Travel, Adventure, and the Culture of Hospitality: Lessons from the Appalachian Trail on the Generosity of Humanity

Travel and adventure rely heavily on a culture of hospitality and how one is perceived in an unfamiliar place as either a welcomed guest or a stranger to be feared.

Photo by Takafumi Yamashita on Unsplash

“Oh yes, sir, good old stranger,” the bright-eyed goddess said,

“I’ll show you the very palace that you’re after—

the king lives right beside my noble father.

Come quietly too, and I will lead the way.

Now not a glance at anyone, not a question.

The men here never suffer strangers gladly.”

-Homer, The Odyssey

One of the more fascinating roles we inhabit during our adventures is when we find ourselves as guests to someone else—our hosts—in an unfamiliar place. The relationship between host and guest is unique and ultimately depends on a culture of hospitality. Where there is little hospitality, there will be few travelers willing to pass through. While the modern phenomenon of tourism has dramatically depersonalized the more intimate relationships that can form between wayward travelers and good Samaritans willing to assist people on their sojourns, we can still find deeper relationships between hosts and guests in some corners of the modern world.

One of the first things we want to know about another place is how safe it is and whether it is known for having a culture of hospitality. To me, a host’s hospitality is the powerful glue that makes travel doable. I view the role of a good host in such high regard as to go so far as to say they are the linchpin to a memorable adventure. Where we rest our heads and learn to navigate an unfamiliar place can be remarkably enhanced because of a charitable host's local wisdom and goodwill.

Most experiences with a “host” while traveling can be rather impersonal. After all, hotel members or an entire country can technically be considered as the “host.” Many people favor their independence while on vacation or traveling and so the role of the hotel staff is making their guests comfortable while providing a safe distance not to be too attached. That isn’t to say friendly encounters and memorable conversations can’t be had, just that a wedge is typically set in place in commercialized and heavily touristed destinations that inhibit more meaningful interactions.

However, I’m talking about the individual hosts that take you into their homes while you are on your adventures. They may be friends, family, or a “friend of a friend” who’s allowing you to “couch surf” or how many Airbnb’s originally operated with someone actually sharing the living space and meals, with engagement between hosts and guests being the norm. Often these can be strangers who go out of their way to graciously gather wayfarers to their table eager to hear some travelers’ tales.

Some of my best experiences with hosts happened while backpacking the Appalachian Trail in 2014. On the Appalachian Trail, hosts take on an almost religious-like aspect, and are known as “trail angels.” These people are holy in many hikers’ eyes because they tend to appear at precise moments when sheer desperation has set in to lend a much-needed hand in the hiker’s journey. Many travelers have found themselves lost, fretful, and utterly exhausted to the brink of despair, only to happen upon a caring individual willing to take them in for the night, provide them a ride, or pay for their meal. This happened countless times on my thru-hike of the AT and gave me an incredible insight into human kindness and generosity, which is rarely spotlighted in our endless news cycles with the selection bias toward human tragedy, misery, and outrage. As Anthony Bourdain put it,

“If you only look at what’s on the news, you can miss MAYBE what’s a bigger picture.”

Here is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, An Anthropology of Wandering: How Adventure Can Alleviate a Fearful Culture, that details my observations on the spirit of generosity found on the Appalachian Trail:

One of the most common surprises people encounter on a given adventure like the Appalachian Trail is how many kind and humble people they find willing to assist them at a moment’s notice. This isn’t something we can learn and fully appreciate through our televisions and computer screens. We have to be in other places to know this. This was another striking element we quickly became aware of while on the Trail, especially when it came to hitchhiking, something we originally had a lot of anxiety about. Before life on the AT, my brain was conditioned to never hitchhike. Unquestionable! Such a thing was risky, I was always told. But when participating in an adventure like a long-distance hike, one comes to find out how much you will have to rely on the goodwill of others. After 44 days of being on the Trail, I noted:

I no longer feel timid or nervous about hitchhiking as I did before our journey. I’m not all that certain why I was nervous to begin with. I just never had the experience. Most of the things that we are uncertain about or have no experience with tend to be given negative impressions in our culture. They are too easily perceived as risky or dangerous and we are often naively warned and influenced by those who too have no experience in the matter but have only maybe heard of just a few bad instances via the news or rumored word-of-mouth hysteria. The “evil” we hear of is what most easily imprints and stays in our minds. How often have we avoided harmless interaction with others or taken a loss of an otherwise great experience due to worrisome impressions stoked by the flames of ignorance and inexperience? This is a great shame in my mind. I recall a fitting quote from Emerson that states, “What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know.”

