The Hobo Handbook by Jeremiah David
Between Bakersfield and Fresno, California.
位于加利福尼亚州贝克斯菲尔德和弗雷斯诺之间。
Photograph by Rondal Partridge, via Wikimedia Commons .
摄影：Rondal Partridge，来自维基共享资源。
Public domain.
公共领域。
The name of the book is a ruse.
书名是一个诡计。
Camping on Low or No Dollars , the dingy cover page reads.
肮脏的封面上写着“低美元或无美元露营”。
An older edition bears a similarly anodyne title: From Birmingham to Wendover .
旧版本有一个类似的镇痛标题：从伯明翰到温多弗。
Both are a misdirection, intended to keep the wrong people—cops, journalists, nosy normies like me—from realizing what they’re holding.
两者都是误导，旨在阻止错误的人——警察、记者、像我这样爱管闲事的普通人——意识到他们持有的是什么。
The Crew Change Guide is a set of best practices and guidelines for hopping freight trains anywhere in the U.S. and Canada.
《乘务员换班指南》是一套针对在美国和加拿大任何地方搭乘货运列车的最佳实践和指南。
A “crew change” refers to a train’s personnel shift, a brief window of opportunity for those brave enough to take it.
“乘务员换班”是指火车上的人员变动，对于那些有勇气接受的人来说，这是一个短暂的机会之窗。
In the heist movie, this is that ten-second gap after the night watchman clocks out and before his replacement takes over.
在抢劫电影中，这是守夜人下班后和他的替代者接管之前的十秒间隙。
For a train hopper, it’s a rare chance to clamber up a wagon undetected.
对于跳火车的人来说，在不被发现的情况下爬上车厢是一个难得的机会。
The Guide is either the train hopper’s Bible or an outdated relic, a must-have or a crutch, depending on whom you ask.
该指南要么是火车上的圣经，要么是过时的遗物，要么是必备品，要么是拐杖，这取决于你问的是谁。
The subtitle dubs it “An Alternative Hiking and Camping Guide,” but you won’t find any trail maps inside.
副标题将其称为“另类徒步旅行和露营指南”，但你在里面找不到任何路线地图。
Instead, what you see in these unstapled pages are dense walls of highly acronymized text in a miniature nine-point font.
相反，您在这些未装订的页面中看到的是密集的高度缩略文字墙，采用微型九号字体。
“East Joliet YD is becoming a major CN GM YD and c-c point for thru trains,” reads a line headed “Gibson City.” “E.
“东乔利埃特 YD 正在成为主要的 CN GM YD 和直达列车的 C-C 点，”标题为“吉布森城”的线路上写道。 “E。
Jackson crosses over S end of YD IM NE of DT.” The acronyms are more shorthand than code, a way of packing as much information as possible into 154 pages.
杰克逊穿过 YD 的 S 端 IM DT 的 NE。”首字母缩略词比代码更简略，是一种将尽可能多的信息打包到 154 页中的方法。
The aesthetic ethos here is lightness, economy, discretion.
这里的审美精神是轻盈、经济、谨慎。
The first Crew Change Guide appeared as a partly typed, partly handwritten pamphlet in 1988.
第一本《船员换班指南》于 1988 年以部分打字、部分手写的小册子形式出现。
The true identity of its author, a reclusive seventy-six-year-old Vietnam veteran known only as Train Doc, is as fiercely protected as the Guide itself.
该书作者的真实身份是一位隐居的 76 岁越战老兵，人们只知道他是“火车医生”，他的真实身份与《指南》本身一样受到严格保护。
Train Doc disguised his voice for his sole interview , and of the three people I’ve spoken to who claimed to know him, none agreed to go on the record.
火车医生在他的唯一一次采访中伪装了自己的声音，在我采访过的三个自称认识他的人中，没有人同意公开。
The most consistent report about him is that he is remarkably litigious—he’s purported to threaten anyone and everyone who uploads the Guide to the internet with copyright infringement.
