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deprivation or test: a fast, a sweat lodge session, a night spent alone in the wilderness (or all three). Other elements might contribute to a state of altered consciousness—the burning of sweet grass, chanting, dancing, or drumming. It’s an opportunity for a young man to test his strength and courage, within the protective circle of a wider clan, in a ceremony that marks his coming of age in body, soul, and mind.
    (For many boys in western culture, I suppose the equivalent ritual is the march across a stage wearing a robe and a flat black hat to show their courage in the face of higher education.)
    In aboriginal cultures, a boy on the brink of manhood is in a liminal, threshold state, both precarious and profound. According to anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, there are three stages associated with liminality and rite of passage: separation from the community, transformation, and finally reintegration into society in a renewed role. For our city-bred, digital boys we seem to have finessed the separation stage. There is a tendency to treat them as a separate benighted species. But the transformative part remains elusive, and reintegration into society—i.e., growing up—is protracted, if not off the agenda entirely.
    The pencil marks on the wall keep inching upward as we track maturity. Twenty-five is not just the new 20; some social scientists, through a mysterious calibration, now put the onset of adulthood at 31. Neuroscience suggests that young brains aren’t really “cooked” until around age 25 (something to keep in mind when 14-year-olds smoke industrial-strength weed). Everyone’s lifespan has also increased, which spreads maturity across a wider arc. In short, youth lasts longer now. Sometimes it seems as if the entire culture is wearing its baseball cap backwards, at any age. (One hundred is the new two?)
    Instead of being a brief stage, for many young men the liminal state—being betwixt and between, at risk, on the cusp, un-launched— stretches over a period years. Our response often doesn’t help the situation; parents see the hallmarks of adolescence as flaws to be fixed, not as a process unfolding. Rather than accepting this period of doubt and confusion as part of growing up and learning courage, we ride them to get it together. Their response is to retreat further inside the treehouse of adolescence, where we aren’t welcome. Which is fine with us. Boys will be boys. Separation from society is just what we expect from them.
    Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2003 17:11
Subject: Hello from Chiapas
    Here are a few exciting facts from Mexico . . .
    Buses come in all shapes and sorts. Most have something at the front for good luck, like the Virgin of Guadalupe, Jesus, a saint maybe or Bob Marley. Whatever gets you down the road. The chocolate is great here. The markets are also great. Every imaginable cow part. Live chickens and pigs on leashes. Mounds of grasshoppers. It’s all about the flesh and blood around here.
    And, Family. People are so sad that I have no brothers or sisters. Just yesterday, riding with a family in the back of their pickup, one of the kids asked me if I was married, if I had kids, and was rather worried that I wasn’t and didn’t . . .
    Well,maybe he had to go all the way to Mexico to get some good news about family life. I was sorry he had to have his epiphanies by himself, on the fly, but he didn’t seem to mind being on his own.
    Although the rite of passage experience traditionally unfolds in the company of the older generation, it clears a space for a boy to venture down into himself, and to encounter himself alone. It’s a chance for a boy to flex his autonomy within the respectful embrace of his clan, and another way of being on the road—a form of vertical travel.
    For many men, joining the military or going off to war is the closest they will come to a rite of passage that lets them bond with other men and test their