American Nomads

This film contains some strong language.

'Wanderlust. Restlessness.

'The urge to get out on the road and ride off into the sunset.

'It's something deep and elemental in the American spirit.'

Someone once asked Gertrude Stein to define America in a sentence.

And, er...conceive a space filled with moving.

That's very much how I think of America today.

'This is a journey in search of American nomads. People who live a life of constant travel.

'Who are they and why do they choose to live this way?

'Why are there so many of them, especially in the American West?

'I first got to know them as a fellow traveller.

'I lived on the road for years

'and wrote a book about the nomadic tribes and cultures I met along the way.

'Now I have a rented house in Tucson, Arizona,

'but I can't seem to spend more than three weeks there,

'or anywhere else, without wanting leave.'

Every time I come home...

to, you know, the electricity bill and the gas bill

and the internet bill and the phone bill

and the cellphone bill and the water bill and the sewage bill

and the credit card bill and the truck payment

and the truck insurance and the renter's insurance,

I kind of remember about, er...

all those years I spent without an address.

Without any bills, without any financial obligations,

um...living in my truck,

um...staying with friends,

spending a lot of time just sleeping on the ground.

That was my big ambition when I was a young man,

to spend as many nights as possible sleeping in the dirt.

'So let's get back out there.

'These south-western states are the best place to find nomads

'during the winter months, but there are no guarantees. You can't plan a journey like this.

'We're looking for nomads, and by definition, they're all on the move.

'So we're going to drift around on the highways and hope to cross paths with them.

'I have faith in the serendipity of the road,

'but bad things can definitely happen.

'Some of these nomads live outside the law.

'Some of them will be armed, some of them will be crazy.

'Some of them, I hope, will be sweet, lovely and inspiring.

'But it's not an easy life out there.

'You have a lot of freedom on the road, but there's a much higher level of danger and hardship.'

You get a little snapshot of roadside America here.

TTT Truck Stop.

And, um...a good place to find hitch-hikers.

You get motorhomes stopping through here.

Truckers stop to take a shower.

Take a rest.

And when the weather's a bit warmer, you find...

..well, girls working these trucks, um....

selling blowjobs and what have you.

'I've spent a lot of time in truck stops like this. And most of the time, it's perfectly calm and safe.

'But things can happen so suddenly and unexpectedly.

'Moments ago, this hitch-hiker just had a brush with death.'

-Give me a minute.

-All right.

First he pulled out a knife,

started hitting me with it when it was collapsed.

Then he pulled out a gun.

At one point, I'm screaming, "Help! Help!" out the window.

I thought I was going to be dead.

I'll never make the same mistake.

You carry a gun when you travel.

What sort of gun would be ideal?

-A big one.

-A big gun?

A big one so nobody fucks with you.

You don't have to hit nothing with it. Just start running.

Or pull out a bazooka.

I don't...I'm a Buddhist.

I've taken a vow of non-violence.

And the guy was scary.

-I'm bigger than him.

-Why was he scary?

Agitation, you know.

I'm going to find my dad, tell him I love him.

Tell him I'm stupid.

Go to church. I'm going to go to church.

First time in 20 years, probably.

I have to thank God I'm alive.

'So he was hitch-hiking and he got picked up by a crackhead woman

'and her jealous crackhead boyfriend.

'Out came the knife and the gun.

'And our Buddhist friend is lucky to be alive.

'Not really the American road at its best,

'but certainly a raw slice of it.

'Man, oh, man, even the Buddhists want guns out here.

'They want bazookas.

'Do I or don't I?

'Is he armed and dangerous?

'He looks old and tired, so probably not.

'His name is Shelton Parker and he apologises for the way he smells.

'He's 60 years old.

'A gentleman of the road with some missing fingers

'and some skeletons in his closet.'

HE LAUGHS

I don't put out my thumb, I just walk.

Sometimes somebody will pull up and I'll say,

"No, I'm just walking, thanks. I don't need a ride". It depends what they look like.

I get stopped by police officers all the time to check to make sure I'm not wanted nowhere.

I've been married five times and got two daughters

and wasn't a good husband and a worse father, so...

Tell me why you travel.

Um...I'm just looking for a place I want to stay.

And, er...I haven't found it yet.

I guess I'm coming of age to where I-I-I-I should,

-I should really start looking for something where I'm permanent, but...

-Yeah.

So, did your travelling have anything to do with your five marriages not working?

Oh, I'm sure of that.

What did your wives think of it?

Well, all but one of them asked me to get married.

Four out of the five.

I told every one of them, I said,

"If you like me now, you'll like me later.

"But if you don't like me now, you're not going to like me later."

Cos I'm not changing, I'm just the way I am.

A couple of years down the line, "Oh, no, you can't do that".

I said, "Whoa-whoa. Let's go back to day one".

I guess stubbornness probably has a lot to do with it.

I do a lot of travelling.

I've been all over the United States.

Over the years, you know.

In between marriages.

And, er...if I can't have a good day,

and I haven't had a bad day out here on the road.

No matter whether it's raining on me, I'm soaking wet or freezing

or hot and sweating, I've never had a bad day out on the road.

HE LAUGHS

'I rode with Shelton for 400 miles.

'He took a nap in the back

'and woke up when we arrived in El Paso, Texas.'

Go down...

OK. See them towers...?

Is that church steeples on the left over there?

-No.

-No. No.

Yeah. That way, we won't be in front.

Come on out.

'He's here to collect a government cheque,

'and then he's going 300 miles across Texas

'because there might be temporary work there.

'He's a drifter, essentially.

'A loner with chronic wanderlust.

'I'll give you my definition of a nomad

'which I stole from a French philosopher.

'A nomad is someone who doesn't feel stable when stationary.

'A nomad feels stable when experiencing velocity.

'Some of them go alone, like Shelton,

'others move around in tribes.

'And the biggest tribe of nomads in America today,

'perhaps unexpectedly, are elderly and affluent.

'They travel around in huge motorhomes,

'also known as recreational vehicles or RVs.

'Every winter, tens of thousands of RV-ers

'converge on the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona.

'There are RV parks in town with plug-in electricity,

'water and cable television,

'and a huge expanse of surrounding desert where the more intrepid

'can camp for free.'

OK, we're looking for the desert encampment of RV clubs.

They tend to all camp together and live quite a regimented life

while they're out here in the desert.

In particular, we're looking for those club members

that do this full-time.

People who've sold their houses, said goodbye to their children

and grandchildren and are now living this nomadic retirement.

It is an odd thing, if you think about it.

I'm getting a bit of a glint on the roofs here.

I think they should be down here to the left somewhere.

There's a lot of desert here and they spread themselves far and wide.

Scapee's RV Club Boondockers. That sounds like a good place to start.

