I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful. I had a good stretch of time between jobs (fortunately voluntarily) a while back and ever since I have had a completely different outlook on life that is, sadly, not quite compatible with modern life.
During my time unemployed my pace of life was more like it is when you are on a camping/hiking trip with a group of scouts: a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch (beginning with walking to fetch the relevant supplies). Now when I am back to work, I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym, because there is not time to do both.
I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.
> I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful.
>I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.
Trust me mate. Being homeless or a homeless traveler is HARD. I am homeless for 3 months now and it's absolutely devastating for my soul and morale.
Having no "safe harbour" takes away all enjoyment from "freedom". I was an avid hiker as well in the past :)
People with comfortable enough lives sometimes have this attraction to the very romanticized versions of otherwise very hard lives. You see this with the coder who dreams of the farmer's life, or that of a "rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond", or even that of a soldier.
It's probably the assumption that something that can be a nice hobby on its best days, a short escape, must also be a nice life. But it's the dose that makes the poison. Things are very different when they become your life and there's no safety net. It's why almost anyone can walk a line drawn on the ground where mistakes are totally forgiven, but very few can walk a high rope with no safety net.
Yes this is soul destroying - the psychological effects are brutal. Not having any little place as a 'base'.
I was homeless in Europe for a few weeks and it really crushes someone. I can see why so many rough sleepers take alcohol / drugs. Just to numb everything. I used to drink a few cans every night before trying to find a place to sleep.
Another crushing thing: as a commenter below said - on average people look down at you as if you were dirty etc. I found that so hard too.
I wish you the very best wherever you are ... really hope your situation will get better somehow please God...
(edit: oh just realised something - not implying the OP takes any substances or anything... just talking in general how I had to resort to alcohol in my situation)
Maybe that's because you're homeless and don't want to be. The Leatherman could have settled down, per the article he "had money", but he just didn't want to.
I was intentionally homeless for 4 months, just riding my bike all around western Europe, just setting up my tent in a random woodland every night. I didn't have a safe harbor, except for the knowledge that I could get a job and rent an apartment if I wanted to.
It was not hard at all. In fact, I loved every minute of it. I lived/worked on a farm and slept on a bed for 2 weeks(WWOOFing), and I could not wait to get back out on the road again.
You can have money or food supplies and still be a homeless traveler. While it is common to assume homeless is broke, sometimes adventure and not being strapped to a certain, civilized life is the goal. I'm always amazed how far legs can take you.
Yeah. The options for lots of leisure are either: a) be homeless, or b) be rich. Those of us inbetween always have to choose and make compromises.
In my life, this has forced me to quit on a bunch of things I would have continued otherwise, and to lean down things like my workouts and so on. This isn't necessarily bad, I like that I can now do 80% with 20% of time/effort, but still, would be nice to have more slack.
There is a third option, which is to move to a place with a much lower cost of living. This isn’t always possible, due to family or job, but it’s not exactly uncommon either. Remote work, in particular, has helped with this. Work fewer hours, for less money, but with fewer needs.
Doable, but it’s about what you prioritize and care about.
- At one place I've worked at (big corp), the QA department was full of contractors. One of the contractors was only working 9 months per year - they spent all summers in Australia. Everyone knew about that and accepted this. The contractor was great, and no one had problems with that (I am sure not having to pay them anything while they were away helped :) )
- At other place, a small startup, we had a team member who was in a band. He'd work for us for a few months, help us to finish a project and make sure customer is happy.. and then disappear for a few more months to tour the US. Again, he was a great programmer, and we always welcomed him back.
I am sure that not every place is like this (for example my current workplace is pretty bureaucratic and would not be happy with this arrangement), but things like this definitely exist.
c) The (lean) FIRE (financial independence / early retirement) way. If you do the math and can do without some of the pricier luxuries of "modern life", you really don't need much money at all.
I lived a pretty high life in Los Angeles for 15 years, and when the time came for me to move to Europe (I'm Australian), I had two weeks where I was basically homeless before the flight home - lease expired on the apartment, circumstances with couch-surfing were not ideal - so I tried two weeks living hard, to see what it was like, as I was also going to have a 6 month hiatus before Europe, back home in the Australian outback, which is a different definition of rough - so I thought, what the heck, why not see what its like. I'd lived in a bubble in LA for so long, the bubble had burst, so why not just try it for a couple of weeks and see how far I got .. I kitted myself out with a sleeping bag and a tent and all the rudimentary camping basics, and headed out of my cushy Los Feliz neighborhood, onto the streets.
