An American Pilgrim: Some Reflections on High Plains Drifter

In the past few weeks, I have been thinking about my book High Plains Drifter: A Hitchhiking Journey Across America. I know that it was God’s will for me to write this book. It was God’s will that High Plains Drifter was published, even though it was published by a self publishing company. It will be interesting to see how the Lord uses this book and how it will influence the people who have read it.

At one time in my life, reading the classics in literature was a passion. High Plains Drifter is not literary, so I have wondered why the Lord wanted it published. But I shouldn’t be judging my book through a literary lens. The New York Times Book Review may not think highly of my book, but the Lord may think it an inspiring, worthwhile testimony. There are some literary classics that really have no value in the Judaeo-Christian world view. The reprobate mind is not the mind of Christ; worldliness is not to be found in the Kingdom of Heaven; blindness is the opposite of prophetic vision.

Then the Lord gave me this Scripture: “the Lord chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” I really believe this verse describes High Plains Drifter best. This book is not meant to entertain; it is not a how-to book on hitchhiking. It is a book to draw people onto the narrow path of obedience to the Lord. High Plains Drifter would not be considered dense writing (i.e., lots of details, much time spent working on the text). Watchman Nee’s classic The Spiritual Man and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov would be considered dense writing.

I wrote the book very fast: 200 pages in 10 days were written in longhand back in January/February of 2000. I really didn’t want to write High Plains Drifter—I wrote it in spite of myself. Back in 1999, I was on the road for probably eight months. During that time, people kept telling me that I should write a book about my hitchhiking travels. I kept telling them, no, I didn’t want to write a book. Finally, in January of 2000, I was hitchhiking in Texas and I ducked into this convenience store to get something to eat. I talked with this young lady who was working the cash register. She could see that I was hitchhiking, so she told me that she wanted to read my book someday. She was speaking words of faith; I believe the Lord was using her.

High Plains Drifter is autobiographical; it is about hitchhiking, the people I meet on the road and my Christian faith. It is a fast read (120 pages). But mostly, I believe that High Plains Drifter is not unlike the jawbone of an ass: it doesn’t look like much at first glance, but it will help destroy satanic strongholds in the long run. I know that Satan hates High Plains Drifter. A couple of nights before it was accepted for publication (August 2008), I was attacked by a demon while I was sleeping in my tent. The attack was so real and so painful that I thought my ribcage was broken. Later, in December 2008, I was attacked by a demon the week it was published. Somehow High Plains Drifter is a threat to Satan’s kingdom; it is symbolic of the intercessory work that I do for the Lord. If the Lord is in a work, it will grow stronger and become more influential over time.

Time is nothing; the timelessness of the Gospel is everything. Some people are drifters, some people read about drifters and some people don’t care for drifters. Inspiration sometimes comes from the quiet lives of wandering, broken vessels. It is the narrow road that leads to God. American highways were meant for pilgrims.

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Dreams from the LORD 2003-2006
7 March 2005

I have also been burning my High Plains Drifter: A Hitchhiking Journey Across America and Dreams from the Lord and Journal onto these mini-CDs (210 MB). When I am hitchhiking around the country, somebody invariably says something like: “Hey, Tim, you should write a book about your travels.” So if they have access to a computer, I can give them a copy of my book on a CD. The typescript of High Plains Drifter (160 pages) weighed about one pound, so it is nice not to carry any extra weight in my backpack.

2 August 2006

About a week ago, I hitchhiked from Jackson through Salmon, Idaho to just south of Darby, Montana where I slept in a barn. Walking out of Tetonia, Idaho, this guy picked me up--he had picked me up before in 2001 or 2002. I had given him my typescript High Plains Drifter when he first picked me up and he said he really enjoyed it. He gave it to his wife and she liked it, also. So when he dropped me off near Sugar City, I gave him a copy of my CD so he could read my other book.

Dreams from the LORD 2007-2010
16 August 2007

A few nights ago, I had a dream where I saw this man sitting alone in a church pew. He told me that he didn’t like my book High Plains Drifter. After he said that, I couldn’t hear him anymore. He talked and talked, but I couldn’t hear him; it looked like he was talking to himself or talking into the air. There was no one else in the church. He seemed very agitated.

I believe I know the meaning of this dream. The man sitting in the church pew either did not like my book, High Plains Drifter, or he did not like my life of obedience to the Lord, i.e. hitchhiking all over the United States, living a life of intercessory prayer, being a prophet and living on the fringes of society (this is what High Plains Drifter represents). The man sitting in the church pew represents church people in general. Some church people don’t like my work of obeying the Lord and taking out satanic strongholds [or else they don’t understand; sometimes people fear or hate that which they don’t understand].

12 August 2008

Last night I had a dream where I was in this office. There was this bookcase and there were files and books in the bookcase. As I was leaving the office, I noticed my two books, High Plains Drifter and Dreams from the Lord, in the bookcase. I pulled Dreams from the Lord out from some files, looked at it briefly and then sandwiched it back between some files. For some reason, I believe that office had something to do with a public relations firm.

1 August 2009

Last night I had a dream where I saw President Ronald Reagan. He was playing a guitar and looked very old. It looked like he had been out of the White House for several years. President Reagan was surrounded by many people—they looked like reporters.

President Reagan saw me, smiled at me and walked over to where I was standing. We spoke for a short while.

Then this woman walked up to me; she looked like a reporter. We talked for a while. I told her that I had a book published. She said that she had heard of it and told me the title of a book. It was the wrong title. I told her my book was High Plains Drifter. I found a piece of paper, folded it in two and began writing High Plains Drifter: A Hitchhiking Journey Across America. I was writing with an old-fashioned fountain pen—the ink dripped onto the paper in a couple of places. I was almost finished writing the title of my book when the dream ended.

A Book Review for High Plains Drifter