Boondocking is the RV-ing term for camping without being hooked up

to electricity, water and sewage lines.

The guys who are full-timers

tend to do more boondocking than the part-timers.

-Hi there.

-Hi.

-Are you all the boondockers?

-Are you the boondockers?

-Yeah, this is the fire circle.

We're just over here visiting for the night.

-OK, this is their fire circle.

-Yeah.

'It's cocktail hour and it has the feel

'of a suburban garden party transplanted into the desert.

'These people come squarely out of the mainstream of American society.

'They worked hard, paid their taxes and raised their families.

'Then they reached retirement and they did something radical

'and unprecedented - they sold their houses,

'sunk the money into the most luxurious RVs they could afford,

'said goodbye to their families and hit the road.

'Doug and Sharon Henry are intending to spend everything

'they have on a wonderful, freewheeling retirement

'and they joke about leaving zero to their children.

'Their RV cost a quarter of a million dollars.'

Wow. Recessed lighting.

-What is this?

-That's like a granite counter-top.

It's a faux-granite counter-top.

And it extends out so you can seat four people.

-Got your comfortable chairs.

-Very comfortable.

-This makes into a bed.

Four slides, two in the front and two in the bedroom.

It slides out into about 400 square feet in here.

-You've got the refrigerator with the freezer below with icemaker.

-Oh, wow.

All runs off of battery if you want it to.

Got an 8000W generator in it to keep the batteries up,

so it's just like home.

-It certainly is.

-Very nice.

Four televisions in it - three inside and one outside.

Got a nice queen-sized bed

and I have an option for a king if you want to.

-Big wardrobe, closet, washer-dryer.

-Wow.

-Closets.

-The bed lifts up.

For storage, a huge storage area down here.

That was to be the wine cellar at the moment but...

Got central air conditioning, two zones - one for the bedroom,

one for the living area.

It's got hydronic heating so it's continuous hot water.

It's roughing it.

-Roughing it out here in the desert.

-Quartzsite style.

'Nomads are always hard to count

'but the best estimate is that 3 million Americans are now

'roaming around permanently in RVs

'and that 90% of them are over the age of 55.

'These RVs are parked in a big circle around the campfire in the same way

'that the pioneers crossing the plains would circle their wagons at night.'

We just wanted to go adventuring. We can't explain it.

-What happened to the house you lived in?

-We sold it.

We wanted to start RV-ing and we kept our house for about a year

and a half just to make sure we liked the lifestyle.

After about a year and a half,

we decided we would like to continue doing this.

It was convenient to sell the house at that time.

So that freed us of that connection. It's been really good for us.

It's made us a lot closer.

We spend 24 hours a day together and we still like each other.

'The RV-ers are also known as snowbirds.

'They're white-haired and they migrate south in winter

'to these warm, dry deserts and they make their way slowly north again

'when the deserts get too hot.

'They drop in on their grandchildren once or twice a year.

'They've really untethered themselves

'from family, responsibility, any obligations at all.'

I feel a bit envious of these snowbirds.

It seems so damn pleasant, sitting on your lawn chair.

In that winter sun, nothing much to do all day.

See your friends, look forward to cocktail hour.

They seem extraordinarily content.

'I've heard that a travelling preacher has just arrived.

'I've never met one before, but I've read about them in novels and history books

'and they always sounded like strange and intriguing characters.

'He's pitched his tent on the edge of town and agreed to meet me

'in his motorhome. His name is Joe Ferguson.'

-Hello, inside.

-Come in.

-All right.

-Come right on in.

-All right.

I'm 71 years old. I got saved at 37.

God taught me for eight years before I done anything.

Praise the Lord. And at 44 years old, I started in the tent ministry.

Praise the Lord.

My wife went home to be with the Lord in January of 2010.

The 13th of January.

So I've been alone just over a year, but I've never backed off.

I just keep on trucking.

This right here is a mansion, compared to what we started out in.

When my wife and I went on the road, we had a 21-foot trailer.

We lived in that trailer...

..with a wife and a young boy,

home-schooling him

and we lived in that for seven and a half years.

What you see is what I am.

The most gorgeous white and purple tent,

and it's beautiful, it's gorgeous.

But everything you see has been given to us.

It's by the hand of God.

We do probably 250-300 meetings a year for the past 20 years

and I am still as on fire, even maybe more so,

than I was in the beginning.

Because the Lord said,

the latter house will be greater than the former.

You know what's good? For brethren to dwell together.

And I am so glad that the Lord drew you here tonight.

Reach over and tell somebody, you're not here by chance.

You're here by opportunity.

Praise the Lord. Glory be to Him.

'The travelling tent ministry is an American institution that

'arose in the 19th century in response to a transient population

'on the frontiers.

'It made no sense for a preacher to build himself a church

'when the souls he wanted to save were on the move.

'When the next boomtown might spring up anywhere

'and go bust just as quickly.

'So preachers started travelling with tents.

'Some of them were hucksters, dispensing snake oils

'and using shills in the audience

'to demonstrate their miraculous healing powers.

'Others were staunchly devout men of God, like Joe Ferguson here.'

I always say it like this.

If you don't have Jesus in your life, try Him.

We're going to open up. You come up here and line up across here.

Those of you that have a need.

Those of you that need healing, restoration.

If you need a jumpstart in your life, come up.

Come up and receive prayer.

You'll be amazed at the change that the laying-on of hands

will do in your life.

Thank you, Jesus. Take a deep breath.

Jesus, I thank you. Glory be to God. Say, me too!

'I look at Preacher Joe and see some sort of deep American wellspring.

'He's part Scotch-Irish and part Osage Indian.

'A throwback to those frontier preachers,

'but in a motorhome rather than a covered wagon.

'He'll be here for a few weeks

'and then he'll pack up the tent and move on.

'He goes to Indian reservations to preach to the alcoholics.

'He used to be a bad alcoholic himself.

'He was an underground hard rock miner, a boozer and a brawler,

'and you can see that same tough, belligerent quality about him now.

'He stands there in his snakeskin boots as if daring Satan to try him.'

Say yes, Lord. I have come to receive.

In the name of Jesus. Take a deep breath.

'Later that night, an RV caught fire.

'I don't know how it started - a mixture of cruel fate

'and complicated electrical systems.

'No-one was hurt or killed, but it was the end of the road for this snowbird.'

And here is the charred remains of a book about the joys of RV-ing.

It's about grilling up. Grilling up a meal outside your RV in Alaska.

Your propane heat, your microwave oven, your refrigerator-freezer.

Very sad. It's funny what the fire has spared.

Everything is almost unrecognisable but it's spared

this story about living a free and easy carefree life, in this book.

'Desert nomads used to keep moving to find water and grazing.

