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Isaiah Thompson

City Paper

Four days before the date of this publication, a man stumbled out of the Pine $\"20110609_cover-4\"$ Barrens and onto a South Jersey highway. He was parched, hungry, his face and clothes rendered an ashy gray by layers of dust and soot. Slouching under the weight of his pack, he made his way out onto the road, stuck out his arm, and wearily jabbed a single thumb into the air: the universal gesture — once upon a time, anyway — of the hitchhiker.

Illustrations by Alyssa Grenning

A truck appeared in the distance, grew nearer and passed. A car came, and passed. Then another, then another. With each, the man’s thumb jutted up and back down again.

OK — he was me. And I was beginning to wonder whether, after three days of walking alone through the Pine Barrens, I wasn’t finally, at last, up a creek.

It all began with a map, and an itch. The itch was for the unknown, of which I …

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