A lifetime of hitchhiking

Hitchhiking is perceived by most people to be a risky endeavor.

Dale Morrow of St. Ignatius, that is part of its charm.

Dale has hitchhiked in every U.S. state and many other countries, and at 79, he is certainly not quitting now. He has already taken four trips just this year.

“There aren’t many people who will pick up hitchhikers,” Dale says. He once counted 300 cars that drove past him on a freeway. “It’s a risk, but to me that’s what makes it really worthwhile.” In his experience, those who do stop are “courageous, independent minded, more curious, more empathetic. It’s a good class of people to hang out with for a while.” He says he gets a disproportionate number of rides from Indigenous Americans. “They are much more courageous,” he suggests.

“With hitchhiking,” Dale says, “when someone stops – you don’t know each other. There’s some wariness, some risk involved there, on both parts. Then, when you see them take a breath, as if saying, ‘this guy’s okay,’ it’s a good sharing.” It fits well with his Baha’i Faith, he says, a foundational principal of which is the oneness of mankind. “Almost without exception, the people that pick me up recognize that we are one family.” He speculates that that is related somehow to their lack of fear.

Dale’s first hitch was in 1956, out of Rifle, Colorado, to go swimming in the neighboring town of Glenwood Springs. Since then, he has owned businesses, lived in several countries and raised a family, but always kept his hitching thumb active. Since he started keeping records in 2002, he has clocked 113,400 miles, with 2,166 rides. Sometimes he picks a destination, and other times, “I just stick out my thumb and see where I end up.”

He took advantage of a Hawaiian vacation with family to hitch around the entire island of Maui. Getting to Alaska was a particular challenge, as Canada does not allow hitchhikers to cross the border. He somehow got a document for a one-time entry, but with a stern warning to just get to Alaska and not galivant around. In 2012, he decided to go to New York City. He met a friend there, a retired school teacher who had picked him up two years before. They went to Maine, and then Dale hitchhiked back.

Other countries he has hitchhiked through include Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. In 2014, he was asked to help deliver two buses from Germany to Mongolia through Russia. Hitchhiking around Mongolia, he met up with an elderly Mongolian throat singer who also loves hitchhiking.

Dale always walks down the road when hitchhiking so occasionally he gets caught at nightfall far from any town. He carries a backpack with a sleeping bag and has spent many a night in a culvert or under a noisy bridge, sometimes at temperatures well below zero. Even there, he has met good humans. One night under a freeway bridge, he felt trapped in his bag as someone in a hoody approached. When he confronted the person, it turned out to be a young woman asking if he was all right or needed anything.

Dale has met drivers from many countries, from Canada to Ukraine. One from Afghanistan had been an interpreter for U.S. Forces, and had been badly injured. Because his life was in danger for helping the Americans, he had been given a green card and sent to the States.

To Dale’s surprise, more women will stop to pick him up now than in earlier days. He doesn’t know whether women have gotten braver, or if his age has made him seem less threatening. He acknowledges that while there are few people who prey on older men, women are more at risk. One young woman, who had never picked up a hitchhiker before, called her dad to say she felt she should pick up Dale. Her dad told her to follow her heart, and if she changed her mind before she opened the door just drive off. She and Dale became friends, and she recently visited him and his wife in St. Ignatius.

Dale says only once he lost his backpack when a driver left with it in the vehicle. But he has “never had a threatening experience where someone wanted to physically harm me.” He takes inspiration from a Helen Keller quote: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing… Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

But it’s a Vicky Covington quote that Dale uses to describe his true love of adventure: “If you don’t live on the edge, you can’t see the view.”