Have you ever hitchhiked? It was long ago, but I used to hitch rides. I’m confident this will shock many who know my ‘reformed’ or ‘domesticated’ self today, but it’s an absolute truth and a defining milestone of my youth. Not only was I willing to stand on the side of the road, stick my thumb out, and hop into a vehicle driven by a stranger as a viable means of transportation, but I would also reciprocate the gesture when I had the wheels and fuel to wander.
It was in just one of these instances that a benign conversation altered a personal perception I possessed. I was living in the Gunnison / Crested Butte area of Colorado. Hitchhiking was pretty standard because the road to CB (and the chairlift) was essentially a ‘dead end,’ and the more obtainable apartments were found in Gunnison. I was headed up to the mountain to make a couple of turns in my faithful old 1988 Jeep Cherokee Laredo and decided to pick up a rather earthy-looking fellow from ‘The Hitching Post’ at the north end of Gunnison.
This dude was pretty chill. He spent the first 15-20 minutes staring out the window. He had a bit of a cosmic aura; his hair was unkempt, his face unshaven, his winter clothes were nearly as faded as his gaze, and a distinctive aroma of patchouli and cannabis loomed about him. We had passed the confluence of the East and Taylor Rivers at Almont and were on the straight away to the Butte when he finally decided to speak. At about this point in the journey, there is a fish hatchery named Roaring Judy. As an abundant food source, bald eagles often congregate at the fish hatchery in the depths of winter. To my surprise, my travel companion’s first utterance was, “slackers.” I raised an eyebrow and asked him to expand on that statement.
“It’s our national mascot, man. They are nothing but a bunch of slackers. Look at them—out there. Just sitting around looking for an easy meal. They are lazy… and they disrespect themselves.” His statement hit me with far more weight than the sender intended, and I have spent years circling back on this oddly profound statement.
Initially, I was slightly offended, which is an odd reaction to a quasi-accurate wildlife assessment made by a half-conscious youth. So, I unpacked that reaction. I had been taught that bald eagles were a majestic apex predator. They are noble, formidably large, strong, fast, with keen eyesight, and tremendously adaptable to North America’s geographical variances. They are amazing birds to behold in person and visually distinctive to the point that children can quickly identify them. All these contributing facts have aided the decision to adopt the bald eagle as a symbol of the United States of America. I had never once looked at this bird-of-prey and thought, “slacker.” But there they were, and the facts were undeniable. Perhaps we can call them ‘opportunists’ and move on—so I did.
Several years later, in the fall, I visited a friend in Jackson, Wyoming. I had not fully recovered from my ‘Beat’ phase of life and was visiting an old cohort from my personal chronicles of ‘On the Road.’ The lifestyle placed little importance on material acquisition, and correspondingly, our interpretation of ‘Beat life’ involved lots of hunting and fly fishing for sustenance.
On one such frigid October afternoon at Jenny Lake, we were wade fishing for lake trout that had moved to shallower waters to spawn. The air temperature was well below freezing, making dry hands a priority. I hooked a laker pup, fought it onto shore, and deftly grabbed the streamer, flinging the fish farther up onto the rocks while removing the hook at the same time. It was so cold that I wasn’t worried about the fish living long or spoiling, so I took another set of steps down the beach and recast. We needed several more fish to alternate protein from the current staple of ground antelope, which had become tiresome.
All at once, I had a ‘Chicken Little’ moment where the sky blackened, the wind from above punched me, and my ears were overwhelmed with a concurrent “whump.” I was sure my time on the planet was up, and my ticket was punched. I raised my eyes to behold a bald eagle, nearly on top of me, now flying away with my fresh fish dinner. I did not catch another fish. The nobility of that bird decreased by a measure at that moment.
Another series of years later, I was driving northbound on US 40 toward Park City on a lovely late summer morning. I had just summited “Mount Doom” and was ultimately rolling down the hill to Quinn’s Junction to make a connection in PC. In the years before the highway fencing was installed, wildlife collisions were a much larger problem, and it would be familiar to see three or four animals on the side of the road during any given commute. I saw a pile of turkey buzzards picking at a carcass near the base of the hill. As I drove by, the birds spooked and took flight. Our national mascot, a bald eagle, remained behind. It had been feeding on a mule deer carcass with a flock of buzzards.
Not that I have anything particularly against buzzards, but apex predators they are not. As far as the food web goes, carrion feeders, while important, are not perceived to have the same majesty as the hunter. What happened in this bald eagle’s life to land it feeding on roadkill deer with a flock of buzzards? Was it a lack of opportunity? Not likely, given the big five local reservoirs, the Provo and Weber River systems. Eventually, it must have succumbed to temptation and embraced a regrettable habit. The visualization of a carrion-eating bald eagle surrounded by turkey buzzards was challenging to shed from my mind.
Then I pondered, are human beings different from an ‘opportunistic’ bald eagle?
The Beat Generation was titled as such, not about the “kicks” or the “jazz.” It was that the generation had been beaten into weariness, used up by WWII profiteers while being governmentally and culturally forced into a new life of commodification and consumerism. They faced the death of their known way of life and the new future that was an inevitability. The Beats felt ingloriously pinned against a wall where nothing was left but their naked soul. At what they perceived as a societal rock bottom, the Beat movement turned off mainstream programming and reduced their core beliefs to find beauty in corresponding base simplicity. Analyzing their new reality, they determined that how one lives is more significant than why—particularly when the why was prescribed by their temporal overlords. The Beats sought spiritual fulfillment in the journey, opposing the consumption, acquisition, and debt recipe for what was societally prescribed as acceptable behavior. The Beats were culturally presented with an easy opportunity and alternately chose to explore what was traditionally ‘human’ over the product wrapped in shiny cellophane and wonderous technicolor convenience.
With the moral exploration of that time, many of the ‘Beats’ and the ‘Squares’ became lost. They both ‘disrespected themselves’ for an easy meal. For the Squares, the easy meal was found by being unquestioningly governable and subscribing to the commodification and consumerism movement. The problem the Beats faced was that, with moral degeneracy, permanently life-altering bad decisions were made—as Kerouac chronicles in On the Road.
Having lived in both of these worlds, which, make no mistake, still exist today, I believe that the way to avoid these traps is always to keep your spiritual identity in focus. If a bald eagle knows who it is, what it is and believes in its purpose, it will be less likely to be allured away by the enslavement of easy opportunity, aversion to hard work, fear of conflict, or the identity confusion created by bad decisions that may equivalently land you eating roadkill with a flock of mutually minded buzzards.
Spirituality is innate within all human beings and is a definitive human trait. Spiritual quests are personal and manifest to each soul in unique ways. I don’t believe any spiritual journey is without merit—so long as it focuses on acquiring light and further knowledge.
I challenge the citizens of the Heber Valley this spring to explore the reality of their spiritual selves. Start by accepting that you are a noble creature capable of greatness. Find quiet time to ponder, read, and meditate in your own personal way. Set expectations that challenge ‘easy-outs’ and avoid apathy. Be assertive and speak the truth without a spin or background side agenda. Own a calm mind, slow to be provoked, and consider positive and negative consequences before making decisions. Explore the wonder of nature and creation as our flora and fauna emerge from their seasonal dormancy. Celebrate what it is to be human in this very moment. There is no better time than the present to emerge from spiritual hibernation.