关于他最一致的报道是，他非常爱打官司——据称他会威胁所有将《指南》上传到互联网的人侵犯版权。
True or not, the document remains conspicuously absent online.
无论真实与否，该文件在网上仍然明显缺席。
It exists only in the physical, and this scarcity has made the Guide a sacred writ to train-hopping circles across the country.
它只存在于实体之中，而这种稀缺性使得这本指南成为全国各地火车跳跃圈子的神圣令状。
Scans have been known to surface on the darknet now and then, and scammers exploit the unmet demand by selling bogus pdfs of blank pages and blurry photographs.
据了解，暗网上时不时会出现扫描件，诈骗者会利用未满足的需求，出售空白页和模糊照片的伪造 pdf 文件。
Train Doc, however, insists on keeping the Guide free and “low profile.” “It is not meant to be sold for more than the price of copying,” he writes in the introduction.
然而，《火车医生》坚持保持该指南免费且“低调”。 “它的售价不应高于复制品的价格，”他在简介中写道。
“Only give copies to riders who will be responsible.”
“只向负责的乘客提供副本。”
There are other texts in this misfit family (I’ll call them folk texts, for lack of a better term), though by definition they’re not easily discovered.
这个不合时宜的家族中还有其他文本（我将它们称为民间文本，因为缺乏更好的术语），尽管根据定义它们并不容易被发现。
The Israeli Traveler’s Book is perhaps the most organic and decentralized example.
以色列旅行者之书也许是最有机、最分散的例子。
A sort of unofficial Green-Book for Jews, it served to identify safe, unprejudiced restaurants, bars, and hostels in Latin America in an age before Google Reviews.
它有点像犹太人的非官方绿皮书，在谷歌评论出现之前的时代，它用来识别拉丁美洲安全、公正的餐馆、酒吧和旅馆。
That’s the primary purpose of a folk text: to pass from hand to hand the secret knowledge of the marginalized and the outcast.
这就是民间文本的主要目的：将边缘化和被排斥者的秘密知识代代相传。
Many of our ancient scriptures, including parts of the Bible, would once have fit this description.
我们的许多古代经文，包括《圣经》的部分内容，曾经符合这种描述。
You can’t buy such a book, can’t download it, can’t trace its often multiple authors.
你无法购买这样的书，无法下载它，也无法追踪它的多个作者。
But if you run in the right circles, all you have to do is ask.
但如果你跑在正确的圈子里，你所要做的就是问。
Kai Carlson-Wee is somewhere near the center of the right circles.
凯·卡尔森-维 (Kai Carlson-Wee) 位于右圈中心附近。
I first met him at Hippie Hill in San Francisco almost ten years ago.
大约十年前，我第一次见到他是在旧金山的嬉皮山。
A poet, Stegner fellow, and Stanford lecturer, Kai started riding freight in his twenties and had just published his first book, Rail , a kind of love letter to the open road.
凯是一位诗人、斯特格纳研究员和斯坦福大学讲师，他二十多岁时开始从事货运工作，刚刚出版了他的第一本书《铁路》，这是一封写给公路的情书。
“Part of the fun of reading the CCG,” he told me, “is imagining the riders who scouted the yards, rode the lines, and went through hell and high water to catalog everything …
“阅读 CCG 的乐趣之一是，”他告诉我，“想象一下骑手们勘查场地、骑行路线、历尽艰辛对一切进行分类……
Train Doc spent years riding trains around the country, taking notes, coordinating with other riders to keep things current.” New editions trickle out each year, photocopied in public libraries and private offices around the country to keep up with ever-changing train schedules.
火车医生花了数年时间在全国各地乘坐火车，做笔记，与其他乘客协调以保持最新状态。”每年都会有新版本推出，并在全国各地的公共图书馆和私人办公室复印，以跟上不断变化的火车时刻表。
On the first page, there’s a caveat—“Some info included is sure to be out of date and innaccurate (sic)”—followed by a warning: “Riding trains can be dangerous.”