It was the hardest thing I'd ever done to myself. My gear was stolen within days, I got beat up and nearly stuck with dirty heroin needles at least 3 times, almost arrested twice, and yeah .. it just generally sucked. I was not prepared for the hardship.
6 months in the Australian desert after that experience definitely made me appreciate the Australian desert a lot more than I had previously, and I will never, ever try this experiment in an American city again.
Its not the street that'll get to you. Its the street life. If I were the only homeless bum in the area, I would've done better I think - but it was all too easy to filter out to skid row after having been chased out of pretty much every 'sanctity' spot I could find, under bridges and in the Griffith Park area - whether by cops or by other homeless people. It was pretty stupid of me, in hindsight. I really didn't need to do it, I was just trying to push my boundaries before heading into the Kimberley region to eat snakes and lizards. That was, by comparison, a far better experience than the reptiles of LA. Would not recommend.
It may be romanic because you have not yet understood the real life
consequences of the "lifestyle".
The problems, health risks, and stress it brings with it.
> I wonder what it says about me or my life that my first thought was that it sounded absolutely wonderful.
What sounded wonderful to me was this sentence: 'One store kept a record of an order: "one loaf of bread, a can of sardines, one-pound of fancy crackers, a pie, two quarts of coffee, one gill of brandy and a bottle of beer"'
This was a time when food brands weren't really a thing, the store probably had one type of bread, one type of (local) canned sardines, one type of crackers, etc. Each shop had a different variation and "menu", so to speak, all completely unique to each other. These days there is no difference between grocery stores, they all sell big-brand stuff and only convenience/price is the differentiating factor. No wonder only Walmarts are left.
> a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch
I think about this a lot when it comes to AI automation for coding.
Yes, it's nice if an AI can speed up the sort of semi-mindless parts of programming. But I strongly suspect that I need those spans of time for my mind to do the background processing necessary for the actual intellectually challenging parts of the job.
I've written two books and anyone who has done that will telling that writing is exhausting. It's an act that is almost purely intellectual with very little menial labor. And it is so utterly draining that it's hard to do for more than a couple of hours a day.
I don't relish programming turning into that. I like the easy refactoring and bug fixing tasks because they provide a respite between periods of very deep thinking while still keeping me mostly focused on the overall problem domain. I suspect I would be an overall worse engineer if I lost those.
Surely you're taking a lunch break now that you're back to work, and that is enough time to hit the gym and scarf down some nutrients afterwards, leaving after work for family time. It only takes 15-20 minutes of activity per day to maintain fitness.
> ... and ever since I have had a completely different outlook on life that is, sadly, not quite compatible with modern life.
I hear you. For about two years I got to live in a rural area, on the sea side, 45 minutes drive from the closest highway. 5000 people villages was a 15 minutes drive.
Chopping wood to then heat the house, having animals pass in front of me while I'd be reading HN under the porch before going to bed.
Walking just for the sake of walking from the house to the sea and then back.
Heny Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
That and the quote about cities being about mystification.
(3 minutes elapsed)
Ah, found it (first read it for someone posted here on HN btw):
Thomas Merton's Raids On The Unspeakable: "I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Where rain, sunlight and darkness are contemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies. I can have no confidence in places where the air is first fouled and then cleansed, where the water is first made deadly and then made safe with other poisons. There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow chemically. It is given a precise reason for existing. They put a sign on it saying it is for health, beauty, perspective; that it is for peace, for prosperity; that it was planted by the mayor’s daughter. All of this is mystification. The city itself lives on its own myth. Instead of waking up and silently existing, the city people prefer a stubborn and fabricated dream; they do not care to be a part of the night, or to be merely of the world. They have constructed a world outside the world, against the world, a world of mechanical fictions which contemn nature and seek only to use it up, thus preventing it from renewing itself and man."
Thankfully I still go to that place where I used to live, several times a year. Sky is so clear I can many stars.
Once my kid shall turn 18, I plan to go back live there.
I don't think us humans were meant to be stacked in cities and high-rises like ants. It's just like communism: great theory but wrong species.