'Now people wander these deserts to find happiness or escape,

'or to look for themselves.

'And for the sheer pleasure of moving through these landscapes.

'There's another big tribe in America that travels

'basically as an act of rebellion.

'Half-punk, half-tramp -

'they call themselves travelling kids.

'Others call them gutter punks or oogles,

'and an oogle's dog is called a doogle.

'Meet Elizabeth, Kevin and Bill,

'emerging from the shade of a railroad bridge in Arizona.

'It's late morning and they're already well into their stash of beer and vodka.

'The dog's name is Dude. Sure, why not?

'Two in the back, one in the passenger seat. This could be interesting.

'They want a ride to Yuma, Arizona, down on the Mexican border,

'where they intend to hop a freight train going east.

'Why east? No particular reason. The destination doesn't matter.

'The important thing is to keep moving,

'away from responsibilities, low-wage jobs

'and family life so bad, in the case of Bill and Elizabeth,

'that the whole idea of home is a sick joke to them.'

-How was it you started travelling in the first place?

-When I was young...

I'm going to say it because that's really what happened.

My BLEEP molested me when I was a kid.

So I pretty much grew up and I was like, woah, that's wrong.

This shouldn't be happening.

Then I told my mom and my mom told my dad

and my dad kicked my BLEEP out.

And so for some reason, my dad always holds a grudge over him

kicking BLEEP out but it's not my fault.

My dad's weird so he thinks it is my fault.

I left when I was 16 and the first thing I got on was a freight train.

-Anybody for coffee? Anybody for beer?

-Beer!

-Cerveza!

-All right.

'Bill is a self-harmer and a runaway and his mother, he says,

'tried to get him locked up in a mental institution.

'Elizabeth and Kevin are a couple.'

I've been on the road for two and a half years,

she's been on the road for five.

-Five years.

-I'm 30, I'm old.

-I'm only 22.

-When was the last time you saw your mom?

-Last year?

-Last year.

My dad's really against my lifestyle,

but my mom, she's used to it already.

Like, every time I see her,I tell her about my travels and stuff.

My mom is a fat piece of shit. I hate her. Actually, I really do.

She sucks. Like, her house, it's just garbage everywhere.

It goes up the walls. It's so horrible.

I'll go there and I'll be like, woah, Mom! What the hell?

It's horrible.

You get grossed out by the hygiene that your mom displays.

Yes. She's disgusting.

I would run away when I was 13 and take off,

and they would come get me in Kentucky and shit and bring me back.

And then I would run away again, they'd come get me.

I ran away a bunch. My parents, I hate my parents.

They screwed me over, man. I like my life more now.

Like, these people are my family.

I meet these people on the road, I'm like, they're my family.

-You hate your life, so you go places.

-Yeah.

-Does it work?

-It does.

'They sleep rough and scrounge for their food in dumpsters.

'They work odd jobs and beg for money

'and spend most of it on alcohol, tobacco and dog food.

'You can see similar types in any city in Britain.

'The big difference here is that they're fully nomadic.

'They travel hundreds of miles a week by hitch-hiking

'and illegally hopping the freight trains.

'It's not a life that most of us would envy or recommend

'but it's one they've chosen.

'A kind of reckless, debauched adventure, leading who knows where.'

-Come here, Bill.

-Come here, Bill. Get over here, buddy.

-Billy!

Come on, come on.

'I dropped them off by the train tracks in Yuma, Arizona.

'I wished them well and they told me about a big gathering

'of travelling anarchists, hippies and misfits

'a few hours away in the California desert.

'It's some kind of abandoned Marine base, they said,

'and its name is Slab City.

'This is the Mojave desert, one of the hottest and driest in the world.

'Hell on Earth in summer, but pleasant and warm now in winter.

'When this was a Marine base, there were buildings here.

'Now the buildings have been torn down but the concrete slabs remain.

'Hence Slab City. It's pretty ratty and squalid.

'A straggle of trailers and caravans and RVs.'

Looks like some RV encampment on an alien crash site.

If it was in a city, it would be a block of squats,

but instead it's sprawled out over the desert in trailers.

And wrecked school buses.

'The two great advantages of this place are that it's free to live here, and it's virtually lawless.

'There are plenty of guns and drugs around.

'But the police stay away most of the time,

'and the ownership of this ground is tied up in some seemingly endless legal dispute.

'In the meantime, what you have here is a TAZ,

'a Temporary Autonomous Zone,

'that exists outside the rules of society and the law.

'It's right next to a military gunnery range,

'a patch of ground that no-one else wants.

'It's lit up by tracer fire and missiles at night,

'and subject to regular explosions during the day.'

Hi, there. I'm just looking for a place to camp. Any rules here?

Well, no, huh?

Just don't aggravate your neighbours,

raise hell after nine or ten o'clock at night,

we can't encourage that.

There's not really any rules as such.

If a place is occupied,

don't try to push 'em out. You might get hurt.

Yeah, yeah.

-How you doing?

-Hi, there.

Just thought I'd bring you up some flyers from our talent show here.

Talent show, Saturday night, Slab City.

Yeah, we got the talent show there. All right?

That's freakin' chillin', man.

Sweet!

'Slab city is a mish-mash, a messy experiment in American anarchy

'that forms every winter and dissolves every summer

'when this desert turns into a furnace and everyone heads north.

'It's not a place I want to spend the winter,

'but I find it strangely reassuring that such a place is able to exist.'

Sun's rising, came to me and said head off.

You don't want a bunch of dead people following you around.

You see, I'm gone. Cool, that means they're not in my head.

BAGPIPES SKIRL

'After six hours at the talent show, I head back to my campsite

'and fall into a conversation with the guy camped next to me.

'His name is Ted Koons.

'He is a full-time nomad who dropped out of the mainstream

'and now roams America and Latin America in his jeep.

'Like me, it was mainly curiosity that brought him to Slab City.'

Well, like a lot of American kids, when I was in my late teens

and early 20s, I had a lot of ambition disease.

So I went to work in that corporate game

and went to New York City and went to work on Wall Street.

The truth is, I don't tell people "Wall Street" any more,

I use the term institutional finance.

Because that doesn't sound nearly as disgusting as Wall Street.

Ain't that true? So I kind of hide behind that,

but I spent about 12 years in that business.

And like many of my colleagues, I knew the end would come someday,

so I was banking away the cash,

like a caveman hiding as much meat as possible before the winter sets in.

I knew the winter would set in sooner or later,

so, when my friends were buying Porsches, I was taking the subway.

And managed to save up enough money to buy nice things,

and be free, and not be depending on anyone or anything.

So from Wall Street to the slabs.

The slabs. Yeah, that's quite a path.

Rather zig-zaggy.

