Children, Youth and Environments 17(4), 2007 The Child Who Would Be Caged Peter H. Kahn, Jr. University of Washington Citation: Kahn, Peter H., Jr. (2007). “The Child Who Would Be Caged.” Children, Youth and Environments 17(4): 255-266. On the road in and out of the local town it’s hard for me to pass up hitchhikers. One night, leaving town toward my cabin, I’m about four miles out the dirt road in a winter rain storm and my headlights shine on a guy walking the road with no bundle and barely a jacket and he turns around and sticks out his thumb, which got me nervous but what could I do. Another car might not be on this road all night. I pick him up. He says he’s heading to Oregon. It would take me six hours to drive to Oregon. I keep conversation calm as can be. An hour later I drop him off near an empty barn, and tell him he can find shelter from the rain there. I give him some food. I live a mile away but I don’t tell him that. I found out a week later that a murder had been committed in town that evening and that they hadn’t found the murderer. Perhaps I had. I picked up two people last week. One person was Thomas. He hopped in right outside his trailer three miles from town, heading into the gas station to get a new battery for his Volkswagen Bug. Lived in the valley all his life. Indian. I mentioned I came to the area when I was 16, and he asked where I lived and I told him, and he smiled and said he knew it well, that his ancestors had lived in that area. My cabin is on what had been Indian land. How could it not be? That’s the entire country. The U.S. Army came in the 1800s, a big battalion, and camped on our land’s main meadow, about 40 acres, and used it as their base as they rounded up Indians from tens of miles around to put them on a reservation. White homesteaders settled. Thomas talked with a bit of a slur. Seemed like he had been drinking that morning. He talked about the “Green Rush” around these here parts. I wasn’t quite sure I was hearing right. He said he spent the last ten years in jail. I heard that right. I tensed a bit but tried not to show it. Had something to do with the Green Rush, he said, and big money to be had, and then I figured that had something to do with plants that could be sold and smoked. We drove past a new building on their reservation: a casino. There’s money to be had there, too, but I guess one’s legal and one’s not, though I’d have a hard time explaining why that’s the case. I asked Thomas how long he’d been out of jail. He said a couple of years. His face came alive, eyes sparkling. He said he loved his freedom. The other person I picked up was a young fellow hitchhiking down from Olympia, The Child Who Would Be Caged 256 Washington and heading to a spot on the river that he had been to once before. He wanted to get into photo journalism, said “how hard could it be, man, to take pictures; it would be great to get paid for that.” He talked about how free he felt here in Mendocino County. Wants to sit by the river and smoke a few. Said, “People are cool here; they let you be free; I’d even light up a joint in the Jack-inthe -Box.” I dropped him off at his spot on the river. He said, “Thanks Brother. Smoke one for me, you hear?” Freedom means different things to different people. It meant something else to the Jews in the story of Exodus. According to Rachel Remen (2000)—actually, according to her grandfather who was explaining the story to Rachel when she was a child—Moses sought to...