my mother or my father he was talking to doesn’t matter. They would delay their departure for the night out, so the hitchhiker turned bus passenger could be picked up, brought back to our house where he would be left alone with me and my younger brother. (Hey, don’t judge my parents. My brother and I both survived… The hitchhiker was a good man.)
My guess is that he turned up somewhere around 1975-76, because as far as I can remember my older brother was in Norway on his gap year (which was a proper 1-year gap year and not a four-decade-long one like mine) and it was probably before March 1976 because I don’t recall having my driver’s license.
In any case, I spent the evening with the hitchhiker and he probably told me lots of interesting stories about his experiences around the world that helped, in a purely subliminal way, to fuel my own desire to see and learn about our planet and the people that inhabit it. I say subliminal because I have no recollection of what any of those stories were.
In later years, including as I write this story, I tried to search the internet for traces of the European explorer. I haven’t found him.
What I have found, is that his philosophy of life has served me well over the years. In its own way it covers a lot. It’s humble. It’s non-imposing. It’s inclusive and accepting.
Never ask for anything but try to accept whatever is offered.
Thanks for reading 87 Stories - Lessons from the University of Life!
I’m Paul, and I like to say that my post-high school gap year in Europe, included a 30-year, basement-to-boardroom career at a company that didn’t want to hire me.
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how my gap year lasted four decades, made me an emigrant, an immigrant and a gave me a life I never dreamed of.
Stay safe, Always Care