You know, you leave Wall Street

and it's kind of like leaving a beautiful woman.

You kind of think you'd like to get back into that, if you can,

because that's some pretty good stuff, right?

HE LAUGHS

But the fact is, I never belonged there

in the first place, and I was always a pretender.

Secretly, I'm an Idaho redneck.

But I actually got through that game and since then,

the last three years, I've wandered around, I haven't spent much time anywhere.

I've done all kinds of silly jobs, purely for fun, mostly.

The income is nice, not to spend the money I saved.

But during that time, I've lived in five or six states and visited 10 or 15 countries.

So, you just rolled into Slab City today? First impressions?

I'm impressed.

A lot of guys living in trailers, it's kind of a weird idea,

and there's certainly a lot of ugly people!

# Wild thing

# You make my heart sing... #

When you see these people living in dilapidated trailers,

some people might see that as a sign of some sort of sad experience,

but I see it as a sign of an open expression of freedom.

When you live in a trailer, you're not paying property taxes,

and you can move on any time you want.

That is the idea of freedom that so many people don't truly grasp.

It's this freedom of the Wild West.

RAUCOUS CHEERING

'The freedom of the Wild West.

'All those nomadic horsemen used to roam around here.

'Cowboys and Indians.

'Fur-trappers and frontiersmen.

'Those pioneering families who kept packing up everything into a wagon and moving on.

'It wasn't that long ago, and it left behind a powerful legacy.'

You don't meet many families out on the road,

but I ran into this couple, Derek and Amy.

They're out on the road with their kids, living in a school bus.

I'm eager to hear what it's like.

So, this is your home on wheels?

Our home on wheels.

It's a decommissioned school bus.

And how long have you had it?

We've only had it for four months now. We had a motorhome before.

-We're in the middle of converting.

-This is a work in progress?

-Yes.

Very much a work in progress.

We basically got a motorhome instead of having a big wedding. So...

But yeah, we just travelled for a long time,

he was young enough where he didn't have to start school for a few years,

and just recently traded in for the bus.

And how will the education work?

He's getting so much of an education, being out here,

and he's learning the basics, so far.

Learning so much about the outside and outdoors and plants

and animals, the same kind of stuff you would be doing reading a book, except it's first hand.

Do you find that a lot of people have wrong ideas

and misconceptions about being a family on the road?

Yes, definitely.

Depending on where you go, they vary, from good ones,

where people are, "Wow, that's awesome,

"we're so intrigued that you guys are doing this,

"it's such an inspiring thing."

And then, you go other places, and people are more closed-minded

and they think it's weird, that there is no way to give

a child a well-balanced education when you're doing this.

There's no way.

And not even just that, but how could you do it?

How could you possibly be happy? Living on a bus.

That's the main one, usually.

Wondering, you know, thinking he's missing out,

because he doesn't get movies and doing all the stuff that we did

when we were living in a house.

Do you ever think back to covered wagons, and...?

-Yes!

-The whole drive out here, it just seems so... Whoever told you

that you had to stay in the same place your whole life?

Why were we taught, since we were young, that we go to school,

we settle down, we get a job, we have a family, and we stay put?

What might you want to do when you grow up?

I want to...

Be a truck driver?

Want to be a policeman.

'Derek and Amy seem so happy and fulfilled

'as a family on the road. You don't see that much.

'I remember a truck driver who drove around with his wife and kid in a truck.

'He wasn't a dropout or a dream chaser.

'He had to keep moving to make a living.

'That's a whole other category of nomads. The working nomads.

'Fruit pickers and itinerant carpenters.

'Circus and fairground people.

'The ones I know best are rodeo cowboys,

'and they travel harder than anybody.

'Rodeo is a kind of travelling carnival.

'And right now, they're setting up an event in the small gambling town of Laughlin, Nevada,

'a day's drive north of Slab City.

'The cowboys are in a tent behind the arena.

'They're taping themselves up,

'so their arm muscles don't get ripped in two when they ride.

'It's a life of constant travel and serious amounts of physical pain.

'Getting on the back of an angry horse or an enraged bull is a terrible thing to do to your body.

'Serious injuries are commonplace, and cowboys do get killed

'occasionally, right there in the arena, like gladiators.

'Tommy McFarlane rides the bucking broncos.

'He's one of the toughest and one of the best.

'He drove 820 miles straight through to get here,

'and he doesn't consider this hard driving.'

When did you get into here?

About half an hour ago, 45 minutes ago.

That's about, what? 11 hours on the road, to get here?

We didn't drive very fast. About 12 hours, I guess.

How did you get into rodeo? Is it a ranch family?

Yeah, I was just raised on a ranch, I guess,

I mean, that don't necessarily make a rodeo guy,

but I was raised on a ranch, so I was always riding horses and cowboying

and stuff, so when we got a little older, we started junior rodeo.

Mom and Dad took us to junior rodeo

and we just kind of got into it that way.

It's a fun way to live.

What are some of the injuries you've had?

Shit! See, '08, I dislocated my elbow,

right out the back of my arm, at Calgary.

I come back from that, rode for another while, went to Pecos.

I was getting ready, and the horse flipped over on me.

That raised two bones up into my hand and then they went back down.

Long story short, flipped over again, this guy came up,

sitting on his butt, and just went on it and broke it in 28 places.

They fixed that all that up,

that was quite a while before I was able to come back,

I come back from that, went to Houston, I broke my finger and all my bones across my foot.

And I come back from that, things were going pretty good,

and I tore my bicep off my arm and rolled it up.

They sewed that back down, and I've been rodeoing ever since.

It's all in the game.

That's two wild cowboys there.

THEY WHOOP AND HOLLER

'They're coming in from other rodeos in Texas and Oklahoma

'and Atlantic City, New Jersey.

'Tobacco-chewing Wade Sundell is a young, hard-drinking,

'up-and-coming star in the small, closed world of saddle bronc riding.'

So, how did it go in Atlantic City?

A case of beer and six bottles of wine!

I feel good today, though. Now I've taken the day off.

You had a day off drinkin'!

I drank wine, freakin' kicked me in the butt, now!

INAUDIBLE HUBBUB

'There's a definite tribal identity to these cowboys.

'Look at their body language, the way they talk and greet each other.

'They travel all the time, but they never leave the world of rodeo and cattle ranching.

'Everyone in this world wears the same uniform,

'and the media can't get into a rodeo,

'without putting on cowboy hats and boots.

'Rodeo is a multi-million dollar televised sport in America now,

'rising in popularity, and the television rights are strictly controlled.

'For this event, they keep our cameras behind the scenes,

'but we'll catch Tommy and Wade in action at the next rodeo

'down the road in Logandale, Nevada.'