第一页上有一条警告——“其中包含的一些信息肯定已经过时且不准确（原文如此）”——随后是警告：“乘坐火车可能很危险。”
For the average Joe, train hopping is an all-risk, no-reward activity.
对于普通人来说，跳火车是一种全风险、无回报的活动。
There’s the danger of arrest, obviously, but also of serious injury or death.
显然，存在被捕的危险，但也存在严重受伤或死亡的危险。
Stories of train track amputations are a common feature of local news stations everywhere.
火车轨道截肢的故事是各地当地新闻电台的共同特征。
Why toss the dice for the privilege of a slow trip on a jerking, whining, uninsulated slab of steel?
为什么要掷骰子来争取在一块抽搐、呜呜、不绝缘的钢板上缓慢行驶的特权呢？
As a kid who grew up reading Jack Kerouac and Jack London and listening to folk music, the answer was obvious.
作为一个读着杰克·凯鲁亚克和杰克·伦敦、听着民间音乐长大的孩子，答案是显而易见的。
I’d fantasized about riding freight since watching Into the Wild at thirteen.
自从十三岁观看《荒野生存》以来，我就一直幻想着乘坐货运飞机。
At twenty I got my first chance to try it.
二十岁时，我第一次有机会尝试。
I’d moved to New Orleans to write for a local magazine and stumbled onto the city’s transient underbelly by accident.
我搬到新奥尔良为当地一家杂志撰稿，并偶然发现了这座城市短暂的弱点。
Traveling buskers were everywhere, their hands black with soot and train grease.
街头艺人随处可见，他们的双手沾满烟灰和火车油脂。
From my backyard in the Saint Roch neighborhood, I could see packs of young people with banjos spilling out from the Oliver Yard in broad daylight.
在我位于圣罗克附近的后院，我可以看到一群拿着班卓琴的年轻人在光天化日之下从奥利弗院子里涌出来。
New Orleans is one of the country’s biggest hubs for illegal train hopping.
新奥尔良是美国最大的非法跳火车中心之一。
It’s the vagabond’s answer to the Denver Airport.
这是流浪者对丹佛机场的回答。
But it’s not just the visibly grimy or the voluntarily homeless who ride trains.
但乘坐火车的不仅仅是那些明显肮脏或自愿无家可归的人。
I soon learned that all three of my housemates—working artists buying groceries and paying rent—had at one point each had their own train-hopping experience.
我很快了解到，我的三个室友——购买杂货和支付房租的工作艺术家——都曾一度有过自己的跳火车经历。
I asked my then girlfriend if she’d consider hopping a train with me, but she wasn’t especially interested.
我问我当时的女朋友是否会考虑和我一起跳火车，但她并不是特别感兴趣。
She’d done it already.
她已经做到了。
On a walk by the levee one autumn day in 2015, I passed a crawling freight car and jogged beside it for a while.
2015年秋天的一天，我在大堤边散步时，经过一辆爬行的货车，在它旁边慢跑了一会儿。
I reached out and grabbed hold of the steel ladder and tested what it would feel like to pull myself up on the fly.
我伸手抓住钢梯，测试一下把自己拉上来是什么感觉。
I didn’t know where the train was going or how I’d get off.
我不知道火车要开往哪里，也不知道如何下车。
I didn’t even know what the penalty was for such a trespass (anywhere from three hundred dollars to ninety days in jail).
我什至不知道这种非法侵入会受到什么处罚（从三百美元到九十天监禁不等）。
After a hundred yards or so I let go and watched the last of the cars rumble away.
大约一百码后，我松开手，看着最后一辆汽车轰隆隆地开走。
It was my girlfriend who first told me about the Guide.
是我的女朋友第一个告诉我这本指南的。
That word, guide , seemed to promise so much.
指南这个词似乎承诺了很多。
I pictured a manual with step-by-step instructions, illustrations, tips and tricks.
