Easy Rider

On hitchhiking to Bridger Bowl.

One late-summer evening, my younger brother and I were cruising across the ancient bottom of Lake Agassiz, flat as a pancake as far as you can see in all directions. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were blasting out into the expanse of endless cornfields when he turned to me and asked, “Why don’t we move out to Bozeman to be ski bums for the winter?” I turned and looked west. “I’m in,” I said, without a second thought.

So that fall, in order to fund our inaugural ski-bum season, we worked the sugar-beet harvest on a farm 15 miles north of Moorhead, Minnesota. We put in 18-hour days, hauling load after load of muddy sugar beets out of waterlogged fields: driving alongside harvesters, filling the trucks full of coconut-sized beets until the wheels started spinning and the trucks dug into the muck and stopped.

At the end of the harvest, I emerged from the swampy fields with a nice paycheck. After realizing that I still didn’t have enough money to make it through the entire winter, I sold my car, again without a second thought.

Thus, my decision to abandon a modern climate-controlled vehicle for transportation in the Northern Rockies, where temperatures could—and would—dip below negative 20, and hundreds of inches of snow would fall, was made entirely on impulse.

Over the years, I’ve hitched over 2,000 rides up and down the canyon. And every single time, I never knew who would be on the other side of the door when I walked up and climbed in.

Any doubts were quickly dispelled by the knowledge that I could stand anywhere along Rouse Ave. with a pair of skis and my thumb out and be whisked off to Bridger Bowl almost immediately. Like some sort of magic carpet ride. Off to Never-Never Land.

So I began hitchhiking up to Bridger most mornings, from late November until mid-April. Day after day, month after month, year after year.

I’d park my bike at the Daily coffee shop at the corner of Rouse and Oak, and from across the street I’d hitchhike up the canyon to go skiing. When the lifts stopped spinning for the day, I’d hitchhike back down to Bozeman. Over the years, I’ve hitched over 2,000 rides up and down the canyon. And every single time, I never knew who would be on the other side of the door when I walked up and climbed in.

Day-trippers, hippies, drifters, lobster-poachers, dopers, refugees from Key West. The bohemian crowd, a lot of old-timers, tugboat captains, baggy-panted outfielders. A motley crew of oddballs and amateurs, Gin-Blossomed boozers’ guts—all of them.

The stories are endless.

One day this past season, I was picked up in a rental car driven by a 60-year-old Puerto Rican woman named Maria who had moved to New York City when she was two years old. She’d lived in one of the five boroughs her entire life, and could count on one hand the number of times she’d been out of the city. And here she was, driving through Montana, picking up hitchhikers along the way. She was euphoric. She’d never seen mountains before. I’m not sure she’d ever driven a car before.

I began to see it all through her eyes. Suddenly, everything was fresh and vibrant and overwhelmingly beautiful. When we finally turned off the highway into Bridger Bowl, the train of cars behind us stretched out for miles. It was a busy day and the parking lot was filling up quickly. Maria said she felt lucky and drove straight to the top lot where she proceeded to create a parking spot by wedging the front of her rental car up into a snowbank. She couldn’t open her door, so she crawled out of mine. Halfway, she got stuck. So I helped pull her across the center console, over the passenger seat, and out onto the snowy ground. She was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down her cheeks. We both stood, looking at the car wedged up diagonally into the snowbank.

“Do you think that’s okay?” she asked.

I thought so, but asked nonetheless, “Did you get the insurance?”

I can’t remember her answer, but I still remember Maria, along with the hundreds of other people I’ve hitched rides with over the years. You just never know who’s going to be on the other side of that door—and that’s the magic of it all.