Mule

I was laying in my tent, alone, in the Sierras and something outside woke me in the middle of the night. I’m not sure what the initial noise was, but as I lay there I could hear something shuffling around my campsite. It was cold out that night, so I had my rain fly on to trap heat in the tent, thus I couldn’t see what was out there. The noise came closer to my tent and I began to worry.

I didn’t have any food with me. I had tied it into a tree before I went to bed. So I wasn’t sure what, whatever was out there, it was looking for. Strangely, I wasn’t worried about it being a bear or a mountain lion. I was really afraid that it might be a wild pig. Not that a bear or a lion couldn’t seriously hurt me (or kill me), but they are normally pretty wary of humans and head in the opposite direction when humans are around. Pigs, on the other hand, are volatile and dangerous. A spooked pig is just as likely to charge as it is to flee. The idea of being trampled and gored because I farted and startled the pig was more than enough to pucker my bung hole shut.

The shuffling got closer, the anxiety ratcheted up a few notches, and then a nose pushed up against my tent. There was just enough ambient light outside that I could make out the shape of a bear’s head through my rain fly. Relieved, I waited till the bear finished his sniffing and wandered off. I promptly went back to bed because I was exhausted from a long day of cycling through the Sierras.

When I tell people this story they almost always ask the same question: “Weren’t you afraid to be alone with that bear around?”

I’m never sure how to answer that question. What would another person have done to make the situation any different? Seriously, if the bear (or pig or lion) had attacked me, what would another person being there have changed. Aside from being able to memorialize my screams as an attack progressed (“He sure did sob and cry a lot as it went on. Kind of a humiliating way to go, really.”), I can’t see what another person would have done to make it a better situation. It’s not like we could have comforted each other (“Pssst, Mike, this sure is scary with that animal creeping around outside. Whatever you do, don’t spook it. It might be a pig and then we’re fucked.”). No, a companion would have made no difference. I was exposed, in nature, to a pig-bear-lion and no amount of other people would have changed that dynamic. If anything, they would have detracted from it.

That question about being alone with the pig-bear-lion is a companion to  the other question I get constantly while out touring. After seeing the bike loaded with gear, and asking where I am coming from and where I am going, the next question is invariably “Are you doing this alone?”

That question is normally asked with such a level of disbelief that you would think I was doing something physically impossible (“Why yes, I often grow these wings and fly around the country.”). People are mystified by the idea of solo travel. They can’t seem to wrap their mind around the desire to be alone for long periods of time.

I guess this reaction isn’t surprising given the present state of humanity. We have engineered a world that makes it nearly impossible to pull back, separate from the storm of stimuli, and contemplate the simple act of being. We exist in a torrent of information that never ceases. From the instant we wake until we go to bed watching TV, there isn’t a moment set aside for reflection.

While this new age of technology and information has brought wonders, it has also robbed us of something fundamental—the ability to be alone. Most people now are not capable of being by themselves. To be alone is to enter into a dialogue with yourself. To sit with your existence and examine it. To confront the issues that lurk at the edges of your consciousness—talking to you in the liminal zone between waking and sleep. And THAT is something we are no longer equipped to do.

Iphones, laptops, TVs, podcasts, streaming services, ipads, newspapers, jobs, and the like are just some of the things we use to distract ourselves from our interior landscape. As media evolve and delivery devices abound it takes greater and greater effort to avoid them. Additionally, modern life is lived at full throttle. It is packed from morning to night. There are 30 hours of activities that need to be done for every 24 hours in the day.

The net result of this lifestyle is that while we are amazing multi-taskers, we have allowed the muscles of contemplation to atrophy. We haven’t had a chance to develop the tools we need to have a rich inner life. We are like sharks, we cannot stop moving because if we do we must confront ourselves and that is the one person we are not ready to be alone with.

I was once tricked (it’s a long story) into doing a 36-day silent retreat based on an ancient religious text. I didn’t know it was going to be silent. If I had I wouldn’t have gone. I would have gotten out of it somehow. But I showed up and, after learning it was in silence, I did it. I was lucky in that I had an amazing Spiritual Director for the experience and I had just gotten a degree in religion. I had a guide and some context for what I was going through, but even with that it was touch and go for a while there. I literally thought I was going insane for a good portion of the retreat.