How can we ever expect to learn anything vital about this world if we rarely physically immerse ourselves in it? (I expand more on hitchhiking and risk in a previous post On Hitchhiking and the Risk of Not Taking Risks).

Adventures often restore our faith in humanity. In anthropology, this sharing of a common experience within a spontaneous community has been characterized by the term communitas. Establishing relationships is something we inherently do. This isn’t an exclusive thing among adventurers. However, entering unknown territory in the heart of travel can be daunting. We often find ourselves relying much more heavily on the goodwill of strangers and become overtly committed to building a rapport with others.

…

After four days of walking in torrential rains, Hilary and I arrived in the town of Hanover, New Hampshire to resupply and recharge. We were utterly exhausted and our moods were souring. The supermarket was crowded, but we needed to gather supplies before figuring out where to stay that night. A young woman exiting the supermarket spotted us with an openhearted smile. Former thru-hikers can instantly spot other thru-hikers no matter the size of the crowd like an archaeologist can spot a piece of worked stone amidst a scatter of natural pebbles. Then again, the stench emanating from their weathered clothes and grungy gear doesn’t make it all that difficult for the layperson either. She invited us to stay the night and clean up at her apartment without thinking twice. She hiked the trail two years before and could easily relate to our situation. When she offered us her apartment, she was quite literal: she was leaving for the weekend and left us with plenty of food, her Netflix account, a shower, and a bed without wanting anything in return

These shared experiences of community struck me as profound and unexpected, despite being recently steeped in the study of anthropology—a field known for unraveling the many deep complexities of the human condition. Another critical lesson dawned on me: learning something from afar, say in the classroom or reading a book at home, doesn’t mean we fully grasp something; many life lessons require the full physical immersion of all our senses. These cases of generosity and the culture of hospitality on the Appalachian Trail came to occur so regularly that it has made me wonder if all we need to do to gain a better sense of human altruism and unadulterated kindness is to simply wander a bit more throughout the world and inspect humanity a little more face-to-face.

Throwing ourselves out into the world forces us to make contact and establish a rapport. When we are nestled in a familiar place, we become habituated. We know how to move around easily and acquire the things we need and want almost without thinking about it—we don’t necessarily need to interact and engage with anyone on any meaningful level. Technology can also distance us just as much as it connects us. When we find ourselves in the grips of an adventure and a new place, we’re almost forced to interact with others more authentically. On an adventure we tend to connect with others more intimately, establishing a camaraderie or companionship with those sharing our experience.

One major positive to journeying into the world is that we not only expand our vision of our planet but also our circle of sympathy casts a wider net. In his study, The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, moral philosopher Peter Singer observed in 1981 a historical trend of how the “circle of altruism has broadened from the family and tribe to the nation and race, and we are beginning to recognize that our obligations extend to all human beings.” The fact that we feel the pain and suffering of those affected by a natural or man-made disaster halfway around the world, and may even send relief money to those with whom we’ll never meet or have our kindness reciprocated, says something quite extraordinary about our moral progress. Stepping out into the world more directly will allow us to see this less media-driven side of humanity.

Hats off to the hosts who kindle humanity’s culture of hospitality. To anyone who has ever served as a host, thank you for all your kindness and generosity.

For consideration:

• Is there a host you’d like to spotlight that enhanced an adventure of yours?

Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Please consider subscribing, sharing, and supporting this project—much more to follow.

Cheers!

-JSB