> I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym
Wife does her gym at home: proper stuff in gym gear. Mostly just simple exercises: no crazy gear besides a few weights. No driving to the gym so twice the time saved. No need to shower at the gym or seat all sweaty in the car.
It mentions in his Wikipedia article that he had money although the source was unknown. The issue with vagrancy throughout history is not the vagrancy itself primarily, but the problems of theft and anti-social behaviors that go with it. Since this person had money, didn't steal, and seemed to mostly leave people alone, they weren't a problem and got an exemption because they were well known.
”Homed” people do those things, quite often, yet I have to se any anti-vacancy laws.
It is telling that society regularly outlaws afflictions like homelessness or situations like vagrancy instead of targeting the specific instances of bad behaviour that ought to be the problem.
Yes, I agree that HN is the place to discover the most interesting, coolest and weirdest stuff on the internet but unfortunately, sometimes, these posts don't get enough traction in their first minutes and once they got pushed to the second page of newest submissions, they are technically dead!
Fortunately, HN had introduced what's called pool, or second chance, where the mods of the site periodically watch for past submissions and pick what they believe is interesting then throw it to the front page and see if it sticks by having users upvoting it.
Leatherman story was one of those cases. I submitted it three days ago without getting a single upvote and was surprised to see it made it to the front page this morning.
I don't know where, but probably here on HN, I read a very long version of the same story. The wikipedia version was surprisingly short. I remember reading it and feeling a lot of emotions. I think this is the version:
but it seems too new... I'm sure it was more than a year ago I read about it...
EDIT: that's definitely not the one. The one I read was by an author who had had a life-long obsession with the Leatherman and wanted to retrace his steps, on his own, and he had a family. It was a haunting piece.
EDIT 2: actually, looks like it is the article. I didn't scan far enough. I guess March 2025 feels a really long time ago.
Gives me an idea of an ultra endurance event... Think "Ironman" of walking. Let's say participants would have two weeks to complete the 587 km course or some part of it and whoever finished first is the Leatherman.
There already are, they're called ultramarathons [0], 587 km would be on the longer end for a regularly held race but it's only slightly longer than Dean Karnazes's record for an uninterrupted run which was 560 km in 80 hours [1] so it'd be a multi day race probably.
Usually the extremely long distance ultra events are held as laps around a limited area because it's hard to safely run a race over hundreds of kilometers over a long period. Each racer needs a support car usually in the really long distance events that do happen to be run on roads etc. blocking traffic and making sure if they do get into medical trouble they can get help immediately.
Do you have to walk? I get that power walking exists as a sport. But no way to easily disqualify people from running instead of walking. Plenty of ultras exist though this would be a cool theme.
It would be on the longer side of ultras and unique if it was actually run over the route (vaguely defined) that Leatherman took. But that's mostly because they tend to not be done that way because of the difficulties of supporting runners when the course is that long. The really long ultras are often lap based instead of being a course that's actually 100+km long or take place in remote areas with support cars following the runners.
A very different man, but the book 'The Autobiography of a Super Tramp' is a fascinating read from the hayday of the tramp - about one manes tramping across the UK and USA
The thing which that article leaves unsaid is that this lifestyle existed in the context of seasonal migrant workers (hobos) who were still necessary to the not-yet fully mechanized agriculture of the time.
One work which touches on this is Louis L'Amour's autobiography: _Education of a Wandering Man_ which is a great read.
There's still a lot of non mechanized agriculture in the US. Fruits especially are often hand picked. Strawberries in particular can be pretty grueling [0] because they're low to the ground. Even the semi mechanized version has the workers lying on their bellies rapidly picking as the tractor tows their platform along. [1]
Change one a to u and this might be about a president ^_^ I never noticed before how close those words were. And he'd probably like the prefix "Super".
Readit News
During my time unemployed my pace of life was more like it is when you are on a camping/hiking trip with a group of scouts: a lot of the time spent on routine things like fetching water, lighting fires and prepping food. I would spend hours each day on prepping the dinner from scratch (beginning with walking to fetch the relevant supplies). Now when I am back to work, I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym, because there is not time to do both.
I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.
>I do not want to be homeless or get rid of my family, but it sure would be amazing to "be able to" (of course I have a choice: I can just resign) just spend time spending time.