我想象了一本包含分步说明、插图、提示和技巧的手册。
I sniffed around for it among my housemates, their guests, anyone under forty who rolled their own cigarettes and smelled unwashed.
我在我的室友、他们的客人以及任何四十岁以下自己卷烟、散发着未洗过的气味的人中四处嗅探。
The etiquette around giving and receiving the Guide is inconsistent, to say the least.
至少可以说，赠送和接受指南的礼仪是不一致的。
For some, it’s a commodity.
对于某些人来说，它是一种商品。
Among true believers, it’s a rite of passage.
对于真正的信徒来说，这是一个成人仪式。
Generally, the recipient raises their right hand and swears some kind of oath in which secrecy and discernment are common themes.
一般来说，接受者会举起右手，宣誓某种誓言，其中的共同主题是保密和洞察力。
They promise never to give it to children, cops, strangers, et cetera.
他们承诺永远不会将其交给儿童、警察、陌生人等。
To dispose of it by fire whenever possible.
尽可能用火进行处理。
Sometimes there are witnesses.
有时有证人。
The swearing-in ceremony typifies the central tension of the train-hopping community.
宣誓仪式代表了跳火车社区的核心紧张局势。
The irony of anarchists imposing a structure on the clutter of the information age is apparently lost on the propagators and protectors of the Guide.
《指南》的传播者和保护者显然没有意识到无政府主义者在信息时代的混乱中强加一种结构的讽刺意味。
These are people who preach the porousness of private property while guarding the gates of their church.
这些人一边宣扬私有财产的漏洞，一边守卫着教堂的大门。
Trespassing isn’t a sin to them, but copyright infringement is.
对他们来说，侵入并不是罪过，但侵犯版权才是罪过。
It’s a symptom of the kind of tribalism that permeates the corners of so many subcultures.
这是渗透到许多亚文化角落的部落主义的症状。
To spend any time on the relevant forums and discussion boards is to encounter a familiar brand of gatekeeping, mudslinging, and divisive rhetoric.
花任何时间在相关论坛和讨论板上都会遇到熟悉的把关、诽谤和分裂言论。
“YOU WILL NOT LEARN HOW TO HOP FREIGHT FROM THE FUCKING INTERNET!” reads an average response to a Redditor’s request for advice.
“你不会学会如何从该死的互联网上跳跃货运！”阅读对 Reddit 用户咨询请求的平均回复。
“I think you should find something else to write about,” another user warned me in a private message, claiming he and Train Doc were “connected in some ways.”
“我认为你应该找点别的东西来写，”另一位用户在私信中警告我，声称他和火车医生“在某些方面有联系”。
Many of these standoffish types identify as something of a victim group, an endangered community insulating itself from the brutality of a capitalist police state.
这些冷漠类型中的许多人被认为是受害者群体，是一个将自己与资本主义警察国家的暴行隔离开来的濒临灭绝的社区。
They’re modern-day outlaws, rebels without a cause, and everyone else is either a “housie” or an “oogle”—a square or a tourist.
他们是现代的不法之徒，无缘无故的反叛者，其他人要么是“Hosie”，要么是“oogle”——广场或游客。
I was undeniably both when I made the move out to the Pacific Northwest in 2016.
不可否认，当我 2016 年搬到太平洋西北地区时，我两者兼而有之。
I’d done my share of hitchhiking and van-dwelling by then, but my parents were paying off my student loans.
那时我已经完成了搭便车和住货车的任务，但我的父母正在偿还我的学生贷款。
I found work as a baker in Eugene, Oregon, and gave a friend $275 each month to rent out an insulated plywood shed in her backyard.
我在俄勒冈州尤金找到了一份面包师的工作，每月给一位朋友 275 美元，在她的后院租用一个隔热胶合板棚。
I took to walking the train tracks at night, learning the routes and schedules and watching the gutter punks scurry out noiselessly from under a bridge near the rail yard.
