Hippies. How and why to be one.

Now let me be clear. I never actually completed the transformation into hippydom. I was more of a by-stander who would take part in every part of the lifestyle but never actually be one of the group. If you've seen Almost Famous, then think of my foray into this minimalist culture like William Miller touring with Stillwater.


The Path
It wasn't really my goal to find a counter culture after high school, but it was my goal to find a cool well paying summer job. After spending several years learning how to kayak I realized with the help of some friends that I was only a couple certifications away from being a raft guide. So me and a buddy packed 3 kayaks, 2 surfboards, plus camping gear, and headed out on the 3,700km trip to begin rafting on the Ottawa River in Ontario.

Everything must go...

Now this brings us the the hippy attribute I do the best at. Road trips with lots of gear in small cars, run down vans, or small pickups, is definitely the bohemian mode of travel. A hippy is a nomad of sorts, but because they are short on funds you will always find them on what seem like horridly long road trips in cars that have no A/C. While gas-guzzling america floats by in their 2 ton DVD installed tanks, we putt along - windows wide open, shocks bottomed out - having much more fun.

Now you need a cool job, or better yet a commune. The purists will volunteer with organizations that pay in only food and board. A classic opportunity is found with WWOOF.

Rafting fit the bill for several reasons. It's a hard job, outside in the water all day rowing or paddling people down rivers. Working a easy river requires a lot of rowing and good "raft talk" to keep the clients interested. Hard rivers do a bit more of the work for you, but require small spurts of strength, lots of skill, and the ability to control a crew of clients when their surroundings are total chaos. It's also pretty spiritual, to make it smoothly down the river you need to let the water do most of the work, and that takes learning how to read rapids. When you can predict how each wave will move your boat, you spend most of your time turning the boat for the desired push, not pulling the boat across the river.

When your day job looks like this it's easy to feel bohemian

Now it's important to remember being a hippy is a lifestyle, not a day job. If your out strawberry picking all day for kindness tolkens but come home to cable tv and running water, you're not a hippy. My summers rafting were 4 month chunks of my year where I worked, slept in a tent, read books by headlamp, and drank to much wine. But as we recall I'm a big faker, and so I lived like a slob...

 

The 'real deals' do this stuff all year round in an endless summer, and they've figured out how to take care of themselves. While I was rafting many of my friends would turn these platforms into tiny functioning homes, with little patios, doors, and lot's of candles. Come September while I was diving back into profit margins and investment strategies, these folk were heading off to Fernie or Costa Rica to set up shop for the winter and live the dream. 

Why be one?

Let's face it, the pay sucks, you're often uncomfortable, the future prospects are much less certain, and after a while everything you own stinks. But in a way that's the point, to take the path less traveled by. 

You meet people with amazingly different ideas, live in some of the coolest environments on earth, and do things most people don't know exist. Once you imbibe the 'live in the moment' attitude you feel all the stresses that plague the average joe melt away. You wake up at 6am not because you need to be at the office for 7, but because you want to surf the morning break before the wind picks up. When you have a day off, you go on a ski tour because you have the energy and there is nothing to do in your shack. While you might miss out on 'dancing with the stars', at least you get to have turns like this.

and views like this

 

Why not?

When I compare a multi-week adventure I've had with my endless summer kayaking friends, and what I imagine life to be like as a first year i-banking analyst, it seems like I'm moving from very extreme ends of the lifestyle spectrum. Oddly it's a choice I've thought very little about until recently.

I always thought of my summers on the water, and my winter adventures as vacations from life. Although I saw people living those vacations year round, I never really seriously considered it as I choice I could make as well. On reflection I think this comes from 2 major flaws (in my opinion) in the drifting lifestyle: a lack of goals, and a lack of challenge. While simply living to enjoy the joys of life seems appealing, it falls apart when you think about scale. Climbing Everest is a hippy thing to do, but spending 3 years building a company that sets up organized trips up Everest, is not. In both, you climb Everest, in the latter you have enough income to climb K2 and the other peaks as well. 

I think that with a real job I will be able to have all the adventures the free spirit me dreams of, but I will need to sacrifice some duration for exposure. I'll be able to afford to do a fly in kayak trip on the Homathko, but after that week it's back to the office, not a follow up trip on the Dean. 

The trick will be keeping the existential frame of mind. The business world is news obsessed, and more than once I've forgotten the big picture. Even now I spend 14 hours a day in front of a computer, while some hippies touch a computer once every 2 weeks at an internet cafe or public library. By filling my weekends with 'into the wild' adventures, hopefully I can strike a balance of extremes that gives me enlightenment in both worlds. Sounds a lot like modern portfolio theory...