Trust me mate. Being homeless or a homeless traveler is HARD. I am homeless for 3 months now and it's absolutely devastating for my soul and morale.
Having no "safe harbour" takes away all enjoyment from "freedom". I was an avid hiker as well in the past :)
It's probably the assumption that something that can be a nice hobby on its best days, a short escape, must also be a nice life. But it's the dose that makes the poison. Things are very different when they become your life and there's no safety net. It's why almost anyone can walk a line drawn on the ground where mistakes are totally forgiven, but very few can walk a high rope with no safety net.
Yes this is soul destroying - the psychological effects are brutal. Not having any little place as a 'base'.
I was homeless in Europe for a few weeks and it really crushes someone. I can see why so many rough sleepers take alcohol / drugs. Just to numb everything. I used to drink a few cans every night before trying to find a place to sleep.
Another crushing thing: as a commenter below said - on average people look down at you as if you were dirty etc. I found that so hard too.
I wish you the very best wherever you are ... really hope your situation will get better somehow please God...
(edit: oh just realised something - not implying the OP takes any substances or anything... just talking in general how I had to resort to alcohol in my situation)
I was intentionally homeless for 4 months, just riding my bike all around western Europe, just setting up my tent in a random woodland every night. I didn't have a safe harbor, except for the knowledge that I could get a job and rent an apartment if I wanted to.
It was not hard at all. In fact, I loved every minute of it. I lived/worked on a farm and slept on a bed for 2 weeks(WWOOFing), and I could not wait to get back out on the road again.
You can have money or food supplies and still be a homeless traveler. While it is common to assume homeless is broke, sometimes adventure and not being strapped to a certain, civilized life is the goal. I'm always amazed how far legs can take you.
Deleted Comment
Why? Stay strong my friend.
In my life, this has forced me to quit on a bunch of things I would have continued otherwise, and to lean down things like my workouts and so on. This isn't necessarily bad, I like that I can now do 80% with 20% of time/effort, but still, would be nice to have more slack.
Doable, but it’s about what you prioritize and care about.
I've had two experiences with people like that:
- At one place I've worked at (big corp), the QA department was full of contractors. One of the contractors was only working 9 months per year - they spent all summers in Australia. Everyone knew about that and accepted this. The contractor was great, and no one had problems with that (I am sure not having to pay them anything while they were away helped :) )
- At other place, a small startup, we had a team member who was in a band. He'd work for us for a few months, help us to finish a project and make sure customer is happy.. and then disappear for a few more months to tour the US. Again, he was a great programmer, and we always welcomed him back.
I am sure that not every place is like this (for example my current workplace is pretty bureaucratic and would not be happy with this arrangement), but things like this definitely exist.
It was the hardest thing I'd ever done to myself. My gear was stolen within days, I got beat up and nearly stuck with dirty heroin needles at least 3 times, almost arrested twice, and yeah .. it just generally sucked. I was not prepared for the hardship.
6 months in the Australian desert after that experience definitely made me appreciate the Australian desert a lot more than I had previously, and I will never, ever try this experiment in an American city again.
Its not the street that'll get to you. Its the street life. If I were the only homeless bum in the area, I would've done better I think - but it was all too easy to filter out to skid row after having been chased out of pretty much every 'sanctity' spot I could find, under bridges and in the Griffith Park area - whether by cops or by other homeless people. It was pretty stupid of me, in hindsight. I really didn't need to do it, I was just trying to push my boundaries before heading into the Kimberley region to eat snakes and lizards. That was, by comparison, a far better experience than the reptiles of LA. Would not recommend.
What sounded wonderful to me was this sentence: 'One store kept a record of an order: "one loaf of bread, a can of sardines, one-pound of fancy crackers, a pie, two quarts of coffee, one gill of brandy and a bottle of beer"'
This was a time when food brands weren't really a thing, the store probably had one type of bread, one type of (local) canned sardines, one type of crackers, etc. Each shop had a different variation and "menu", so to speak, all completely unique to each other. These days there is no difference between grocery stores, they all sell big-brand stuff and only convenience/price is the differentiating factor. No wonder only Walmarts are left.
I think about this a lot when it comes to AI automation for coding.
Yes, it's nice if an AI can speed up the sort of semi-mindless parts of programming. But I strongly suspect that I need those spans of time for my mind to do the background processing necessary for the actual intellectually challenging parts of the job.