我开始在晚上在火车轨道上行走，了解路线和时刻表，并看着阴沟里的小混混们从铁路站场附近的一座桥下悄无声息地跑出来。
I even packed a sleeping bag once and spread it out on the bucket of a parked grainer—a train car with a small covered porch.
我什至还打包了一个睡袋，并将其铺在停放的谷物机的桶上——这是一辆带有小门廊的火车车厢。
I lay there in the dark for hours before stumbling home at first light.
我在黑暗中躺了几个小时，天刚亮就跌跌撞撞地回家了。
The train hissed and sputtered but never moved an inch.
火车发出嘶嘶声和溅射声，但一动不动。
When I relayed this latest disappointment to a friend, he finally pitied me enough to give me his copy of the Guide.
当我向一位朋友转达最近的失望之情时，他终于怜悯我，把他的指南送给了我。
He was a mid-thirties seasonal firefighter with a long blond mullet and a black canvas jacket he rubbed with beeswax to waterproof it.
他是一名三十几岁的季节性消防员，留着一头长长的金发鲻鱼，穿着一件用蜂蜡擦拭以防水的黑色帆布夹克。
He handed me a bundle of unbound pages.
他递给我一捆未装订的纸页。
No raising my right hand, no oath, no witnesses.
没有举起右手，没有宣誓，没有证人。
“I think you need it more,” he said, tossing the bundle in my lap.
“我认为你更需要它，”他说，把包裹扔到我的腿上。
Kai Carlson-Wee’s initiation looked much the same.
凯·卡尔森·维 (Kai Carlson-Wee) 的入会仪式看起来很相似。
It took him about a year to get a copy of a copy from a well-connected friend.
他花了大约一年的时间才从一位人脉广泛的朋友那里得到了一本。
“Reading through it for the first time was like gaining access to a sacred text,” he told me.
“第一次阅读它就像获得了一本神圣的文本，”他告诉我。
He kept it in a Ziploc bag and taped the pages back together when they ripped.
他把它放在一个密封袋里，并在撕破的时候用胶带将它们重新粘在一起。
For him, this marked an induction into a new world.
对他来说，这标志着进入了一个新世界。
He and his brother, Anders (also a train-hopping poet), had been eyeing the Northtown Yard in Minneapolis, a sprawling, seven-mile industrial zone along the Mississippi River, but the scale of the yard had made it unmanageable.
他和他的兄弟安德斯（也是一位跳火车的诗人）一直关注着明尼阿波利斯的诺斯敦工厂，这是密西西比河沿岸一个绵延七英里的工业区，但工厂的规模使其难以管理。
The Guide told them about “specific streets, specific jungles, specific holes in specific fences,” he told me.
他告诉我，指南告诉他们“特定的街道、特定的丛林、特定栅栏上的特定洞”。
“It helped us tremendously, especially the first few times.”
“这对我们帮助很大，尤其是前几次。”
I read on my stomach in bed that night.
那天晚上我趴在床上看书。
The train lingo was intimidating, but there were also surprising flashes of accessibility.
火车行话令人生畏，但也有令人惊讶的无障碍闪现。
“Rolando’s Diner is the only decent greasy cup of coffee left in this town,” reads an entry for Binghamton, New York.
“Rolando's Diner 是这个镇上唯一一家像样的油腻咖啡，”纽约宾厄姆顿的一篇文章中写道。
Another, for a remote outpost in Quebec, stumbles into philosophical territory.
另一个是在魁北克的一个偏远前哨基地，无意中进入了哲学领域。
“Does this place really exist?
“这个地方真的存在吗？
Is it really in Quebec …
真的是在魁北克吗...
or Labrador?
还是拉布拉多？
Can you get there from here?
你能从这里到那里吗？
A train-hopper’s existential dilemma.”
跳火车者的生存困境。”
The Guide signified more than information to me; it signified the courage to act on it.
