A man, his bike, and dogs: a journey of change
Everyone has a story. They are all different and personal, none of them more important to this world than another. Over the years, I have been entrusted by many to tell their stories. It is always my honor. This is Jacob Erwin’s story. A journey of change, discovery, and healing.
Jacob was living in Mississippi, but eventually moved to the Chicago area three years ago, joining other family members there. But life was not happy for Jacob. He had an all to familiar struggle with addiction.
“I'm 34. So, before I got on the bike, before I started my drifting around, I was a drug addict for years. Probably about five years of amphetamine use and abuse in the end. I just got tired of it and couldn't live that way anymore, and couldn't kill myself, either. So, I decided I had to do something really drastic. For some reason, I just wanted to go on a pilgrimage. Just go across the country to the place I was born, Tacoma, Washington, was the original plan. That's where I was in my life,” said Jacob.
He said before his pilgrimage, he was pretty much just a nobody, at least that’s how he felt. Not really a good person to be around, not really good for anybody to be around. At the time of his active addiction, Jacob said he was trying to escape something, not sure exactly what he was trying to get away from, he chose drugs as the escape. “Well, I started when I was 15. I started doing pills and then I got addicted to cocaine at the same age. So, cocaine was off and on for years, but I really didn't let it destroy me too badly. I guess, I mean, of course it did destroy me, but it was nothing compared to when I started using amphetamines. I was using them up until almost six years ago. November 2018 was the last time I used amphetamines. It was not an easy feat.”
In November of 2018, Jacob “tried the dying part”. “I tried to kill myself. I barricaded myself in my sister's room with her husband's gun. I drank a bunch of his whiskey, got s**t faced, and was just gonna end it all. I tried. I put the barrel under my chin and pulled my head back as I pulled the trigger. The bullet went right past my head.” After his thankfully failed attempt to take his own life, Jacob said he looked down to see a kitten at his feet looking up at him. It was just him and the kitten in the room. “I didn't know it was in the room with me. He had these like, deformed paws, and he's just looking up at me like, why are you, what's the matter, and he just wanted to cuddle. And that's probably what kept me from trying it again. So, I just picked up the kitten, laid down, and cuddled it until the police came and took me to jail.”
Making up his mind to take action on his pilgrimage, Jacob set out on his bike with his dog Dingo, pulling a small cart resembling a covered wagon from the 18th century. Jacob didn’t have much; a pop-up tent, a little battery, camera, sleeping bag, the clothes on his back, and a bag of personal items. “Dingo, he's been with me going on eight years now. So, he's been with me through the addiction, through the time I was in jail staying at my parents’ place. Then, when I got out, me and him just started adventuring. He's been on the road with me ever since. He's been at least 1000 miles with me on the road, hiking and biking (Growing his own pack, as Jacob calls it, Dingo now has two sons named Panda and Delta).”
Jacob set out from Chicago land and headed North into Wisconsin. With no defined plan or route to get to Tacoma, he just would meander his way there, seeing the country and healing himself spiritually from years of turmoil and pain. He rode as far as the Driftless area and stopped. “It took me two months to get up here. I took my time. I didn't go fast, and I just kind of went wherever I felt like. There wasn't no hurry to get anywhere, that's for sure. When I got up here, obviously it's called the Driftless area, so I thought to myself, like maybe I should drift less,” he said with a serious face.
Where in the Driftless did he end up? Viroqua, Wisconsin, and has been there going on two years. “Then, I met a girl,” he said with a big smile. “Her name is Elise. She was the first person to greet me when I came into Viroqua. She stopped, saw the sign on my cart that had my YouTube address on it, and asked about who I was, about my YouTube channel, and what I was doing around here. We just hit it off from the very beginning. I fell in love with her, and her kids accept me as much as any kids could accept their mom’s boyfriend. They are really great kids. I also fell in love with her voice, she likes to sing. Now I'm kind of on this next phase of my journey.”
Still moving around the Viroqua area and homeless, Jacob has the goal of not being homeless now. Although originally, he liked the freedom of being homeless. “I'm trying to be not homeless now and pull myself out of the pit of homelessness. I find it a real challenge to do that. Well, the biggest part of that challenge is getting over the mental illness that comes with homelessness, because it can lead to severe depression. People sleeping in a house while you're sleeping in a tent, sometimes it gets to you.”
