By: Aramie M. Bloom
I recently read an article romanticizing The Drifter. You know, the archetype of the guy (usually, it’s a guy) who traveled from town to town, doing odd jobs, maybe making some trouble, a story, or a baby, never to be heard from again. The bridge between the hobo and the myths of the ancients. The Everyman who people simultaneously envied (for their freedom) and feared (their freedom; their poverty).
The need to drift, to adventure, is so strong in us. How many times have humans been overwhelmed or disappointment or simply bored to tears by life and felt the urge to pack it all in and simply move somewhere. Anywhere. Spin the globe and let your finger land on a spot.
I know I’ve been there.
I know I’ve said it.
And – I’ve also done it.
Fifteen years ago, I wanted to run. Not away from myself, but away from people the moment they got mean. There was always a moment of time with strangers when they were their best selves – usually, just after meeting people, they were like this. I called it “the Honeymoon phase” and it seemed to apply to everyone.
The first place I fled was to Appalachia. Eastern Kentucky wasn’t very far from where I grew up in Louisville. It’s a mere four hours or so by car. But it always seems like you’ve entered a different world because you absolutely have.
Pine Mountain – Letcher County, KY Appalachia
I fled to Pine Mountain in Eastern Kentucky because I’d lived for a while in Letcher Co. and still knew people there. It was during my drinking and Adderall days, and my confusing behavior had converted more friendships into hostile backaways than I cared to understand at the time. I was on a mission no one else understood – and this was uncomfortable. When you are on Adderall (and you don’t actually need it), everything feels amazing. Even the burning of bridges. There was a man called Jim Webb, though, aka Wile E. Coyote. He lived up on Pine Mountain, recorded for the local WMMT radio, and hosted music festivals on his land. He had scads of room, and old log cabins to sleep in, and woods and flatlands and trails and dogs that alerted for bears and a giant pond for swimming and if you can name a better place to disappear into the wild without being far from decent convenience then I would like to hear about it. Jim was also remarkably non-judgmental towards me.
“People come up here to get away,” he said the first night. “And hell, I’m happy to let em. We got bears though. I can’t do anything about them.”
The whole story of Pine Mountain is a tale for another article. This one is about me, the female Drifter.
And drift onto Pine Mountain I did, and then away again, a couple days after an epic night. The night had involved music, pond swimming, a prognosticator of a lad called Glenn with bright red hair and a broken leg. It was revealed later the next morning that Glenn had been on LSD the night before which made his proclamations land in near-Biblical proportions. Part spooky, a dash eerie, and unexpectedly humorous in ways that ranged from wry smiles to side-splittingly funny; by the end of the evening (which would end up being sunrise) we had no idea if the man, Glenn, was guy or ghost.
Up on the mountain were we waiting for Moses to find the burning bush and show us through a whiskey and water-soaked haze. I played my mandolin out loud where strangers could hear me that night. Just for a moment but the joy was significant. We waited until sunrise to jump in the cool lake and ate sandwiches on huge rocks until we got sleepy in the heat. The sunlight shimmered into the pond and reflected on our faces and hands like an iridescent heaven.
Still, soon, it was time to move on. When it can’t get any better, one must know when to go. A lady friend of Jim’s, whose name I cannot recall (but who was very kind), brought out a strange, white and gray hoodie she asked me to take before driving off the mountain. I never knew why, but it was just my size. And I wore that proverbial cloak of many colors until I entered rehab. You can be as epic as you want when you’re The Drifter. That’s why people love a Drifter. That’s why the boring fear him. But it’s what makes personal legends.
Harlan County
Harlan County isn’t exactly where you want to find yourself alone. In fairness, no one is ever doing their best work alone as a woman in any sort of populated place, I find. The wrong people want you for the wrong reasons, and the right people ignore you.
But when you are drifting – and wiley – you know better than to get caught in the net.
I think we better let Harlan County stay as a short mention in this piece of Gonzo.
Louisville
My hometown – but that doesn’t mean I’d been everywhere in it. The thing about Adderall is that it is basically legalized meth. It induces a state of psychosis in certain people – certainly, me – and psychosis does indeed seem to be a liminal dimension where you perceive far more than the people around you. It’s not that your perceptions aren’t real. It’s that it is nearly impossible to exist on any sort of regular human dimension while perceiving them.
Weird things would happen. Tangible, weird things. I would think something or say something out loud. I would think “$40” and a stranger would hand me $20. Except I wasn’t panhandling. Once I said, to no one in particular, “I need tea tree oil,” and another stranger gave me a bottle. It’s hard to argue with evidence. But there are better ways of getting low sums of cash and easily obtainable essential oils.
A low wage job comes to mind – but with that job goes your priceless freedom. It’s always a Catch-22. When you are given the option of customer service, with its dehumanizing interactions and inevitable overwork, or the option to feel good, be out in nature, and do whatever you please while feeling like a god – well, I ask you: what would Jesus do?
Me, I kept on walking.
The thing is, I wasn’t just being boozy or high. And I wasn’t causing a scene. I was consistently following my instincts toward weird situations that seemed innocent enough: a man in a wheelchair on the sidewalk who, when asked what his greatest wish right then was (yes, you feel free to ask the big questions when your social mores are somewhat deviant), answered “pack of reds and a cola.” What was there to do? I bought them for him.
His eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas, but his grown son and daughter-in-law weren’t exactly thrilled that this random young woman was being suspiciously helpful.
“We don’t want any,” his son said firmly. And it took a moment to realize he thought I was selling drugs.
What happened to appreciating the kindness of strangers? I guess that appreciation has diminishing returns when the stranger is a young drifter on a city blocks that patently isn’t hers, spending money on what would appear to be a rather captive audience in a disabled man she’d never seen before. What’s she buttering him up for? I could hear them thinking. And I slunk away, wondering what good the ability to solve minor problems was when they only created what could have been great big new ones.
Rehab
It wouldn’t occur to me until a year or so later that there could be some merit in not needing pills to amp you up and swigs to calm you down. Regular people exist without doing either? Sounds rough. What’s rough is the point when drifting isn’t fun. When you run out of chemical courage, or the streets turn cold, or scary, or cold and scary, and you remember a childhood full of quaint picnics on grassy banks and sunny meadows filled with horses and fresh clothing and nice hotels with even finer restaurants. Why had I been exuberant over buying Marlboro Reds and an RC Cola for someone’s disabled father? The answer was because my own insignificance as nothing but “a drifter” felt too loud. I had to do something to feel seen. It wasn’t as much an act of altruism as it was a need to effect positive change somewhere in the tiny sphere of what passes for life as a person who relies on substances for everything.
To this day, I’m genuinely sorry I scared those people. I’d be upset too, in my current sober, healthy form. The stories I describe are hard to imagine for everyone except the ones who, whether from circumstance, trauma, or both, took the plunge at some point and threw caution to the winds. I’m damned lucky it wasn’t irrevocable. My behavior was beautiful, dangerous, and reckless and I don’t want to paint it as anything but understandable, undesirable, and as deeply human. Those times were the ultimate paradox.
It’s human because anyone worth their salt hits a breaking point in a broken society – like a ship crashing onto the rocks of a sea too violent to navigate. With luck, hard work, and a bit of heart and grit, lots of us find we can jump ship for land. Or, at least, we find a piece of driftwood and cling until help arrives.
Don’t let go.
If you want to, I understand.
I just wish you wouldn’t.
Signing off,
A Drifter – In Spirit. Feet on Dry Land. Heart Open. Head in the Clouds. Pen in Her Hand. A meteoric episode.