'I once spent six weeks driving around America

'with three rodeo cowboys.

'They were young and wild, drinking like crazy,

'taking a lot of drugs, hardly ever sleeping.

'It nearly killed me, and I wasn't riding bulls or bucking horses.

'One of those cowboys is dead now.

'He got gored in the chest by a bull in the arena.

'Another one is in prison for assault.

'No-one seems to know what happened to the third guy,

'but I seriously doubt there was a happy ending.

'All right, action time.

'This is the Clark County Summer Fair and Rodeo in Logandale, Nevada.

'There's wine-drinkin' Wade Sundell, with a feather in his hat.

'And there's Tommy McFarlane.

'They've all just arrived half an hour before their events start.

# ..Does that banner yet wave?

# O'er the land of the free

# And the home of the brave? #

-All right!

-RAUCOUS APPLAUSE

Put your hands on the beat, come on, put your hands up.

'These are unbroken horses, bred to buck.

'Riding them is a kind of dance that gets scored out of 100.

'The horse gets marked out of 50 for the way it bucks.

'It's supposed to try everything it knows

'to get that cowboy off its back.

'The cowboy tries to stay on the horse for eight seconds

'while spurring it and holding one arm aloft.

'Tom's got no saddle or stirrups,

'just a handle tied onto the horse's back with a strap.'

Let's hear it for Wade, great guy, great football player.

Right now, we got Tommy MacFarlane.

He's goin' hell for leather!

CROWD CHEER AND WHOOP

Gee! Never had a spread so buckin' enormous. What an amazing cowboy!

After breaking his arm in 26 places, he put out his knee in Houston a year ago,

but when that guy stays healthy,

he's well for riding a buckin' horse.

Riding a very high...

COMMENTARY BECOMES INDISTINCT, DROWNED OUT BY CHEERING

..Puttin' in a score of 80 points!

'A good ride from Tommy. 80 points might win him some money.

'Next up is Will Lowe, Tommy's travelling partner,

'and a three-time world champion.'

Horse is called Ladies' Man.

'They travel around in a white Chevy van with two other cowboys,

'and they call themselves The Wolf Pack.'

Get your hands going to the beat of the music.

Go on, Willy!

Folks, there he is. Three-time world champion, three-time Calgary champ.

'It's America's original extreme sport,

'invented by working cowboys in the 1880s

'to make a contest out of their skill at breaking wild horses.'

His name is Will Lowe!

CHEERING

How many days a year are you on the road?

Over 200.

It varies, there was a couple years where I was hurt and stuff for a couple months,

so quite a few less rodeos, but I would say on average, probably 220 to 240 days a year.

My office is where I make it!

What did you think would happen to you

if you tried to work a 9 to 5 type job?

I wouldn't enjoy it very much. I could do it, but I wouldn't like it.

But you wouldn't blow a gasket?

No, I wouldn't blow a gasket, But I wouldn't enjoy it very much.

It'd actually be work!

This is fun.

Check out the horse!

How many of y'all like that bucking horse?

CHEERING

This guy won the World Championship.

'Next out of the bucking shoots comes wine-drinking Wade.'

Wade Sundell...

COMMENTARY INDISTINCT, DROWNED OUT BY MUSIC

That guy can play into the back of the saddle. Come on, everybody!

Wade Sundell!

Second in the national finals, second twice in Houston.

I tell you, you can bet on this kid.

Score comes up out of 90 for Wade Sundell.

CHEERING

87 points.

Everybody told me that horse is a pretty nice horse, and everything.

But she was strong and I just kept on gassing on,

trying to get to the front and hopefully it all worked out.

I probably did!

How many points?

87.

What sort of money are you looking at?

Well, shoot, I don't know.

I suppose if I win it this rodeo'd pay about 4,000 or so.

And then I'm winning Pocatello, and they'll probably pay that too.

You're on a streak.

I had a good weekend. Hopefully they'll both hold out for me.

Then I'm just going to drink beer in Arizona and chase wild cows. For a week.

If I can afford the cash, I'm ready to do so!

-Where y'all from?

-England.

-That's just like America but different, ain't it?

-Exactly.

They're having a ball. 27 years old, riding from rodeo to rodeo.

Drive for nine hours at 70 mph,

buck for eight seconds at a million mph,

win some money, get on down the road.

They're just loving it.

They love the life, it's written all over their faces, isn't it?

'The first Europeans in the American West were the Spanish conquistadors and settlers.

'They came up from Mexico on horses

'and these were the first horses that American Indians had ever seen.

'In time, horses got away from the Spaniards,

'and established wild herds.

'In the early 1700s, Indians learned to catch horses and ride them.

'And a golden age of nomadism began.

'Here in Nevada, there are still herds of wild horses.

'Their ancestors got away

'from Indian tribes, cowboys, cattle ranches and the US Cavalry.

'They're a living symbol of the Wild West and some of them

'are directly descended from the horses that the Spanish brought.

'Normally you see wild horses at a distance, if at all.

'But here in the Joshua Tree Forest outside Cold Creek, Nevada, I get lucky.

'Horses revolutionised life for the Indian tribes in the West,

'changing their whole conception of speed and distance.

'Lacking a word for these new animals,

'the Sioux called them holy dogs.

'Mounted on horseback, they could travel 100 miles per day,

'and gallop alongside a running buffalo

'instead of watching it recede into the distance.

'Before the horse arrived, most of the Western tribes had practised farming and lived in huts.

'Now they began a nomadic life on horseback

'following the buffalo herds around and living in tepees.

'"For bringing us the horse," said John Fire Lame Deer of the Sioux tribe,

'"we could almost forgive the white man for bringing us whisky."'

It's going to be cold tonight.

It looks like Afghanistan, or...

There's more mountains in Nevada than any other state.

More wild horses and my contention is more lunatics as well,

but we're well away from them, we keep them down in Vegas.

The rest of Nevada is just a big, wild, wide-open place.

This elevation can hit 85 or 90 degrees during the day,

and then at night, it'll get below freezing.

'When I first came to the American West,

'I saw this beautiful thing outside my car window.

'I called it scenery and sometimes I stopped to take a photograph of it.

'Then I started walking out into it,

'scared at first to be in such a big, wild place.'

That's good enough.

'Slowly I became more comfortable

'and started going out there for days and sometimes weeks at a time.

'I slept under the stars and bathed in the rivers,

'and paid very close attention to the animals and birds and plants.

'This wasn't scenery anymore, but a living, breathing place,

'full of mystery and wonder.

'I still can't get it out of my system.

'So I was having a quiet moment, savouring a beer at sunset

'in that perfect silence you sometimes get in the desert.

'Then I heard an engine coming towards me across country.

'It was a guy on some kind of dirt bike,

'a moment of totally random American weirdness.

