Coastal Travelers

How the Coastal Travelers got their name is lost to history though their presence is not lost to history. If one takes the trouble to read the almanacs and diaries of farmers and sages from a century or two ago, one will discover that the Coastal Travelers are featured now and then in various essays and stories.   For many years, authorities sought to discover where home was for the travelers. The only thing that was learned is that the travelers don't understand the meaning of home in the way that most Autaugans do. Most of us think of home as the place we reside, or perhaps the place we were born and plan to return to some day.   Travelers insist that wherever they are, that is home. Their stubbornness on this front has caused some landowners frustration and has landed some travelers in the town jail for a short period of time. Since most jails don't hold more than a couple of prisoners, the result is that the city or town must pay for the traveler's stint in jail while the rest of his group or family remains in the location until their loved one is returned. When town or city leaders realized it was a mistake to jail someone for parking caravans and camping on public or private land, they changed their policy and when a landowner or citizen complained about Travelers, authorities tried instead, to calm the complainant and ease their fears.   In spite of mild conflicts between landowners or farmers and the Travelers, the Travelers are sought after for services and goods. Travelers have made winemaking into an art. As they travel about the country, they try different types of berries and fruits to make their next batch of wine with. While some are annoyed by a group of 25 to 30 people camping nearby for 3 weeks at a time, it is also true that many people are eager to see the Travelers arrive in their town (or the outskirts of it). The Traveler's reputation for wine making is so well known that it's not unusual to overhear someone in a tavern house say, "But did you get a chance to try the '84 blackberry?"   But making wine is only one facet of goods and services the Travelers offer. At the bottom of many complaints over the years by landowners is that the Travelers don't work. Hardworking farmers find the idea distasteful. But the Travelers actually do work. They like to tinker with things. In appearance, the Travelers appear to be idle. They sit around their campfires in the midst of the circle of caravans all day, then drink, dance, and sing at night. But the tinkering that the Travelers do has given them the ability to not only create things out of old disused items, but also to repair things. Farmers have finally begun to come around to the view that Travelers can be a boon. They will repair farm machinery for next to nothing. They also pick up discarded objects that are broken or no longer needed and tinker and make something new out of the old.   There is a true contradiction in the public's reaction to travelers camping nearby. Even the most irritated farmer will ask for help with his farm machinery while muttering under his breath about how it's terrible to see all those idle people living the good life traveling for free.   Anthropologist Kayfrum Steelheart has made the study of the Coastal Travelers his life's work. The man has written extensively about them. Steelheart states as a preface to his main work on the Travelers that every Anthropologist seeks to be as unbiased as possible but that readers should note that no person can be completely unbiased no matter how hard they try.   When Steelheart approached a group of travelers and drank with them, he was polite and respectful and didn't ask them where they came from. Instead, he spent a night around their campfire and on waking the next morning, asked to speak to the leader of the group.   The Caravan leader, seemingly, the elder of the group, known in the book only as Kai, listened as Steelheart made a heartfelt appeal, rather a request and explained his reasons for the quest. He explained that he felt the Coastal Travelers were unfairly treated by the public at large because the public knew so little about them. He, Steelheart, would like to know more about how they lived and that once he could convey his findings to the public at large, it would, perhaps, have the effect of "normalizing" the travelers. Steelheart said that the public viewed the travelers as outsiders, others, foreign and exotic. He maintained that that view led to an intolerance of the Travelers.   After a long conversation that Steelheart hints involved his drinking certain amounts of the Travelers' wine and making what he thought might be a contract with one of the many young women in the group, Steelheart was welcomed to the group. He then traveled with the group, living as they did, for two years.   Steelheart's research if one can call it that, did provide a great deal of information though after reading the book, the reader may come away feeling that Steelheart became more and more biased over time.  

Travelers don't choose not to bathe regularly, they want to smell good and be clean just as much as anybody else but they don't have regular access to water in which to bathe. Whenever it is possible, the group will park their caravans close to a pond, a small lake or even a small stream. None of the group I traveled with knew how to swim so they were very cautious around water.   Moreover, they consider bodies of water to be sacred and when they drink from or bathe in a body of water, many rituals must take place. After the bath, for example, the entire group drinks a great deal of their seemingly endless supply of wine while dancing in a circle holding hands in the nude. The first time I joined in the ritual, I felt very awkward and embarrassed but soon grew to enjoy the freedom of the dance.

Steelheart writes that the Travelers are a matrilineal society. People often mistake the meaning of matrilineal for matriarchal. Matrilineal is a term applied to kinship. Who one thinks of as family. In a matrilineal society, one is related to the female's family, ie., her parents, siblings, and so on. If I were born a traveler, I would recognize the people on my mother's side of the familial unit as my family.   While it would be interesting to think that the females of the society then controlled the currency, that thinking would be wrong. The female's brothers or uncles control any wealth that the family owns.   According to Steelheart's reporting, the Travelers abide by certain implicit rules; rules that nobody explicitly tells you are rules but you know nonetheless. He states that there are very few explicit rules but that perhaps more were given once he, a non traveler, joined the group.   Steelheart confirmed that the travelers are somewhat hedonistic. They live for drinking and dancing but he has stated that contrary to popular belief, the travelers are not thieves. He posits that their thievery is confined to using someone's property to stay a while, and that teenagers are known to milk the odd cow now and then for milk.   During his travels with the Travelers, he learned that it is indeed true that the travelers leave a mess behind them when they leave but goes on to explain that they don't leave trash behind, they only leave the traces of their encampment. Where once was a green meadow, once the travelers have spent 3 weeks living there, only bare dirt or mud remain. The travelers explain that nature will take care of it. They call it part of the great cycle.   They believe that there is a great cycle of life and death and equate it to spring and winter.   They do love to dance and sing and they love their children fiercely. Unlike more traditional people, they don't think of their children as future workers.  

Children are treasured above everything else in Traveler society. Don't get the wrong idea; Travelers don't coddle their children or try to confine them, they let them explore and the children follow the implicit rule of being home (the camp) by nightfall.

Steelheart states that it is not evident to the untrained eye which child belongs to which parent because every adult in the caravan treats the children as their own.   Perhaps the most interesting thing that Steelheart learned about the travelers during his two years of living with them, is that they enjoy making things.  

Travelers love music, dancing, and drinking but they are inventors at heart. While traveling, the entire caravan may be ordered to stop while someone gets out and picks up an odd broken piece of machinery, farm equipment or household item that has been thrown out. I've seen a musical instrument fashioned from an old broken rake for example. One woman shaped an old piece of metal into a cup that would fit onto the end of her finger so that when she sews, she won't prick her finger.

  The Travelers contend that making something new out of something old and discarded is part of the cycle of life and have dubbed what they do with such items re-cycle. They believe it is, again, part of the great cycle of life, as in winter and spring. The old unwanted or broken item is Winter and when they fashion it into something new and desirable, it is like Spring.   Steelheart theorizes that the Travelers equate home with the people they are currently with instead of a building that stays in one place. He believes that if people understand that the Travelers aren't truly disruptive to their own way of living, they will fear them less and may even make a few friends.   In the last few years, it appears that the Coastal Travelers are becoming not only accepted but welcomed when they arrive near a village or town. Townsfolk seek them out to buy unusual and often time-saving devices that are re-cycle.