The net result of the retreat, after the madness subsided and the bitterness of being tricked went away, was that I became comfortable with being alone. I grappled with some pretty big demons that came crawling out of my subconscious and, rather than scarring me, it taught me more about who I am. I ended up meeting someone, myself, and learned to be at ease in his presence.

That is why I prefer to tour alone. Time spent on the bike, on back country roads, with the smell of hardwood forests in my nose and early summer sunshine on my face, in silence, is what I think heaven must be like. I often stop on little bridges or in beautiful meadows and open up to the experience. No one is there to comment. Nor can I comment to someone else. I am talking to my soul. And it is responding. We marvel in where we are, how we got there, and what a perfect moment we are experiencing. We haven’t found loneliness, we have found solitude.

I often have a silly grin on my face most of the day. Like I am in on some inside joke. And I am. The joke is that I am there and all it took was to push past the fear of being alone. Sure, there are scary moments. There is the occasional pig-bear-lion. When your fears become palpable. But even that is made special by solitude. In solitude you can confront your fear rather than wrapping it in distraction and turning it loose on your unconscious. You learn what frightens you (being mauled) and why (agonizing death). You recognize it and put it into context.

So, yes, to answer their question, I do these trips alone. When I was young I couldn’t have imagined doing them alone. I was too terrified of the idea. Now, after my silent retreat, I can’t imagine doing them with someone. It would be too distracting. For me, the road passing underneath my wheels is like the river flowing past Siddhartha. It rolls the world past me and imprints it on my experience. It tells me tales about people and places, but I have to listen. The road doesn’t shout, it whispers. Alone, in solitude, I can experience those tales. They aren’t heard with the ears, but felt with the soul.

Until you learn to be comfortable with yourself solitude is not possible. You are not alone, you are just lonely. I encourage you to start pulling back from things. Disconnect. Find time to sit in silence and start that conversation with yourself. There is a world inside of you that is bigger, more interesting, and infinitely more rewarding than anything our hyper-stimulated society can throw at you, but it doesn’t turn on like a TV set or iPad. It is a world you develop in dialogue with yourself. But once you enter it, it grows with every step. The journey isn’t easy, but it is ultimately the most rewarding journey you will ever take, because only by turning inward do you truly open yourself to the world outside.

I’ve been thinking about stuff.

It is not surprising, really. I have a gross abundance of time to contemplate things. No matter the relative magnitude or triviality of something, I am rich with time to squander on thinking about it.

I have pondered the meaning of my existence. Why am I here and what it means. Why do I have value and what does real satisfaction mean. I have also pondered less important matters. Like why is it that the more “white trashy” a front yard looks the greater the chance that an angry dog will come shooting out from behind a lawn couch to attack me. And, why also is it that the more “white trashy” that yard the person’s response to you nearly being bitten by their dog is to be angry at you for upsetting their mongrel’s afternoon nap. I swear, I have had people in real nice neighborhoods apologize if their dog even barks at me, but pull a couple of teeth off that person, slap on a couple of knuckle and neck tattoos, and put most of his furniture in the front yard and his response is to flip me the bird and say “Git the fuck outta here! ‘Fore I let ‘im bite ya.”

Ahhhh… M’erica.

But what I have been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about is the rough edges of life. Those times when expectation does not meet reality. It has become a topic of thought because so often on this trip I have turned to go down a road to find that road no longer exists or pulled over only to find my campground under 15 feet of water.

When you are rolling through an area of the country you have never seen before and your map and google tell you to head down a road that doesn’t exist anymore, expectation has a Come-to-Jesus moment with reality. Or, after biking 90 miles you find that you have no place to stay, there is a jarring realization that what you want is not what you are going to get. What got my mind wandering down this path was a chance encounter I had with an ACA fully-supported bike tour on the Natchez Trace.

Tours, at least mine, are planned in the loosest sense of the word. Meaning, I generally have a timeframe, a direction, and, normally, an endpoint. Though that last one is a moving target for me. My tours seem to evolve as I get deeper into the road. What seemed like a good path and goal changes as I meet people and hear about things, AMAZING THINGS, down the road if I just keep pedaling some more. In fact, I am so bad at planning that if the place I stay at in the evening is the place I intended to stay at when I started the day I feel like Hannibal crossing the Alps.

That is why the time I spent with the ACA tour was so thought provoking for me.