该指南对我来说不仅仅意味着信息；它还对我来说意味着更多的信息。它意味着采取行动的勇气。
I knew that no guide, no matter how detailed or digestible, could substitute for experience.
我知道任何指南，无论多么详细或易于理解，都无法替代经验。
But I returned to it again and again over the following days, craving some conclusive invitation.
但在接下来的几天里，我一次又一次地回到这个问题上，渴望得到一些决定性的邀请。
A word, a sentence addressed directly to me.
一句话，一句话，都是直接对我说的。
It occurs to me now that maybe riding trains was never what I really wanted, that maybe it was always more about being someone who rode trains, but at the time it felt like an honest calling.
现在我意识到，也许乘坐火车从来都不是我真正想要的，也许更多的是成为一个乘坐火车的人，但当时感觉这是一个诚实的呼唤。
I hadn’t considered that those disclaimers at the start of the book (“This guide is not intended to encourage people to hop trains and is for informational purposes only”), those warnings online, the reluctance to give out the Guide—all of this was meant to keep people like me from doing something stupid.
我没有想到书开头的那些免责声明（“本指南无意鼓励人们跳火车，仅供参考”）、网上的那些警告、不愿分发指南——所有这一切都是为了防止像我这样的人做蠢事。
“The Crew Change Guide can save you a lot of frustration,” Kai told me, “but it can’t actually teach you what riding trains is about.
“《乘务员换班指南》可以让你避免很多挫败感，”凯告诉我，“但它实际上并不能教会你乘坐火车是什么。
If I had waited around for the clouds to part and the train gods to usher me into their secret cult, I would have never started riding trains.
如果我等待云散去，等待火车之神将我带入他们的秘密崇拜，我将永远不会开始乘坐火车。
Nothing could have reasonably prepared me.”
没有什么能让我做好合理的准备。”
I stuffed the pages between hardcovers in my bookshelf and planned to revisit them when the time was right.
我把这些书页塞进书架的精装书之间，并计划在适当的时候重新审视它们。
With work and holiday travel and my disintegrating relationship, I had enough on my plate.
由于工作和假期旅行以及我正在瓦解的关系，我的工作已经够多了。
I found myself avoiding the tracks on my nightly walks, took up motorcycle riding to get my thrills.
我发现自己在夜间散步时避开了轨道，开始骑摩托车来寻求刺激。
There was comfort in the thought that I had some forbidden knowledge.
想到我掌握了一些禁忌知识，我感到很安慰。
That I could use it to disappear at a moment’s notice.
我可以用它瞬间消失。
I never relinquished my desire to hop a train, I just stopped pursuing it.
我从未放弃跳火车的愿望，只是停止了追求。
These days the Guide’s value is largely nostalgic.
如今，该指南的价值很大程度上是怀旧的。
A souvenir of a short time—thirty years at best—when the printed word held disparate people together.
这是一段短暂时光（最多三十年）的纪念品，当时印刷的文字将不同的人们聚集在一起。
Train hoppers still exist.
火车漏斗仍然存在。
Many have migrated to niche forums and message boards to stay connected.
许多人已经迁移到利基论坛和留言板以保持联系。
Some even thrive as influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, where millions can watch their adventures from home.
有些人甚至在 YouTube、TikTok 和 Instagram 上成为有影响力的人，数百万人可以在家观看他们的冒险经历。
Kai suspects that, in the future, the Crew Change Guide will exist as a Google Doc or some kind of open-source document.
Kai 怀疑，未来《船员换班指南》将以 Google 文档或某种开源文档的形式存在。
Though there are still debates about the effects a widely accessible, digitalized Guide will have on the scene, the point is somewhat moot.
尽管对于广泛使用的数字化指南将产生的影响仍然存在争议，但这一点有些没有实际意义。
“The last time I was riding trains,” Kai told me, “everyone was using Google Maps.”
“上次我坐火车时，”凯告诉我，“每个人都在使用谷歌地图。”