Everything I Know About Hitching I Learned From Papa Bear

By Suzanne Finney

Paradise Cafe on the Pines to Palms Highway

Skipping the Paradise Café was not an option. Trail inertia, which keeps an object in motion once set in motion, would have catapulted me across the highway, if I’d let it, but a newly posted sign stopped me. It warned that the PCT was closed at Devil’s Slide Trail due to fire. Devil’s Slide was to have been my entry to the nearby town of Idyllwild, where I planned to take a “zero day,” a rest day with zero miles hiked. But first I needed to head west down the highway to pick up food— more energy bars and some string cheese—that Fred had sent to the café.

After a quick mile, the café came into sight. Cozy and rustic, the small building had an outdoor patio and a parking lot with more motorcycles than cars. I added my backpack to the line-up against the café wall and walked inside. The knotty-pine walls were decorated with branches, and a fountain counter ran the length of the building. Extra chairs had been pulled in to handle the influx, and the tables brimmed with diner food: half-pound hamburgers, sweet potato fries, giant plastic glasses of ice tea. Hikers waved and yelled across the noisy room to each other, making the motorcyclists seem demure in comparison.  A young, grey-eyed waitress with long blond braids and a dancer’s body gracefully handled the demands of the boisterous crowd. 

Word passed quickly from hiker to hiker that fire had just closed the PCT from the highway all the way to Black Mountain Road, twelve miles north of the Devil’s Slide Trail. Hikers would be piling up in Idyllwild until more information became available. Jellybean, a fast, strong female hiker in her forties, asked if I wanted to share a room at the Idyllwild Inn. I was delighted. We grabbed our packs but before I could leave, Papa Bear pulled me aside.

“Would you be my Ride Bride?”

A bit younger than I, Papa Bear was a good-looking man with a lopsided smile, who hiked the PCT in sections. He also did Trail Angel-ing for other hikers when he had the opportunity.

Papa Bear explained that he needed to pick up his car in Warner Springs and would have more success hitching there with a woman than as a single man. I thought the younger, more attractive Jellybean would be a better bet, but she had already hitched a ride into town. With all that people had done for me, how could I say no?

Papa Bear taught me the basics: Hat off so potential rides can see your face, hiking poles collapsed and stowed so they don’t look like weapons, sunglasses off to expose your eyes, leave room for the car to pull over safely. Smile, look harmless and friendly. 

We positioned ourselves at the corner and assumed the hitchhiking position. The first car passed us. The second car pulled over and the driver offered to take us as far as Anza. This was going to be easy. We threw our gear into the trunk of his car and he dropped us off in Anza, six miles closer to Warner Springs than we had been just a few minutes before. 

For our next round, I wanted to make Papa Bear proud. I stood right next to the road, aggressively sticking my thumb up and out.

Cars zoomed by.

I smiled beguilingly.

Feet hit accelerators.

I smiled wider.

Heads turned away.

My parched upper lip stuck to the top of my teeth.

Drivers returned my demented grin with scowls and frowns. Maybe they don’t realize I’m hitching. 

I raised my thumb higher and angled it more into the traffic. A young mother flipped me the bird as her baby clapped his hands and grabbed the straps of his car-seat, head-butting the front seat.

How could it all have gone so wrong so fast?  Papa Bear, undaunted, reassured me that it would all work out. 

I made excuses:  “Well, that one had a government license plate. He couldn’t pick us up…That one had a full car…That one didn’t see us.”  

Another hour passed. What was I doing out here in the hot sun, stinking like putrefying Spam packets, when I could have been sipping a lemonade in Idyllwild?  About the time I thought we might as well start walking the thirty-five miles to Warner Springs, a car pulled over. A familiar face peered up at us from the driver’s side. 

“Hi, I’m Allegra.” The waitress from the Paradise Café was on her way home from work. “Jump in. I live in Anza but I’ll take you to Warner Springs.”  

We introduced ourselves by our real names and added our trail names. 

As we headed out of town she turned to Papa Bear. “You never would have gotten a ride in Anza. Too many tweezers without cars. People here are afraid to pick up strangers.”

Papa Bear, sitting in the front seat, nodded as if he knew what she was talking about. 

“What’s a tweezer?” I asked.

She corrected me. “Tweaker. Meth addicts. Meth is big business here.”

Neither Papa Bear nor I remotely fit the profile of an emaciated, toothless meth addict.

Allegra drove through the countryside and described hidden oases where she played as a child, pointed out landmarks, and shared the history. Seeing the landscape through her eyes, I imagined what it would have been like when the settlers all knew each other and rode horseback from farm to farm.

As a little girl, Allegra loved to dance, wearing fancy costumes. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina. She laughed wryly. “I was going to be somebody.”  

Now she has a second job besides waitressing. She dances in Las Vegas. 

I tried to glimpse her expression in the rear view mirror. As our eyes met, a sweet, hopeful child looked back at me and I averted my gaze. She looked away and continued, laughing and bantering with Papa Bear. I wondered if her dreams had gone dormant or if they had simply changed.

She drove us to Papa Bear’s car in Warner Springs.

“Here, let us pay you for the gas,” I said. But she would not accept any money. 

The next day, I bought a card for her and wrote a thank-you note. Papa Bear signed it too. It was months later that I found out from other hikers that she would never have received the card. That had been her last day at the Paradise Café. She had been fired.