Supertramp Goes Global: How One Man’s Alaskan Death Wish Became the Planet’s Favorite Midlife Crisis

The Ballad of the Global Supertramp: How One Man’s Train-Hopping Became the World’s Favorite Escape Fantasy

PARIS—In a century when passports are biometric, borders are militarized, and your phone rats out your location every 3.7 seconds, the word “supertramp” has staged an unlikely comeback. Originally the surname of one Richard Davies—better known to his probation officer as Roger—who dropped out of polite society in 1990 and ended up decomposing in an Alaskan bus, it has since metastasized into a universal shorthand for every bored barista in Brisbane who fantasizes about quitting Wi-Fi and becoming a philosophical hobo. The planet, it seems, can’t decide whether it wants to deport these people or elect them.

The international appeal is obvious: if your country is on fire, underwater, or merely governed by one of the 247 populist cousins currently squatting in various palaces, the idea of “Into the Wild” cosplay is catnip. South Koreans call such runaways “kimchi cowboys”; Brazilians prefer “mochileiro de alma suja” (literally “backpacker of dirty soul”). In Germany, where even rebellion comes with paperwork, they’ve coined “Büroflüchtling”—office refugee—because nothing says freedom like precise compound nouns.

Meanwhile, the global economy has obligingly turned vagrancy into a supply-chain issue. A one-way flight from Lisbon to Bangkok costs less than a decent divorce, and the eSIM in your burner phone will keep pinging towers from Tbilisi to Tierra del Fuego. The modern supertramp doesn’t hitchhike; he collects airline status miles like Pokémon badges, then posts sunset selfies captioned “#blessed” from the same McDonald’s Wi-Fi in every time zone. Capitalism, ever helpful, now sells $400 “distressed” backpacks pre-ripped by Vietnamese teenagers so you can cosplay poverty without actually experiencing it.

Climate change adds its own punch line. When the Mediterranean becomes a bathtub and the Arctic a cruise destination, the supertramp’s traditional route—north until the map runs out—starts looking less like rebellion and more like following the herd. Alaska’s infamous Bus 142 was airlifted out in 2020 because too many pilgrims were getting airlifted in. Authorities cited “public safety,” which is bureaucratese for “idiots keep Instagramming themselves to death.” The bus now sits in a museum, presumably charging admission so future supertramps can pay to imagine not paying for anything.

The geopolitics are equally farcical. Nations that spent decades fortifying borders against migrants now market “digital nomad visas” to lure exactly the same demographic, minus the desperation. Croatia will let you stay a year if you promise to spend your crypto-gains on overpriced espresso; Barbados offers a “Welcome Stamp” for anyone who can prove they once used Slack unironically. The message is clear: if you’re poor, you’re an invasion; if you’re merely disaffected and middle-class, you’re a growth sector.

And yet the archetype persists because it scratches an itch older than passports: the suspicion that civilization is a Ponzi scheme and the only winning move is to forfeit. From Huck Finn lighting out for the Territory to Gen-Z TikTokers “van-lifing” across Patagonia, the supertramp is the West’s secular monk—except instead of illuminating manuscripts he live-streams his breakdown over spotty 4G. The rest of the world watches with a mixture of envy and schadenfreude, like seeing your richest friend discover minimalism by throwing away other people’s stuff.

The cruel punch line, of course, is that true escape is impossible; the algorithm follows you even into off-grid communes, and the bus in the wilderness ends up on TripAdvisor. Every supertramp eventually learns the same lesson McCandless did, albeit usually without the fatal fungi: you can delete your apps, but you can’t uninstall capitalism. The planet is a closed loop, and the only frontier left is interior—which, let’s face it, has terrible Wi-Fi.

So the next time you see a sunburned pilgrim strumming “Wonderwall” outside a Prague hostel, spare a thought for the international supertramp: a walking metaphor for our collective desire to log off, set on fire, and start again—preferably somewhere with better lighting for the ’gram. He won’t find enlightenment, but he might find content, and in 2024 that’s close enough to paradise to trend.