The other night over dinner some 50-somethings were telling some 20-somethings what it was like to stand by the side of the road and stick out your thumb.

I had started the discussion by saying (even though I knew it was impossible), "Wouldn't it be nice if the high gas prices brought back hitchhiking?"

And then those of us who once traveled through the kindness of strangers told the others, who couldn't imagine such a thing, what it was like. Waiting and wondering when the next ride would come. How far it would take you. Whom you would meet.

We talked about the interesting encounters, the fascinating conversations, the way that hitchhiking connected people in a way that doesn't always happen today. Because it often involved people of different generations (usually the young and the not so) and economic backgrounds (those with wheels and those without).

It all sounded incredible to the 20-somethings, and even a little, now, to us. And then I realized the greatest thing that had been lost, greater than the sense of adventure and the feeling of connection: trust.

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