The 3 Scariest Encounters of My Life

Julien McLaren
10 min readAug 6, 2021
Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash

I’m happy to say that the vast majority of my life has been peaceful and relatively easy-going. Many people consider travelling to be dangerous. Sure, there are elements of danger and risk — but not nearly so much as some people imagine.

I remember before I went to India, sitting with my mom and her friend. Her friend urged my brother and me not to go to India because of tensions with Pakistan. She was sure that war was imminent and possibly even the use of nuclear warheads. Honestly, I laughed. India has almost always had tensions with Pakistan, and a nuclear war was preposterous. Of course, no war happened while we were abroad, but it goes to show the fear surrounding travel.

Whenever I tell anyone about my experiences hitchhiking, I usually get the same sort of response — people who commend me for my adventurous bravery, people who think it’s stupid and dangerous, and other hitchhikers who know what it’s like. I don’t necessarily condone hitchhiking. There is especially a stigma for it in America, which is understandable. Bad shit has happened — but mostly to hitchhikers rather than the driver. But what I would say is that I’ve never had anything particularly bad happen to me while hitchhiking. Almost everyone who picked me up was nice and charitable. One incidence, though, was scary.

1. Hitchhiking through America

Back in 2012 or so, I was hitchhiking with my brother in October. We had nothing more than our clothes and sleeping bags. We planned to get to Mexico from Canada. We lived right next to the border, so we packed our bags and walked across. We didn’t have much luck hitching rides, and the nights were cold. After a few days, we were still in Washington. On one particularly cold night, with my brother and me in the same sleeping bag to keep warm, we decided to turn back. We walked all night until we finally caught a ride early the next day.

Haste was our priority. We wanted to get home as quickly as possible. We continued hitchhiking all day and into the night. Now, it’s important to note that we were both sleep-deprived and not in our most sound minds.

Introducing Rocco

Somehow we had more luck catching rides in the middle of the night than in the day. Though the…

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Julien McLaren

A Canadian writer sharing his life experiences and lessons learned. Traveller, musician, fitness enthusiast.