A PHILANTHROPIC ONE NIGHT STAND

From 2004 until 2013 I had the privilege of living in the small, resort town of Idyllwild in Southern California’s San Jacinto Mountains. I recall that every year, around this time, thru-hikers would begin to trickle out of the woods on their annual migration from Mexico to Canada. Their route along the Pacific Crest Trail would bring them into Idyllwild where they would arrive looking trail-weary, bearded, and asking “Can I use your restroom?”  They eagerly dropped their packs outside of coffee shops, restaurants, the post office, and along the front porch of the Idyllwild Inn before being reunited with the comforts of civilization- beds, beer, pizza, and wireless internet.  They often struck me as having knowing, introspective eyes, as though their intellectual palate had been washed clean in the lonely quiet of the back country, and their reemergence into society allowed them to see things differently.

They also seemed drunk with the novelty of their existence and, in their presence, I felt somewhat dissatisfied with my own. I knew it was not fair to them, and also probably wildly inaccurate, but I always felt vaguely judged by them. They always made me feel especially fat.  To be honest, I did envy them a little. In some ways I think I was built by my Creator to thrive in solitude, and I would enjoy the opportunity to be alone with my thoughts, putting one foot in front of the other for days at a stretch, and then limp into town with new eyes for the place. Plus I knew that their vanilla latte tasted far better than mine because it was earned and anticipated over miles of sun-drenched trail.

I also wondered at the expense and, frankly, the frivolity of what they were doing. All that gear wasn’t cheap, and if the old maxim is true that time is money then thru-hiking is either a terrible waste or a profound statement of something’s worth. But what exactly is that something? I think that in order to enjoy being a thru-hiker I would need a good reason for doing it, something larger than personal fulfillment. I've never asked them for their reasons, but I suspect that most of their reasons could never be mine. I clearly do more judging of them than they of me.

Still, in a mysterious way, I was drawn to them. Their experience was magnetic, and judging by the reaction of others in town, they felt the same. I think they wanted to share vicariously in the thru-hiker’s experience. Thru-hikers seemed to excite in people a strong desire to help them along their way. I felt the same tug in me and this even as I privately judged the merits and usefulness of that they were doing.

Every spring, their arrival in Idyllwild coincided with a general outpouring of good will and generosity. Folks, who I suspect would never think of offering a ride to a neighbor, would stop and ask thru-hikers if they could give them a lift, and even agree spontaneously to drive them as far away as the next trail head in Big Bear. They would pick up the tab in restaurants and pay for the groceries of thru-hikers then pass by the homeless as they walked out to their cars. They even offered thru-hikers hospitality in their very homes and considered it no hardship. Judging by the way people helped the thru-hikers you would think these bearded, greasy nomads were on a quest to cast a ring into Mordor or taking much needed medicine to a remote village or something, but as best I could discern the long walk had no such end in view. It was an end all its own.  

I think all human beings are made in the image of the God who said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) So it makes sense that, for many, there would be a strong internal pull to be a giver and to meet needs, but why then would we tamp that impulse down and harden our hearts against the everyday needs in our community only to release it so generously when the thru-hikers arrived? I think one possibility is that the open-ended need of our neighbors represented a philanthropic Vietnam of sorts, a quagmire of giving with no clear exit strategy. If we gave our neighbor a ride to work today, won’t they still be without a car tomorrow?  If we offered hospitality to the homeless man living behind Fairway Market won’t he still be homeless tomorrow?

For the trail angels, as they are called, thru-hiker season in Idyllwild was like a no-strings-attached fling. Each encounter was a one-night-stand of generosity. However, every year this rare community-wide spirit of open-handed good will proved in the end to be every bit as transient as…well…a thru-hiker. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have been generous and kind to them but insofar as that generosity represents a departure from the norm it strikes me more as penance then the natural overflow of a generous heart.