'He said his name was Ray and he told a long, garbled story.

'It seems his family are polygamist Mormons from Mexico

'and they dumped him out here in the desert.'

So how long have you been here?

-Here?

-Yeah.

-Two days. No, three days.

My dad came from the US.

He went down there on a search for the religion, to find God.

He did that for a while, and he moved around the United States

and preached about the downfall of the United States for a long time.

'He seems lonely, confused, jumpy.

'And his stories get more and more agitated and incomprehensible.'

That's what I figured until somebody walked up a little while ago,

wondering where the fuck his bike was, with a big metal pipe on him.

"Where's my bike?" Dude, I have no fucking idea!

I helped the fucking guy out.

At a gas station, I helped him pick up his bike

and put it on his truck and I have no idea.

He got off the truck with a big old pipe like that.

"Where's my bike?"

I don't know!

"I might have to get violent with you!"

I didn't tell him nothing.

But he looked at me...

I guess you're not the person.

I guess there's trouble everywhere.

So, I feel really bad for Ray last night.

I was kind of trying to get away from him because he was crazy.

And I didn't know whether he was going to flip over into violence.

He seemed poised on the edge there.

But the poor guy just doesn't stand a chance. He's crazy, he's lonely.

He doesn't have any money. I just feel really bad for him.

He doesn't have anything. Didn't look like he's eaten much.

That's just about as hard as it gets.

'Someone asked Johnny Depp to sum up America.

'He said, "All appetite, no taste."

'Las Vegas is only 30 miles away

'from the wild horses. And a more extreme contrast is hard to imagine.

'The first casinos were built here by a gangster with big dreams

'in the 1940s. And he borrowed so much money to build them

'that the Mob put a bullet in his eye.

'The mafia ran Vegas for decades, but now it's all corporate.

'Two million people live here permanently

'and this city in the desert

'is expected to run out of water in less than 30 years.

'For me, Las Vegas is a place to get through.

'I'm heading east into the highlands of Utah,

'up above the snow line, hoping to find some buffalo.'

Oh!

Almost hit a golden eagle.

Just literally flew inches over the windshield.

I'm extremely glad I did not hit that golden eagle.

Somewhere up this road, there's supposed to be a herd of buffalo.

'The American buffalo, also known as the American bison,

'is the largest mammal on this continent.

'It's a symbol of the American West,

'and of American roaming.

'The herds were always moving, migrating with the seasons,

'and this why the tribes that hunted them became nomadic.

'Bison are now restricted to a few national parks

'and a growing number of private ranches like this one.'

60 million is the accepted number for how many bison

used to roam the West.

And they were wiped out in less than 20 years by hide hunters,

thereby depriving the Plains Indians of their livelihood.

And then those 60 million bison, which were reduced to, I think,

less than 2,000 animals, were replaced by 50 million cattle.

And some people in the West now think that the whole thing

was basically a mistake, that cattle are not nearly as well suited

to this environment as the bison.

These guys can give birth without the assistance of vets,

they have good immunity to the various diseases

that are endemic here, they can make it through the winter

without supplemental feed, they can survive the 40-below storms.

You see, they have these big head and shoulders,

and when the blizzards come, they face them straight on like this,

whereas cows kind of turn tail and it gets too cold, the cattle die.

They are perfectly adapted to this environment.

They've evolved out here.

Now we're starting to see them come back,

mainly because the meat is so good.

It's low-fat, high protein, tasty, red meat.

In the three weeks since I last saw him,

Ted the Wall Street refugee has driven down to Mexico and back.

He's been to New York and all over Idaho, Wyoming and Utah.

He's had transitory relationships with a number of different women.

Now he's come to meet me at a remote campground

in the high desert of Western Colorado,

and he's brought some buffalo steaks.

Oh, man.

This is good living, huh?

Oh, man. These are really good.

What do your family think of your wandering ways,

your appearance and what have you?

-Have you got brothers and sisters?

-I don't.

I had a brother but he died about 11 years ago and my parents,

that onus falls on me, you know, the legacy,

the next generation. And if I had one wish,

I wish I could make my parents happy,

you know, the only thing I know how to tell them is I'm pretty happy,

and that's the only answer, at the end of the day.

But if I could flip a switch and somehow have the life I have now

and the picket fence and the children,

raising up the next generation, I would do it, I really would.

Just only for my parents, for their...

You being happy is not going to cut it compared to grandkids?

For my mother, I just haven't delivered.

I'm telling her it's not her fault.

-She did a great job. She did a great job.

-How old are you?

-I'm 37.

I'm 37, just turned a couple of months ago. Plenty of time, really.

I got it figured I got 20 years, at my pace. That could still happen.

But yeah, as a nomad, if I had one wish,

I wish I could make my parents as pleased as they deserve to be.

THUNDERCLAP

Man, we've got weather coming in.

Woah!

-(SOUTHERN U.S. ACCENT)

-When the wind blows, the desert just stands up on its hind legs.

-Goddamn!

-Goddamn!

So Ted came over a bit maudlin in his cups last night.

I know how he feels, but pull yourself together, man!

This wandering life is supposed to be the pursuit of happiness,

not a lifelong commitment to the road.

When you meet the right woman and want to settle down

and start cranking out kids, just buck up and do it.

That's my plan, anyway. All in good time.

You don't always have to be that John Wayne figure, riding away from the picket fence into the sunset.

People have the idea that the West was won by heroic cowboys

and that kind of thing.

They get this idea from movies and mythology,

but the key factor in the taming of the West were, number one, disease.

Microbes, smallpox, that's what really wiped out the nomadic tribes

on the plains, was these diseases they had no resistance to.

And another really important factor

was the invention of barbed wire fences.

Fences restricted the free movement of animals and people

and enforced the new idea of private property.

The nomadic Indian tribes hated fences.

So did the nomadic trail cowboys who had grazed their herds

up and down the plains. Now the damn things are everywhere.

-(SOUTHERN U.S. ACCENT)

-Don't get me started on Goddamn fences!

This whole country has been divided up,

it's had its spirit torn up, brutalised by fences.

You've got your five-strand barbed wire fence,

seven-strand barbed wire fence, you got your round topped fences,

picket fences, Goddamn round top split rail fences,

I'm talking about galvanised tube or steel fences.

Don't get me started on the fence.

So the era of horseback nomads came to an end.

The tribes were corralled on reservations,

railroads came, bringing the iron horse, and in time,

the railroads produced a new and distinct American form of nomadism.

Transient labourers started riding the freight trains

as a way to get from one harvest to the next.

They were called hobos,

and their hungry heyday was the Great Depression of the 1930s.

After the Great Depression, America forgot about the hobos

and tramps on its freight trains but they never went away.

