I picked her up one autumn day as I was driving down Vermont’s Route 12 on my way to work. Having been brought up in New York City, I had never before considered picking up a hitchhiker.
“You just never know who might be crazy, M’ija” my mother used to say to me. But this was the third day that week I’d seen the professionally dressed blond woman on the side of the road, smiling despite the early morning chill, her thumb optimistically thrust out. Mom, I thought, she just doesn’t look dangerous.
Truthfully, it was my writer’s voice that told me to stop that morning: I collect people’s stories, and I just had to know hers. As I came to find out, Marci Young practices what she preaches. You can’t say that about too many people these days, but as an employee of Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation in the Air Pollution Control Division she can’t justify adding yet another gas-burning car to the road. So she hitchhikes, year round, to everywhere.
Originally from Connecticut, Marci was raised in Wolcott, Vermont on a dairy farm. After earning a master’s degree in Resource Management Administration from Antioch New England and training in solid waste management, Marci went to work for the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources in 1994. She started hitchhiking while traveling around Australia and New Zealand in 2001 and continued off and on once she returned to the states, until finally starting full-time in October of 2005.
Her reasons for hitching are — as she puts it — global, social, and political. Aside from the obvious inspiration that comes from her profession and where she works, the main reason she hitchhikes is global and is certainly an issue that’s on many of our minds these days: “The climate change is affecting us all and I feel that I’m not contributing to it by taking one car off the road, that used to be driven in excess of 15,000 miles a year.” As for the political reasons, she ties her protest to the war in Iraq which she says she’s against “because I believe we are there to protect and procure oil for various uses in the United States.”
In fact, Marci put these two passions together two summers ago when she chose to hitchhike from Vermont to President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. She was feeling despair about the war when she heard about a protest that was being organized around Cindy Sheehan’s visit — one of the 3,300 American mothers who have lost children in Iraq. “I had eight great rides from Vermont to Texas. Two of them were from Bush/Cheney supporters — I could tell from the bumper stickers!”
Article comments
1 - Arch Conservative
[Entire comment deleted]
2 - Michael J. West
Geez, Archie. What was the point of that comment other than to be nasty and spiteful? (Or was that it?)
Ann, I thought it was a fine article about serendipitously meeting an interesting person and learning about how she lives her life. It didn't change my views about environmental activism...but it did make me wonder what I miss by not engaging with unfamiliar faces. Thanks for posting it!
3 - Mark Saleski
cool post. nice to see somebody walking the walk...in more ways than one!
4 - Dave Nalle
In the good old soviet union, because of the shortage of cars private drivers were legally required to pick up hitchhikers and could be prosecuted if they didn't. I think that puts this all in context.
Dave
5 - Lisa Alvarado
Ann -- What a great wake-up call....Once again, it looks like grassroots activism has a long reach!
BTW--Arch, you might want to review that old red/commie document...the constitution, with its subversive ideas of freedom of speech and expression. (I guess if you can lower yourself to character assassination and obscenity for a difference in belief, we can tolerate your apparent inablity to offer a substantive critique.)
6 - mwb
Excellent article! Keep them coming.
7 - Anna Creech
Interesting article. I used to put a lot of miles on the road, but I've since changed jobs and moved to a new state. Now I'm in a small town and live less than a mile away from work. I may not have access to all the luxuries of an urban area, but I do spend less time in my car and more time doing the things I enjoy. It wasn't exactly a choice like what Marci Young is doing, but it does remind me that we can all do little things here and there that lessen the impact on environmental resources.
8 - Christopher Rose
Just to avoid confusion, I have removed the content of Arch Conservative's gratuitously offensive remarks.
9 - MCH
Hey Ann;
I hear you folks in Vermont get more snow than we do here in Montana. Any truth to that?
BTW, great article. And I agree with Mark's comment #3, there's so very little of that on BC.
10 - Ann Cardinal
Thanks MCH! As to the snow comparison as we say in Vermont, "hard tellin' not knowin'" (translation: I don't have a clue)but I will say that we are getting less and less each year and with a snow-based economy (as I heard our chamber president call it the other day) we are wishing we had gotten more!
11 - Mark Saleski
i personally could have done with 3 feet of snow over the weekend in souther nh instead of 5" of rain. bleah!
12 - DEAN BERRY
AMERICA'S NOW DOING EVERYTHING THE COMMUNISTS DID TO THEIR PEOPLE. LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVES LOST AFTER ALL:
13 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I hate to rain on the happiness parade here.
I live in a country where hitching a ride is rather common. MOST folks are decent, kind, friendly. But in only takes one rapist to ruin a woman's life, and one bullet to end it...
Nothing wrong with the article, but travelling by outstretched thumb - or finger - is dangerous for a lone woman...
14 - Bill
Marci - Please get a job. It is time to behave like a grown-up.
15 - MCH
Ann re #10;
Yeah, we've been experiencing milder winters here over the last 15-20 years...warmer temps, less snow, etc. The only up-side being that the heating bills aren't as astronomical as they could be.
16 - Ann Cardinal
response to #14:
Bill: If you would have read the article carefully, you would have seen that Marci does indeed have a job, an important one at the state's Dept of Environmental Conservation.
17 - Dave Nalle
Although she does have a job, Bill does have a point about the luxury afforded state employees in the Peoples Republic of Vermont to continue an indefinite adolescence.
dave
18 - Clavos
Marci's making an interesting point that can and is, right here, generating debate: a good thing. More power to her for stirring interest and having the courage of her convictions.
But, hitchhiking, in the face of today's crime rates??...