by William Skink
I think it was the guy with the guns and alpaca that finally did it for me. I am so frustrated with the “travelers” that blow through town every summer to spange, get fucked up and just generally be assholes. I have to willfully remind myself of the good conversations I’ve had with a few of them because more and more what I see is not good.
Maybe it’s just me, but Missoula feels out of control right now. Downtown seems especially unhinged. I know students are returning and the Griz are playing on Saturday, but there seems to be a particularly nasty edge to the manic energy permeating this valley. Maybe it’s the smoke. I don’t know.
In that Bozeman Chronicle article linked above, “Tinker” (the guy with the guns and alpaca) used a term I’ve heard before: Drainbow. Here’s the full quote:
“A lot of these travelers out here, they don’t deserve to be traveling,” he says, adding that many are into drugs and miss the point.
“The rainbows aren’t rainbows any more. The hippies aren’t hippies,” he says. “They’re hipsters and drainbows.”
Tinker is right, there is a dark side to the traveling way of life. And, at least from my perspective, peace and love seems to be rapidly losing ground to violence and hate.
JC
It’s the smoke.
scapegoating weather is one way to look at it.
On the other end of the spectrum, Americans are often enough pulling or driving a $100K vehicle when traveling. Don’t mean to be a reverse snob, but those vehicles, snowmobiles and ATV’s are perfect ways to avoid nature while traveling.
It does seem to me that there is something wrong with our culture. Hiking wilderness trails these days, it is rare to encounter anyone else. (That’s a bit scary, as it means wilderness has lost its constituency, and so will soon disappear.)
Riding an ATV or snowmobile in the forest is the same as riding in a Greyhound sized motor home?
Riding ATV’s is a way of being in the forest without exertion. It’s avoidance of nature. Riding in Greyhound-sized motor home is a way of traveling without giving up any comforts. Same principle.
Oh I get it. Heart rate matters.