At best guess, 20,000 people are still riding around

on America's freight trains. I used to do it myself.

Most train hoppers today are under the age of 30.

I've found one hitchhiking by the side of the road

in Western Colorado, a young kid out on his own.

-Well, howdy, there. I'm Comfrey.

-Comfrey?

-I've never met a Comfrey before.

-Yeah, neither have I.

It's a bit of a unique name. I'm glad to call it my birth name.

So how come you're out on the road?

I travel off and on.

For years, I've been doing travelling off and on.

Really hard the last three years but before that,

I've been homeless off and on since I was about 13. I'm currently 18 now.

But I just like... I don't know, it's absolute freedom in a lot of ways.

Within limitations of the law.

The only problems I ever have is someone trying to take my stuff

or take advantage of me or the cops harassing me.

Other than that, it's complete freedom.

-Freedom from what?

-Um, life in a box.

-Life in a box?

Sitting in an office, 9-to-5, in front of a computer,

letting my brain rot and listening to the humming. Zzz-zz-zz-zz.

In some ways, I'm addicted to travelling and being on the road.

I'm always looking for that next great adventure to replace

that last one that just passed by.

At the next lake, you're going to want to take a right.

Do you feel connected to any kind of historical tradition

of transient America?

I mean, a little bit,

due to the current days and ages of where we are.

We are in the second Great Depression that this country's faced,

and in the first Great Depression, that was the golden era of hobos,

I guess you'd call it. This is a squat that people actually use.

They cut a hole in the fence and they go way back there in that patio area

for the train, to go west.

So they sit out here and just wait for it,

kind of hiding in the back, just wait for a train.

We are in the gritty Western town of Grand Junction, Colorado,

right by the side of the train tracks.

So usually if people are going to be hopping this area,

they'll be coming in late, after dark,

probably coming to spend a couple hours just sitting and waiting.

-There's still actually some hopper tags up here.

-Let's have a look.

-Good old Luc Puc.

-What's going on with this tag?

This is some travelling kid's tag. You've got your train tracks

and then you have some kind of severed leg.

Hopefully they didn't lose their leg getting on.

How do you stop your leg getting severed like that?

The trick I use getting on a train, I count the lug nuts on the wheel.

If I can count every nut and actually see every nut on the train

then I personally feel it's not moving that fast,

it's moving at a speed that I feel comfortable getting on at.

Anything after that is where you're going to lose a leg or an arm.

And how is it that it happens exactly, the severing?

You get caught under the wheels, man.

You're trying to hop up, climb up or whatever,

you just kind of get sucked in because of this momentum, and the wind builds down and out,

so you're getting pulled down and under so you get sucked in.

And they'll just cut it off and cauterise it right there,

grinding metal on metal. That trick with the lug nuts is a hobo trick

that was passed on to me by oral tradition

-when I first started riding.

-Any other tips for riding the trains?

Keep a knife and something blunt.

I mean, the knife's more an intimidation thing.

If I start to get a sketchy vibe from somebody if I'm hitchhiking

or something, I'll just start cleaning my fingernails and so forth.

Smiley's an improvised weapon that's blunt and kinda scary.

But you have a full wrap on it.

I don't know, it's definitely kept me out of some situations.

I'd rather scare somebody than hurt them, more than anything.

If I can scare someone out of a sketchy situation,

then that's better than actually having to come to blows.

You don't rape, you don't steal,

otherwise you will end up floating down the river

or duct taped to a train.

You're not welcome in this if you break these small ethic...

It's morals, I mean, that's all travelling rules are,

-is a best set of morals. I mean, we all have them.

-Yeah.

It'll be a sad day when you don't see anyone trying to make it

from place to place with their thumb or hopping a train.

That was something I remember as a kid, just sitting by the riverbank

and watching the train roll by, and seeing a couple of kids

or old guys just sitting on the back of the train

or in a boxcar or whatever, and just wave on.

That'll be a sad day when I'm 60, 70,

if I make it through my tramping days, and don't see that any more.

I rode freight trains because I wanted to see what it was like.

I wanted to enter that other world. It really is a tough way to travel.

I nearly froze to death in Montana in a boxcar once.

I was riding with a bunch of Vietnam vet hobos

and they all had dogs stuffed down in their sleeping bags

to keep them warm. I didn't. That was the last time

I got on a freight train and I can't say that I miss it.

Let's order some breakfast. I'm hungry.

I'd like two eggs over easy with hash browns,

uh, toast and a side of green chilli.

-OK. How would you like your eggs?

-Over easy.

And I'll have the sausage, please.

So your dad abandoned you at a greyhound when you were 12?

-What's the deal with your dad?

-I don't know, too busy getting high.

He's an old hippie stoner who's been dealing drugs

as long as I can remember. It's kind of why my mom left him.

He's an old travelling deadhead. I guess it's kind of in my genetics,

like my mom was an old punk rocker that ran away from home

when she was about 17, 18. I mean, she's always been there

but working 60 hours a week trying to support me,

so it was always really difficult.

So you were left alone a lot.

Yeah, pretty much between the age of seven and five,

I had to learn how to take care of myself, learn to start cooking,

wake up every morning, go to school,

come home, there's nobody home,

make myself dinner, do my homework, go to bed, till I got kicked out.

Right, that should feed you up - you been getting square meals?

Cans of ravioli, apple sauce, whatever I can dumpster...

Whatever soup kitchen feeds up for the day.

-You could stand to put on a little weight there.

-Yeah.

I'm definitely nothing but skin and bones.

That's why I have to wear suspenders and a belt. Skinny white boy disease.

Thank you.

You seem pretty tough emotionally.

Is that a facade?

Or is that real?

A little bit of both.

Um...

I'd like to think I have a very strong personality in a lot of ways.

I've seen people break at a lot of less stress,

but a lot of times, I just got to keep going until I can lay down and sleep,

and then I might cry myself to sleep or whatever else happens,

but, I mean, my dreams get crushed on a regular basis.

A month or two ago, I thought I was moving to Durango to go live with my girlfriend,

and about two weeks ago, I found out this isn't going to happen,

so that was my plan for the last... six months, eventually, was to go.

-So now...

-Were you in love with her?

I'd like to think so, but I'm 18, I don't know what love is.

This is the first time I've felt this way about anyone, so I'd like to think it's love.

I mean... The train leaves out of here every night, there's at least one train.

At this point, it doesn't matter where I go, East or West.

Once again, my life's completely open to me.

I just met Comfrey the day before yesterday,

but I find myself worrying about him in kind of a fatherly way.

I know what it's like out on the rails, it's dangerous and illegal and rough as hell.

There are knife fights, different gangs of tramps and hobos who fight each other.