I've written two books and anyone who has done that will telling that writing is exhausting. It's an act that is almost purely intellectual with very little menial labor. And it is so utterly draining that it's hard to do for more than a couple of hours a day.
I don't relish programming turning into that. I like the easy refactoring and bug fixing tasks because they provide a respite between periods of very deep thinking while still keeping me mostly focused on the overall problem domain. I suspect I would be an overall worse engineer if I lost those.
Deleted Comment
I hear you. For about two years I got to live in a rural area, on the sea side, 45 minutes drive from the closest highway. 5000 people villages was a 15 minutes drive.
Chopping wood to then heat the house, having animals pass in front of me while I'd be reading HN under the porch before going to bed.
Walking just for the sake of walking from the house to the sea and then back.
Heny Thoreau: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Full quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2690-i-went-to-the-woods-be...
That and the quote about cities being about mystification.
(3 minutes elapsed)
Ah, found it (first read it for someone posted here on HN btw):
Thomas Merton's Raids On The Unspeakable: "I am alien to the noises of cities, of people, to the greed of machinery that does not sleep, the hum of power that eats up the night. Where rain, sunlight and darkness are contemned, I cannot sleep. I do not trust anything that has been fabricated to replace the climate of woods or prairies. I can have no confidence in places where the air is first fouled and then cleansed, where the water is first made deadly and then made safe with other poisons. There is nothing in the world of buildings that is not fabricated, and if a tree gets in among the apartment houses by mistake it is taught to grow chemically. It is given a precise reason for existing. They put a sign on it saying it is for health, beauty, perspective; that it is for peace, for prosperity; that it was planted by the mayor’s daughter. All of this is mystification. The city itself lives on its own myth. Instead of waking up and silently existing, the city people prefer a stubborn and fabricated dream; they do not care to be a part of the night, or to be merely of the world. They have constructed a world outside the world, against the world, a world of mechanical fictions which contemn nature and seek only to use it up, thus preventing it from renewing itself and man."
Thankfully I still go to that place where I used to live, several times a year. Sky is so clear I can many stars.
Once my kid shall turn 18, I plan to go back live there.
I don't think us humans were meant to be stacked in cities and high-rises like ants. It's just like communism: great theory but wrong species.
> I have to choose if I want to spend time with my family or going with the gym
Wife does her gym at home: proper stuff in gym gear. Mostly just simple exercises: no crazy gear besides a few weights. No driving to the gym so twice the time saved. No need to shower at the gym or seat all sweaty in the car.
She does 20 or 30 minutes each day.
It is telling that society regularly outlaws afflictions like homelessness or situations like vagrancy instead of targeting the specific instances of bad behaviour that ought to be the problem.
Interesting character for sure, this leatherman.
Yes, I agree that HN is the place to discover the most interesting, coolest and weirdest stuff on the internet but unfortunately, sometimes, these posts don't get enough traction in their first minutes and once they got pushed to the second page of newest submissions, they are technically dead!
Fortunately, HN had introduced what's called pool, or second chance, where the mods of the site periodically watch for past submissions and pick what they believe is interesting then throw it to the front page and see if it sticks by having users upvoting it.
Leatherman story was one of those cases. I submitted it three days ago without getting a single upvote and was surprised to see it made it to the front page this morning.
The mods didn't put it on the front page themselves but instead emailed me with an invitation to repost.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/magazine/old-leatherman-w...
but it seems too new... I'm sure it was more than a year ago I read about it...
EDIT: that's definitely not the one. The one I read was by an author who had had a life-long obsession with the Leatherman and wanted to retrace his steps, on his own, and he had a family. It was a haunting piece.
EDIT 2: actually, looks like it is the article. I didn't scan far enough. I guess March 2025 feels a really long time ago.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Karnazes#Running_highligh...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrianism
Crazy things like people walking 1 mile every hour for 1000 hours, grabbing bits of sleep within those hours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_ultra
Any why?
“The more I hear about this Hitler fellow, the less I like him”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_a_Super...
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1646104/
One work which touches on this is Louis L'Amour's autobiography: _Education of a Wandering Man_ which is a great read.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/SipsTea/comments/1kqv2yd/pov_manual... pardon the subreddit it was the best video I could find shortly.
[1] https://youtu.be/jmib5b7AhXg?t=24