Mountain man

Friend, reader, and fellow blogger Phil forwarded this NY Times story to me recently. We both found fascinating reading, albeit for completely different reasons. He was impressed by the quality of the prose, especially coming from someone still in college, as well as the theme of intentional homelessness.

In April of my freshman year, my boyfriend, Terry, decided he wanted to be homeless. Among the decisions I expected a college-age boyfriend to make (changing cellphone plans, or maybe going vegan), homelessness was not one of them.

Still, I took the situation calmly. I had known Terry since high school and had watched him pass through various phases: Goth, punk, anarchist, Marxist and Zen. When he explained that he was giving up his room to live on the farms and in the woods surrounding our Hudson Valley college town, I did not make a scene. I told myself this, too, would pass and politely asked him why he did not want to live in a house.

Phil, for those of you who don't know him, is similarly not tied to a particular dwelling, and he writes (quite well, too) about his travels and adventures. But he's not what we typically think of as homeless. He's a professional house sitter on the one hand, a business consultant with a wireless connection whose office is wherever he chooses to be at the moment on the other. So he related to Terry's travails from a different perspective than i.

That "Hudson Valley college town" is the same one that i, fresh-faced and pony-tailed, first moved to in the fall of 1974 and where, a year and a half later, i first met Mrs. D in a class called, and i swear i'm not making this up, Communes and Alternate Technologies. New Paltz has always attracted more than its share of lost souls and seekers. It's bucolic and, at various times of the year, breathtakingly beautiful. It's also convenient to New York City, yet far enough away to be outside the commuter zone. Until relatively recently, it was even affordable. So i understood why someone like Terry would be attracted there at a certain time of life.

Even more, i could relate to his adventures in the woods outside of town. In the summer of 1977 i found myself in New Paltz, collecting an $85.00 unemployment check every two weeks and $60 in food stamps once a month. CETA jobs had dried up, and i didn't want to spend any more time than i had to in town, anyway. My friend John V. was putting together a lean-to in the woods about 5 miles west of town on the road up to Mohonk, but he was leaving for Colorado to live with his girlfriend. It took about 30 seconds for me to decide to spend the summer in the woods. I had lost all of my worldly possessions except my backpack, sleeping bag, and the clothes on my back earlier that spring*.

Homeless wasn't in anyone's vocabulary that summer. Mountain man. That was a phrase i heard more than once, but i didn't think of myself as a mountain man. I wasn't hunting my own food, although i did supplement my diet with some berries and leaves that were growing nearby. I made it into town a couple of times a week to sit and drink tea on the sidewalk, or to visit a friend and maybe take a shower. I learned to build a fire and keep it smoldering all night. Once, while in town, i watched a huge cloud of smoke rising above the mountain in the general direction of my house, and spent the better part of a morning wondering if i had burned up half the mountain. I hadn't. I learned to hang my food from a tree to foil the raccoons, who were happy to steal whatever was in reach, and who didn't seem to be afraid to walk past my campfire. I slept in a hammock in the woods when it didn't rain. I took long walks, leaving little shrines on the trailside, mounds of twigs and pebbles with a small bit of pot wrapped in tin foil inside. Once or twice i impressed the heck out of a friend by spotting one and producing, as if by magic, a bowlful of smoke. I had a wonderful encounter with a park ranger who, sadly for me (and her, i think), wouldn't take off her clothes to join me for a swim in an otherwise totally secluded lake. My first night sleeping in the woods, i made the mistake of assuming that i could find my way in the dark. I probably walked within 10 feet of my lean-to half a dozen times before, exhausted, i stumbled upon someone's barn at 3 am and slept for a few hours inside the door, leaving at first light and retracing my steps to my house. I dealt with that problem by leaving a flashlight at the trailhead under a boulder, and tacking some reflective disks, stolen, no borrowed, from the highway, up on a few trees to mark the way. I reread the Lord of the Rings. I wrote occasionally. I hitchhiked up to Kingston twice a month to sign for my unemployment check. Here's a tip. If you collect unemployment from a state that's not the one you live in, the staff at the department is incredibly helpful and friendly and will make sure you get every penny to which you're entitled. I stole, no, borrowed, a few ears of corn once in a while. I discovered there's a difference between sweet corn and feed corn, too. It was, for a person of my age and disposition, a damn near perfect summer.

I felt bad for the young man in the article that he wasn't able to make that work. I hope he tries again, letting go of the cultural trappings of wanting to be "homeless" and just figuring out how to enjoy that last brief, carefree fling before adulthood.

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* Some of you who know me in real life will recognize this as the "Danny 'If anybody asks my last name is' King" story. The price to hear that story is a Maker's Mark, neat, at any local establishment.