People get thrown off moving trains,

people get duct-taped to moving trains,

so the tape gradually works loose as the train picks up speed.

I told Comfrey to be careful, and he said, "Yeah, right."

I tried to give him money, and he said, "No, thanks."

He went east.

I went west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

They go 400 miles north to south, and they're about 75 miles wide.

They've got glaciers and bears,

and the peaks are well above 4,000 metres.

I love mountains, but I always feel slightly uneasy here,

mainly because I have a fear of heights.

I'm here to meet a legend.

Richard Bear, nicknamed Yogi, has been wandering these mountains for 25 years.

He's climbed nearly all the peaks.

He lives by himself in a tent and he never camps in the same place for long.

To get a message to Yogi, someone had go 20 miles up into the mountains on snowshoes,

and then come 20 miles back down with the answer.

The answer was yes. Yogi has agreed to meet me.

I was expecting some kind of shaggy, grizzly wild man,

but Yogi is smooth, clean, polished.

Clearly no stranger to shampoo, razors or toothpaste.

All the climbers and park rangers who spend time in these mountains have stories about him.

He's the king of the backcountry, a true modern-day mountain man

and the first thing he says is, "Let's go. Follow me."

The story goes that he first came here to commit suicide.

He spent the night intending to jump off a mile-high cliff in the morning,

but woke up awestruck by the beauty and grandeur of the mountains.

You were seriously thinking about walking off a cliff?

Ah, well. Yeah, that was in my head. That's for sure.

I can eliminate my 400 in debt!

HE LAUGHS

And my lack of being married and having all those kids,

by just stepping off El Capitan, you know...

I got dropped off here.

The car drove away, I had something like 20 in my wallet,

and my tent, and in about half a day's time,

I hadn't felt so content in years,

maybe ever in my adult life at that point. I just loved it.

'He's never looked back. He's lived out of a backpack ever since.

'What does he do for money?

'He works seasonal jobs in and around the mountains.'

But a job is something to quit in order to...

Yeah, it's an end to a means for sure. It makes me enough money so I can take off for a few months.

But I have never had any monetary goals,

I don't want to save enough money to buy a brand-new car, that kind of thing.

As soon as I've got 1,000, I don't have to work for three months.

What does he do for love?

He has short-term relationships with the young women who come here to work in the summers.

-These seasonal relationships...

-There have been quite a few.

There have been some I would've loved to have continued for ever,

-but I'm not willing to give this up and move to LA.

-Yeah.

At least in my life, it turns out that love doesn't conquer all,

not even close.

But these relationships start really quickly, because you don't have much time.

All those feelings, all the stuff, it happens fast, and then...

it's gone.

And then comes heartbreak, maybe. You must have had a few of them?

Quite a few of them.

So how do you deal with heartbreak?

I guess, just kind of embrace it.

I know when I get into something like that, it's going to be gone soon, and that helps a lot too.

And anyone that I may be with is fully aware

that I'm going to be here in my tent, regardless of what may develop.

If they wanted to stay, that'd be just fine sometimes.

Other times I'm glad the three months is over, to be honest with you!

Yogi wants to take me through this forest of giant Sequoia trees,

and up to the nearest peak.

So you've got lost up here before?

Um...

I like to say that I'm not lost, I just don't always know where the trail is.

I know which canyon I'm in, and it does get tricky sometimes.

'Out of nowhere, a heavy mist comes in.

'If I was on my own, I'd be turning around now, going back down towards safety,

'but Yogi seems completely unconcerned.

'Then the mist clears as suddenly as it came in,

'and we're standing on a very high, exposed fin of rock,

'looking down at the clouds and the valley floor, a vertical mile beneath us.

'If I fall off here, Yogi tells me,

'it will take a full minute to reach the ground.

'This is the very last thing I want to hear.'

I can't make it. I get vertigo in places like this.

This is as far as I'm going to...

I start to wobble, and...kind of clench up.

So this is as far as I'm going to go.

This is still the front country for me. Kind of the front yard.

I'm heading out to the back yard, out that way.

I would love to join you, I just don't have it in me.

YOGI CHUCKLES

That's home for me. I actually count on most people feeling the same way you do.

-Keeps it good for me.

-Keep the riffraff out!

I wouldn't call it riffraff, but...

That's where I'm going.

How long would you go up there for? How long are you going up there for?

Two weeks, usually.

First day is here, third day I go over the great Western divide,

that wall out there, then the bigger peaks are out beyond that.

So that's kind of your front entrance?

Mm-hm. I've climbed all the higher of the named peaks,

in this Great Western Divide, up north, a long way,

and I've been working my way out toward the far eastern side of the park.

So I've got about five days out, five days back,

and two days to bag a peak or two out there along the way.

Well, I wish you a fine adventure, but you're on your own, partner.

I count on that. I count on that.

Thank you, Richard.

-All right. Adios.

-Bye!

And he's gone.

Back into the frozen wilderness, and absolutely delighted about it.

He's passionately in love with these mountains.

A man at peace with himself, a happy nomad.

And that's all, folks.

We've rambled around the American Southwest for 6,000 miles,

and if you trace the journey on a map, it looks like a daddy longlegs,

smashed up against a wall.

Conclusions? Don't jump to one.

People with bad upbringings sometimes become wanderers,

and so do people from good upbringings.

Loners wander, and so do couples.

Weak people take to the road, and so do the strong.

People wander to find beauty, or because God told them to travel with a tent,

or because tomorrow's rodeo is in a different town.

But ultimately, people wander in America because they can.

The space and possibility exists.

That nice young couple Derek and Amy split up soon after we left them.

He went to Tennessee. She kept the child, the dog and the school bus,

and found herself a new boyfriend at the slabs.

Preacher Joe went on from Quartzsite, Arizona to Lake Isabella, California,

where he caught himself a 10-pound trout.

Right there. That's a number one bait!

Praise the Lord!

Now he's moving north into Canada,

a fisher of men and a fisher of fish.

Hi. Baby.

Hello?

Oh hey, what's going on?

Will and Tom the rodeo cowboys are still driving 2-3,000 miles a week in Will's van.

So far this year they've won 42,000 between them.

Hey, darlin'.

Oh, we're pulling into a gas station.

Ted is travelling harder than ever.

The longest road in North America is the one to Panama,

and he's given himself two months to drive down there and back.

Yogi is back up in the high Sierras, communing with the wilderness,

reading a book about Siberian tigers,

and listening to baseball every night on a pocket radio.

Last I heard from Comfrey, he was out on the rails.

I check his Facebook page from time to time,

and it's been more than a month since he updated it.

And me?

MACHINE BEEPS

'Hi, this is Richard, I'm not around right now.

'Leave a message and I'll get back to you when I can.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]