Jacob was quick to point out that the community of Viroqua has treated him great. “This is a very close-knit community,” he said. Although at times he admits to asking for help via charitable handouts, Jacob has put his long-time skills to work to support himself. “I have a problem where I don't work well for other people. I don't do well being an employee. But I'm finding around here, that I can actually do my own thing and be my own boss, and people will hire me and help me out in a lot of different ways. When I got here, all I had was a bike, dog, and some camping stuff. Now, I've got pretty much any tool you can think of as far as like construction and carpentry goes.” Jacob accredits his carpentry skills and knowledge to his father who owned a construction business and a drywall business that he grew up in. His father starting teaching him when he was 11-years-old.
“The second problem I found around here is there's not enough housing. And what little housing there is, they don't they allow pets and want references. I've been homeless now for six years and before that, I really didn't rent that much and I rented from my parents. I don't really have references so that's the other challenge.”
I found Jacob on Facebook in a group I belong to. I came across one of Jacob’s posts, and for the most part the comments on that particular post were positive. I read one post where a person had commented that they felt Jacob’s being homeless was a choice, and that he should not look for hand outs (of course I’m paraphrasing). That comment is what piqued my curiosity into who is Jacob Erwin, and what is his story? I needed to know more. “Well, he's totally correct, um, to some degree. That comment kind of hurt my feelings. You know, my decisions did lead me to being homeless. And actually, when I started my YouTube channel, I decided that I was going to be homeless. I read a part in the Bible that says, ‘though the foxes and birds of the air might have their dens and their nests, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’. I was just like, really deep into this Jesus thing. Why was Jesus doing this? What's this all about, what is he talking about? And I was obsessed with it and it led me to doing like a spiritual journey, just getting away from everything and going on a pilgrimage. Having nowhere to lay my head, that was a choice that I made, that I was going to be homeless for a while. I don't want to be homeless anymore. Now I’m working my ass off. I work seven, eight hours a day, five or six days a week and it's so difficult to make ends meet. So yeah, that's why it does hurt my feelings because you know, it's not like I'm just sitting around my thumb up my a** looking for a handout.”
Jacob shared that every time he wanted to give up, he would think to himself, screw it, I'm just gonna sell everything and go back on the road. But in the end, that made no sense to him after all his hard work he has accomplished establishing a reputation in the community as a trusted and independent worker. “It doesn't make sense because I've got so much stuff but it's not enough to mean anything. If I were to sell it off and go on the road, well, I couldn't do crap and I wouldn't be able to make much money.”
I asked Jacob about others he has seen looking for some help in the community, and he quickly pointed out a recent event that took place at a large retailer in Viroqua where a woman was asking for any kind help at the entrance drive. “I was bullied a lot when I was younger, and I mean a lot! And so now if I see somebody getting bullied around, especially by the corporate, you know, the corporations, I try to stand up for them. I don't like it! There was this lady, she came from Mexico, she had a family. They were living in this little camper, this crappy little camper, and she had three daughters. They were just trying to make some money so they could probably put gas in that thing and get down the road and eat for the night, you know, and find someplace to stay. Having a camper, it costs a lot of money. You can't just like park it on the side of the road or you'll get ticketed. So, you have to find places that don’t do that. It just really disturbed me that they wouldn't let her ask for some money right there, to feed her family. It's kind of bogus to me.”
“I've done a lot of panhandling, and you know, you don't get mad at somebody if they can't help you. If they can't help you, they can't help you. If they can help you, then Great! It's not like you're asking for a lot, you know, spare change. You know, you got 13 cents that you didn't use at the store, spare change here and there, that adds up between all the people. Basically, you might not really notice that 13 cents or 25 cents or whatever, that dollar that you gave, but that person who you gave that spare change to, they will notice it. Nobody wants to stand on the corner and ask for money, it sucks. I mean, I've been in that situation, but I've only done it because I had to. No matter how much someone does it, you don't get used to it. You still feel like a bum, you're still looking for a different way. I know there are some people out there that exploit others, but maybe they have something wrong with them and need help to change. They're not destroying the world.” They are human beings (no, that is not a part of the quote).
As for the future, Jacob said he doesn’t plan that far ahead. “Let it come as it comes, and try to be humble about what it is. Humility is a good thing. You know, humble yourself and be exalted. I try to not get too carried away in my own wants and needs. Right now, it's kind of about my girlfriend and her kids, and doing right by her family.”
Follow Jacob Erwin on Facebook and visit his YouTube channel called Son of Man-Tree of Life. Scroll down after the photo gallery to watch his YouTube channel trailer.
