Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 29 What does it say about Montana if we can't trust our own commu- nities? Often, the danger is in our heads. Spooky stories build on this fear, providing supernatural forces to explain how unsavory hitchhik- ers sometimes appear—dark shapes on the side of the road, strewn with an otherworldly aura. Stories percolate of Montana's most famous ride-snagger: the Black Horse Lake Hitchhiker. Near Great Falls, a Native American man reportedly slams into windshields and vanishes, the ghost of a guy killed while walking on the side of the road. He now paces this stretch, looking out at the starry lake, continuously reliving his demise like some Montanan Sisyphus who cheated death too many times, only to end up inside something worse. There's also the account of a football coach at a small Montanan college who picked up a hitchhiker in an odd suit one day after prac- tice. The man asked him to stop the truck and got out. The coach looked back and saw the hitchhiker crawling on all fours like an animal, chasing his truck at inhuman velocity. Others have reported similar encounters. Still, there have been real-life, ghastly crimes committed against travelers and those who give rides to strangers. My father, Page Anderson, grew up on a ranch outside of Three Forks. "Hitchhiking was fairly prevalent then," he says. "My buddies and I used to hitch all the time, but then one time a social worker disappeared, after picking up a guy on his way to Yellowstone National Park." When police caught the killer, a self-described cannibal, in California, he still had the guy's fingers in his pocket. The guy was carrying around an LSD recipe and a Satanic Bible, which earned him a neat moniker: the Satanic Hippie. "That pretty much shut down our whole hitchhik- ing thing for a while," my father says. • • • Meg and I stand up. Inside the Tundra sit a father and his young daughter—ten, maybe twelve years old. "I just couldn't let you stay out here," he says. "How long you been waiting?" "An hour," Meg says. "Not long." It had been three. When they drop us off, it's still pouring. Apart from an apparently unoccupied camper, we're the only ones there. "Are you sure you don't want me to take you back to town?" he says. "You can't stay out here." We tell him we'll be fine, and the two reluctantly leave us there. • • • In the nostalgic era of Montana hitchhiking, the endeavor seemed to represent a beautiful fluidity: mobility unlinked to money. Trav- eling on the strength of human connection. Bartering if you could— huckleberries, conversation, a listening ear. And we've had our fair share of Montana writers who've hitched or written about hitching: Jim Harrison thumbed across the U.S. in the 1960s. Tom McGuane, in Driving on the Rim, writes about a young hitchhiker his narrator Berl meets and tries to help. Maile Meloy writes about a couple picking up hitchhikers on their way back from securing a Christmas tree in her short story, "O Tannenbaum." Rick Bass first met Terry Tempest Williams while hitching to Ed Abbey's memorial in Moab, Utah, in the late 1990s. Experts say people don't hitchhike as often anymore, but not because of the risk of being assaulted or kidnapped. As more and more house- holds acquired vehicles over the years, and the vehicles themselves became longer lasting, people simply stopped needing to ask for rides. A New Yorker cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez pictures a car stopping for an apparent hitchhiker. "I don't need a lift. I was just liking your car," the man says. • • • Two days later, the same black Tundra rolls up. "My daughter's been asking nonstop about you," he says. "Figured I'd come make sure you're okay." We invite him for noodle soup and a Keystone Light, but he de- clines. He's late for dinner with his family, but he wanted to stop by to make sure we were okay. Hitchhiking through Montana www.distinctlymontana.com/hitchhiking203 DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL

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