Sleeping is illegal
Nothing is free, nothing is allowed, if someone doesn't profit. On the freedom to sleep under the stars, lead a self-determined life, and what that even means.
While planning my thru-hike across Austria and over the Alps, one problem quickly became apparent: sleeping. Sure, there’s an endless array of mountain huts and guest houses, but those do not, at all, conform with the intentions I’ll be setting out with: freedom, solitude, and wilderness (also, spending as little money as possible).
In Austria, and most of Europe for that matter, wild camping, i.e. sleeping in the meager remains of what, with only great imagination and goodwill, can be called ‘the wild,’ is illegal. In the US, the situation is similar: wild camping is generally forbidden, but allowed on (certain, not all) public lands ‘including national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, and some state and local parklands.’ However, ‘most of the wild camping areas have a 14-day maximum stay policy in any given 28-day period, and your next site will need to be 25 miles away from your last one.’ Local restrictions can be much harsher than that, and most of the US is private property, anyway.
Sleeping without a roof over your head is illegal in most countries of the world. Many nations enforce these laws with harsh prison sentences and/or monetary fines. In the Austrian state of Tyrol, for example (one of the five states I’ll be passing through on my journey) sleeping outside can be penalized with fines of up to €14,500.
Why?
No man’s land is someone’s land
Official arguments against wild camping are superficially founded in ‘environmental concerns’ and ‘wildlife protection.’ This, however, in most cases, can only be interpreted as a meager excuse with the goal of obstructing the underlying ideology. The same officials that rant against ‘irresponsible campers’ see no problem with the destruction of entire swaths of land for industry, roads, infrastructure, tourism, and property, as well as the annihilation of entire ecosystems.
Instead of railing against the system that allows and proliferates those things, they direct their resentment toward the few adventurers and wilderness-seekers that, having no other choice, conglomerate on what is left of nature. Yes, there are some problems with that, too, and I do not deny those, but the issue begins somewhere else entirely.
The Austrian state of Tyrol, for example, despite being largely comprised of inaccessible mountains, forbids wild camping and sleeping outside entirely. The reason is not some hazy notion of environmental protection, but, much more down-to-earth, profit. Tourism, the hotel and service industry, is Tyrol’s main economic player, influencing and defining state policy. They don’t want you to sleep outside and feed yourself with cheap grocery store ramen; no, they want you to sleep in hotels, eat in restaurants, and ski on the mountain ranges they’ve paved over with slopes.
Private property forms a fundamental feature of exploitative capitalism as we know it. Its ‘holiness’ is instilled from a very young age and enforced by incredibly bloated state apparatuses known as ‘police’ and ‘military.’ The protection of the upper classes’ wealth is the main reason these exist in the first place, and this notion still constitutes the state instruments’ main task.
This quickly becomes apparent whenever industrial or commercial property is threatened by public dissent, as in German Lützerath in January this year, when climate protestors clashed with police near a coal mine.
Police will always, always, guard the property of corporations, no matter the social harm they exhibit. Every policeman and policewoman on this planet swears, when joining the force, that they’ll uphold the nation’s laws — all the nation’s laws — unquestionably and with religious, fascistoid devotion. The fact that many of those laws are products of corporate lobbying, intended to enrich individuals, and that they cause de-facto-irreversible social and environmental harm, is of no matter.
A large portion of this planet’s land mass is privately owned, either by corporations or individuals. While the philosophy, history, and underlying mechanisms of the ‘private property delusion’ are complex matters, filling books and archives (check out David Graeber’s and Jason Hickel’s works) and best left for a great series of essays, let us briefly point out some of its consequences here.
Freedom lost, obey the rules
If there is one theme, one recurring topic, to all my writing then it’s freedom.
It is my strong opinion that we live in the most constrained society in the long history of humankind. David Graeber and David Wengrow point this out in excruciating detail and analysis in their monumental rewriting of human history, ‘The Dawn of Everything’ — a book everyone should read at least once.
Under capitalism, there is, in principle, one way, and one way only, you’re supposed to live: selling your time and body to others. The only thing that, in spirit, differentiates an office worker from a slave (not to downplay the disgusting horrors inflicted by slavery, historically and ongoing), is the fact that the modern worker can choose their ‘owner’ and that he/she is provided with the illusion that, with hard work and unquestionable subjugation to what we call a ‘career,’ i.e. the American Dream, he/she can escape this prison. Very few ever do.
I wrote about work under late-stage capitalism and useless jobs in more detail here:
More on our (occasionally golden) cage here:
Back to sleeping. Sleeping is illegal, yeah, except under very specific circumstances, i.e. you either own or rent the land where you sleep (or in other words: you satisfy the legal demands imposed by institutions) or are granted temporary permission to sleep on public land.
Public land, by itself, is a misnomer, as that land is owned by the government and subject to heavy regulation. This is not to be confused with free land, which hardly exists anymore.
Finding freedom, perhaps, and escaping
Is there any escape? Is there any possibility of leaving the rat race, the 9-to-5 prison, the hollowness of society, the lies and propaganda, the endless wars, the artificiality of experience, the destruction of everything?
Well, it’s difficult — it’s supposed to be — and not many can do it.
Recently, I came upon a fascinating Twitter/X thread by a person called Adirondacker (@shagbark_hick on Twitter/X and
here on Substack), a self-declared vagabond and adventurer (I’ll ignore his political convictions for our purposes here, and focus on the matter at hand). In the comprehensive thread, he describes life as a homeless man, how and where he sleeps at night, and the challenges and beauties of the wild life.Because Elon Musk is an idiot, Twitter/X doesn’t allow embeds on Substack. Check out the thread here.
Adirondacker, or Randy, talks about social norms, vagrancy laws, vigilante landowners, defending himself, cops, and how to avoid detection and prison. He also observes:
And: “I got hooked on my circumstances oscillating me between socializing with others often and periods of isolation lasting for weeks. The slow burn of settled life is still, nearly 5 years later, extremely difficult for me to experience. Makes it hard to connect with others.”
There’s many parallels to be drawn between Adirondacker and well-known society escapees such as Chris McCandless, also known as Alexander Supertramp, or Everett Ruess. There’s much to be said about their likes — people criticizing their irresponsibility, selfishness (no one profits from a vagrant), naiveté, overly romantic worldviews, and so on — yet the fact remains that these men have experienced life to a degree most of us can only dream of.
I’m not arguing that anyone should follow in their footsteps (McCandless died in the end, as you may know), but I am convinced that in an age where most of us feel numb, depressed, or burned out, there is something to be learned here. I, for that matter, thought about these things intensely — studying the works of Henry David Thoreau, Jack London, and the likes — on my solitary journey over the Alps. Perhaps I’ll see you somewhere down the line, outside.
I’m author, writer, and activist Antonio Melonio, the creator of Beneath the Pavement. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack or over on Patreon. It’s the best way to support Beneath the Pavement and help me put out more and higher-quality content.
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It seems we pay for a relative appearance of safety and life of convenience with the most precious thing we have been given: our one and only life.
A good friend of mine that I met on the GR20 in Corsica last summer is nearing completion of a three-year hike through all of western Europe's major mountain ranges. He mostly sleeps wild. He doesn't have all that much to say along the way, but I do expect at some point he'll write a book about this truly EPIC experience.
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