{"id":1968620,"date":"2023-07-10T14:05:02","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T18:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/maybe-sometimes-do-pick-up-the-hitchhiker\/"},"modified":"2023-07-10T14:07:34","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T18:07:34","slug":"maybe-sometimes-do-pick-up-the-hitchhiker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/maybe-sometimes-do-pick-up-the-hitchhiker\/","title":{"rendered":"Pick up the hitchhiker occasionally."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmaybe-sometimes-do-pick-up-the-hitchhiker%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1968620&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>There was a woman on the side of the road last week asking for a lift. I pulled over, cleared the passenger seat, and she hopped in for a 20-minute ride that became the highlight of my day.<\/p>\n<p>I hadn\u2019t picked up a hitchhiker since I was in Oregon seven years ago when a trio of thru-hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail wanted to skip a section near Crater Lake. Back then, I was probably reckless, driving a small Toyota Camry with nothing to protect myself from the three strangers who stunk up my car.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2-long d-flex justify-content-center\" style=\"margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; \" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-2117521174\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-1379703300879-0\" class=\"mb-30\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9bd0e0c55a0a5610676d5479af0b725b fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-2\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-9bd0e0c55a0a5610676d5479af0b725b\"><\/div>\n<p>They turned out harmless. One offered me a marijuana joint tucked behind his ear when I dropped them off. I declined and drove on.<\/p>\n<p>Hitchhiking is common in the mountain community I moved to last month. Located about a half-hour west of Boulder, Colo., there\u2019s usually someone holding their thumb out in the center of town that\u2019s home to just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggestuscities.com\/city\/ward-colorado#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20current%20population,largest%20city%20in%20the%20US.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">130<\/a> people. I always went right past them, unsure if they were an axe murderer who was prepared to turn me into a victim on \u201cDateline,\u201d but last week\u2019s stand out on the side of the road was a little old lady with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/7-year-old-ala-girl-hosts-lemonade-stand-raises-more-than-300k-for-her-brain-surgeries\/\" title=\"7-year-old Ala. girl hosts lemonade stand, raises more than 0K for her brain surgeries\">pink hair<\/a>. If I got robbed by <em>her,<\/em> that would just be embarrassing. I told her I was headed to Nederland, a neighboring mountain town with a population of about <a href=\"https:\/\/datausa.io\/profile\/geo\/nederland-co\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1,500<\/a>, another 25 minutes south.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerfect, I am too,\u201d she said while climbing into the car. She gave me her name, but for the purpose of this column, I\u2019ll call her Linda. I asked her where she lived; she said it was 400 yards up the mountain where I picked her up.<\/p>\n<p>Sheer curiosity, more than anything, led me to pull over. Who is this little old pink-haired lady hitchhiking on the side of the road?<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-6a32e073438bf06ed3bd32eddd1b7d69 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-6\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-6a32e073438bf06ed3bd32eddd1b7d69\"><\/div>\n<p>I had just finished reading Dr. Jordan Peterson\u2019s 2019 book, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/12-Rules-Life-Antidote-Chaos\/dp\/0345816021\/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=12+rules+for+life&#038;qid=1689005440&#038;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">12 Rules For Life<\/a>,\u201d the day before. In it, Peterson describes the importance of active listening in rule number nine, which is to \u201cassume that the person you are listening to might know something you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you listen,\u201d Peterson wrote, \u201cwithout premature judgment, people will generally tell you everything they are thinking \u2014 and with very little deceit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople will tell you the most amazing, absurd, interesting things,\u201d Peterson added. \u201cVery few of your conversations will be boring. \u201c<\/p>\n<p>So I picked her up and decided to listen. I wasn\u2019t in a hurry, my neighbor needed a favor, she didn\u2019t appear threatening, and I thought it a good opportunity to put Peterson\u2019s rules into practice. She had quite the life story.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-8d9c09029c49a577553968bc4633a1f3 fdrlst__b89e9-paragraph-10\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-8d9c09029c49a577553968bc4633a1f3\"><\/div>\n<p>At 77, Linda lives off the grid at the top of a mountain. Her home is at 9,500 feet, with no electricity or running water. She hitchhikes to Nederland to go to the library and grab groceries, even in the winter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just bundle up,\u201d she said nonchalantly when I asked how that worked out in January. Snowpants are everyday apparel in 30-below temperatures. But her life wasn\u2019t always so remote.<\/p>\n<p>Linda was an Orange County housewife in the 1960s. Her father put her husband through college to become an accountant.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had no interest in being an accountant\u2019s wife,\u201d she told me, disillusioned by pretentious cocktail parties in southern California. An elite west coast dream was Linda\u2019s personal nightmare.<\/p>\n<p>One day a friend of hers gave her LSD. The \u201ctrip\u201d inspired her to go home, divorce her husband, and move to Colorado in 1972. She\u2019s been here ever since, with a resume that included time as a secretary and a ranch hand. At 77, she\u2019s happily retired and remains healthy enough to hike up and down the mountains for daily necessities. Given all we know about trees as <a href=\"https:\/\/socialjusticeredux.substack.com\/p\/as-children-of-the-forest-green-spaces\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">key<\/a> to health and longevity, I bet she\u2019ll live at least another 20 years on her mountaintop surrounded by evergreens. She certainly didn\u2019t walk like she was headed for a nursing home anytime soon. I took her to the library in Nederland and then headed for the gym at the community center.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes our neighbors need a favor. We often forget that.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve lived in a variety of places now, from the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, to four blocks from the White House. But I\u2019ve never lived in a town of less than 150 people until now. When I went to the local bookstore in Nederland, I wasn\u2019t asked what street I lived on. I was asked which <em>house.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I always found it ironic how the denser a community becomes, the more anonymity presents itself. Ask residents in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/heres-how-to-prepare-your-home-to-survive-a-disaster\/\" title=\"Here\u2019s How To Prepare Your Home To Survive A Disaster\">high-rise apartments<\/a> who their neighbors are; they often can\u2019t tell you. Ask them where their food comes from, and they\u2019ll say, \u201cFrom the store.\u201d Local news? Waste of time.<\/p>\n<p>When I was still in Denver two months ago, I went through three weeks without a car. I couldn\u2019t pull teeth to get a neighbor\u2019s help, and it almost felt uncomfortable to even ask despite the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/maybe-sometimes-do-pick-up-the-hitchhiker\/\" title=\"Pick up the hitchhiker occasionally.\">social justice yard signs signaling<\/a> their own supposed virtue. The smaller the neighborhood, the richer the community, even if it\u2019s conventionally poor.<\/p>\n<p>Community is important, but it takes effort. Cities designed to be effortless aren\u2019t conducive to fostering such flourishing communities. It\u2019s no wonder, then, that despite more Americans living an urbanized lifestyle <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/269967\/urbanization-in-the-united-states\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">than ever before<\/a>, the nation is grappling with an <a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/harvard-study-an-epidemic-of-loneliness-is-spreading-across-america\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">epidemic<\/a> of loneliness.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fdrlst__b89e9-90feee931c3e7d57a05d8cd657853e0c fdrlst__b89e9-after-post-content\" id=\"fdrlst__b89e9-90feee931c3e7d57a05d8cd657853e0c\"><\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\">    \t\t\t\t\t   \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I encountered a woman seeking a ride on the roadside. I stopped, prepared the passenger seat, and she joined me for a delightful 20-minute journey. It was the best part of my day, as I hadn&#8217;t given a lift to a hitchhiker since my time in Oregon seven years ago, when three people were involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":1968621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1968620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1968620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1968621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1968620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1968620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1968620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}