Riding With Strangers:
A Hitchhicker's Journey
Review by Darren Sutherland
Riding With Strangers
by Elijah Wald
Chicago Review Press
$22.95
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“If you trust everyone you meet, you will occasionally get robbed; but if you distrust everyone, you will spend your life surrounded by thieves.”
-Elijah Wald, quoting a forgotten source
Don’t tell Elijah Wald the world is a scary place. He knows that, but he would argue that it is no more scary than it has always been. In his new book Riding With Strangers, Wald maintains that the world has not become more dangerous, but that our fears have begun to alienate us from a world that is essentially benign.
His new book is a paean to hitch-hiking—yes, hitch-hiking, that age-old mode of transportation that the pregnant Mary used to get to Bethlehem. Combining his verve for storytelling with his keen eye for social commentary, Wald takes us on a one-week journey from Boston to Vancouver, BC, sharing along the way a social history of hitchhiking, his views on contemporary culture, and some musings on the beauty of “sleeping rough” and the pleasures of the road. For the more adventurous, he also offers us some tips and advice on the ins-and-outs of hitching. Wald’s journey is a re-imagining of the American landscape. His United States is not the world of terror alerts and a menacing populace, but of individuals who may be different but are basically good-hearted.
For Wald, hitchhiking is not about the adventurous thrills, it is about meeting people, “the small cumulative experiences of close meetings with complete strangers.” In an increasingly alienated culture, getting out there on the road allows one to make those brief, yet intimate connections with people of all walks of life. In his journey he meets missionaries and musicians, truck drivers of all walks of life, and even a businessman in a powder blue sweater he meets leaving our own Sun Valley. Everyone has their story, and it is remarkable how similar threads run through these seemingly incongruous lives.
True to his word, Wald’s National Book Tour has been arranged without any transportation. Beginning at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, WA, he will hitchhike from reading to reading, with a stop at Iconoclast Books in Ketchum, ID, where he will appear with musical guest Rosalie Sorrels on May 24th. His final destination will be Coliseum Books in New York City on June 12th, that’s roughly 3000 miles in 27 days.
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