>>3592559[quote]Every stop I make, I make a new friend,
Can’t stay for long, just turn around and I’m gone again[/quote]
In addition to Hobo’s friend-making ability that led to a neverending parade of character actors, Canadian and otherwise, appearing in guest spots on the show, this couplet also describes his Batman-like ability to disappear mysteriously once his task was finished. In the very first episode, Park Ranger Ray Caldwell describes the Hobo as having vanished “the same way he came – in a cloud of smoke.”
In ancient Egypt, Anubis was the dog-headed God of mummification and the dead, whom he guided on their way to the afterlife. Admit to yourself that it is possible that the Hobo was a modern Canadian animal-deity that was sent to our realm to aid the desperate in their time of need.
[quote]Down this road that never seems to end
Where new adventure lies just around the bend[/quote]
Again, the song doesn’t describe a long road, but a road that never seems to end. There is no sense here that the Littlest Hobo’s journey is finite. He’s not making his way to a finish line. He doesn’t even have a starting point. He’s just destined to walk this mythical neverending road from crisis to crisis, setting right to that which is wrong, for all eternity. A sad, lonely life for most regular people. But regular people Hobo was not (for many reasons, primarily because he was a dog). He embraced his nomadic lifestyle and turned what could have been a Sisyphean curse into a blessing for each and every one of us.
[quote]Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on[/quote]
The chorus might as well have been scribbled somewhere in the pages of Rust Cohle’s giant ledger. After all, how would 4th dimensional beings viewing the Hobo’s activities from the comfort of their vantage point in nonlinear timespace perceive what was happening? A dog (or something more) on a ceaseless march towards an ambiguous possible ending, chasing a tomorrow that never comes, reborn time and time again to repeat the cycle of discovery, aid, and departure. Why, it would almost look like a circle. A flat circle. We’re through the looking glass here, people.
