The Lost Kids at the Edge of the Known World

Tofino was familiar to me, even though I had never been there before.

I recognized the kind of place that Tofino was----at the edge of the continent, and at the edge of some corner of the civilized world, as some places are.

If you have been traveling a while, on the road say, looking for yourself or something akin to that, and you arrive at such a place, you might find that you have not in fact found whatever it is you were looking for,  that you were forestalling the issue of while you were yet in motion. Now there is no more road to follow that direction---in some direction of the compass, or up or down, or inside or outside. You might begin wondering "what was it about, really?"

You might linger there awhile, waiting for the full impact of pilgrimage to set in, hoping to store enough of the experience to bank upon later, and then you turn around, having perhaps felt as if you have come to some disappointing defeat, even though nothing concrete has happened to you to make you suffer.  It happens.

Any place on Earth can be that to anyone, perhaps. But in a place like Tofino, many people can wind up coming to that same kind of realization at roughly the same time, simply because of geography and sheer awe-inspiring beauty.

Red and I couldn't help but notice, independently of each other, how many Europeans and Canadian young folk we met at the guesthouse in Tofino seemed distant and down-in-spirit. We shared notes on the last day there.

From our very first conversations on the patio, there had been awkwardness trying to talk to some young Europeans. Among other things, I somehow got the impression that they thought that because we were Americans, we were stupid and therefore beneath the contempt of talking to as intelligent people.

Oh well, it's not as if I couldn't see that coming for a while (Besides being underestimated that way gives one a special kind of freedom, doesn't it?).

But Red thought it was just basic ill manners.

"Where are you from?"

"Switzerland."

"Cool, what part?"

"Oh, uh, the central part."

"Oh yeah, where?"

"You probably haven't heard of it."

"Try me."

"It's called Zurich."

(Oh heck, sonny, I been there---prolly 'fore you wuz born. Second week of July 1992. On my way back from the East. In early morning light I walked down from the station by the lake to the park where the junkies leave their needles and talked to some strung out Goth kids all in black, next to a cold fountain of water pouring over a stone globe. But in any case, any educated person has heard of the place).

Italian guy also at the table: "So they say Portland is the place in the United States that is the most like Europe."

(From his tone I'm not sure how I'm supposed to react to that one. I'm thinking he's going to expect me to brag about how it is in fact so very European, and of course that is something to be automatically proud of. Sure as heck he's met Americans that have said stuff like that, so I don't really take it personally. But I can't help myself so...)

"Portland is the place most like Europe? Well, I guess I know what they're talking about, when they say that..."

"But I wouldn't insult it that way." 

Like a stand-up comic, I stand at the picnic table with a goofy expression, waiting a beat for the audience reaction.

There is no reaction at all to my comment, and I immediately crack a huge smile and interject a well-enunciated version of "I'm just keeeeedding!" Still nothing.

(Woah. Tough crowd tonight. Anyway the correct answer is San Francisco).

Later I talk to a a pair of graduate student sisters from Toronto on vacation. They are of Subcontinental family background but from a fully Canadianized generation. When I tell one that we're from Portland, she replies immediately, "I'm obsessed with that show Portlandia."

(Hah. Good one)

"Is it really like that?" she asks me, eager for real information on the mythical place she has seen in videos.

"Pretty much exactly like that," I tell her.  It seems gratifying to her to hear that.

Later I sit next to a pair of young Germans. The slender young woman refuses any introduction or eye contact, just nods along with the narration of the young man, as he talks with pride about the German soccer team, which is about to play in the finals.

"It'll be interesting to see Argentina and Germany play each other again," I said. "An old rivalry in the finals."

"No, this is the first time they have met in the finals," he tells me, with conviction of certainty.

(Indeed? because I watched Maradona personally will the ball down the entire field like a demigod and score the winning assist in one in 1986, and then of course there was the rematch with German "Machine" of 1990, as my hosts in the former East Prussia called them. But whatevs, as the kids say. Not gonna point it out).

As I had predicted to Red, he gave me the usual line of America could be proud of its team this year, and one day might be a competitor in the finals.

"Well, I hope that never happens," I said.

"We don't need that. Other countries need it way more than us."

A man in the true spirit of old Captain Hatch.

But I think by then he had shifted his attention elsewhere. His female companion just kept smiling to herself, nodding her head, and looking down at the table. She never looked up the whole time.

My thought while I was there was that more than a few of these kids gave the impression of being in a Lost Generation, having witnessed great horrors in a catastrophic war, but with no such recently great war having been fought.

This detached sadness was not new, but its proliferation seemed far beyondI had seen among the vagabond youth in Lisbon even five years ago.

Red noticed how this sadness was especially evident in the young women. One could not help but notice them---the slender ones from Germany, Switzerland, and Toronto who don body suits and choose their companions among the fittest of the surfers. They are told the world is theirs for the taking, and the worlld seems ready to give them whatever they want.

Red noticed how they hid their gazes and never smiled. "It was very off-putting," she said, on our last evening there. "Finally it me, like a big realization, how miserable they were."

Riding in the passenger seat, I couldn't help but laugh a little because to me it was a trend I noticed for a while, but quite to this degree yet. Most young women you meet still like to smile. But it seems trendy to move away from that.

"I noticed that on the first day here," I said. "Sad to say, but I basically wrote them off as so much non-interesting bystanders. I cut my losses, didn't even try to make eye contact or say hello, and just concentrated on the few people whom one could actually talk to."

We agreed mostly on the names of the folks with whom one could carry pleasant conversation, including both of the folks our own age---Nick himself of course being foremost. He's doing the Lord's work tending to the breakfast waffle needs of these kids, and spreading the gospel of Eighties pop music and universal ohana. But even he can only do it six months a year. He spends the rest of the year traveling the world himself.

Also we agreed that among the better conversationalists was a guy named David from Scotland, who now lives in Arizona and who was traveling with his Americanized son, who himself was also very pleasant. We shared our hard cider leftover from the San Juans with them, while on the outdoor deck table on the last evening, just before the amazing inevitable sunset. We found ourselves wishing they had been there a day earlier.

"There were a few others whom I chatted with as well, among the kids," I said. "There were a couple cool guys from Switzerland---I recognized their Schwyzerdütsch---they were carpenters on vacation. We didn't talk that much, but mostly because of the language. But somehow it didn't matter."

"Also the two guys from Ireland-did you meet them? I sat across one at breakfast. He was about twenty years old. Traveling with his friend. They came down from Banff by means a long miserable bus trip to Vancouver. Full of the vigor of life, of spirit. They way he talked himself, traveling, reminded me so much of myself back then, and of just about everybody else who was on the road with a backpack." 

"Thank God for the Irish," I added. "They aren't all of them like that, to be sure, but many of them seem to be, when you meet them."

"No wonder they are the last ones left to still believe in America. They know what is really at stake."

Then a deep thought occurred to me, like the proverbial light bulb going on, a realization about the sad young women in the body suits who never smile at anyone, and who hide their faces, and seem miserable despite it all.

"I think...I know how we can help them," I said. "It's so obvious."

"How's that?" asked Red.

"We can help SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!!!!"