As I rode with their tour leader he explained how the tours work. They (the ACA—Adventure Cycling Association) plan the route, arrange all the stopping places, carry all their gear, have chairs and drinks waiting for them when they finish, cook dinner, breakfast, and lunch, explain what the next day will looks like (both terrain and riding conditions), go over the map with them, have the van ride ahead to smooth any wrinkles in the day, and have someone ride sweep to make sure no one gets lost or breaks down. All you have to do it get up, enjoy a beautiful day riding in the sun, roll into camp, drink a few beers, eat a nice meal (they had beef stroganoff and NY cheesecake the night I stayed with them), and retire to their tents to get some rest for another awesome ride the next day.

I’ll have to say, it was very, very compelling. None of their riders ever wondered “Where the fuck is the road?” Because their tour leaders knew the route from the start, had checked it right before they took the riders on it, and had a van go ahead just in case there was any problem that arose that day. They never once had to say to themselves “Hmmmmm, it is pitch black out, I am exhausted, and I have no idea where I am going to sleep tonight.” Plus, their meals don’t consist of peanut butter, honey, and tortillas or tuna and pretzels.

No, they got up to fresh, French press coffee, yogurt and berries, cereal, and cinnamon buns. They took off, without gear, secure in the knowledge that they were on the right route, going to a place that still existed, and that if anything happened there was someone behind them to help them out.

Yes, it was all so attractive.

But then, was it really?

I pondered this while I rode (sometimes fantasizing that there would be chairs, beers, beef stroganoff and cheesecake waiting for me that night). It made me ask a basic question: Why am I doing this? Seems like a dumb question to ask hundreds of miles into my trip, but it kept working itself into my head as I thought about those ACA tourists.

It is a question that I get asked a lot. I have been asked it on previous tours. I thought I knew the answer before I started, but now I am not so sure. What the ACA tourists were doing should have been the ultimate realization of my biking dreams. But something about it made me hesitant. Not only did I not want to do an organized tour, I was looking forward to my solitude after the single night I spent with them.

But an answer began to form in my head as I stood in a Piggly Wiggly in Rosedale, MS. Cold, wet, and exhausted, I had just spent the day riding into a brutal headwind, getting rained on, only to learn the campground I was shooting for had been bulldozed a few years ago. I was trying to find something to eat and to warm up before I got back on the road to go looking for a place to sleep for the night.

As I stood in the bread aisle, a little glassy-eyed, I heard, in a very thick Southern drawl, “You the biker I passed coming from Greenville?” I turned to see Will.

Will was a man that was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, wearing a Mississippi State button-up shirt, and was in his 70’s. I nodded and said yes. And Will said “We’re you gonna’ spend the night?”

Within a minute Will had invited me to his house, where he had a friend from high school and his wife staying with him because they were flooded out of their home. We put my bike and trailer into Will’s truck and drove through Rosedale, getting the guided tour from a native, and then up to Will’s beautiful old home (one that had belonged to his grandfather). Dinner was white beans and cornbread, whiskey and wine were poured generously, and breakfast was biscuits and sausage. Will and his friend were born and bred Southern gentlemen. They told me about the town, the Delta, farming, the soil, the culture, and their lives. I spent the night so thoroughly entertained by these two men and by a corner of the US I had never been to before that it passed like a good dream—quick, elusive but vibrant, and utterly engaging.

No, I didn’t have beef stroganoff. No, when I got to the Piggly Wiggly there wasn’t a chair and a cold beer waiting for me. And, no, I didn’t know where I would end up sleeping when I started the day. But, instead, I met Will. I learned about a town and its people. I spent a day with its history. I got an experience that will forever be part of my soul.

So maybe I don’t do these tours for the reasons I thought I did. If all I really wanted was a day of exercise without hassles I could ride my bike on its trainer and sleep in my own bed. No, I want something else. I want to meet Will or camp in a bayou compound in the middle of the Atchafalaya Swamp. I don’t want walls, cable TV, and electric lights. I want thunderstorms and sunny days. I want lonely country roads and crazy city streets. I want to share an empty state park with one other camper—a civil war history buff who tells me all about the history of the park and the area. I want the unexpected.

We do all we can to control our circumstances. We spend the vast majority of our lives seeking stability only to complain that our lives have become routine. The desire for adventure is still there, but we have become frightened by it. So instead, we want everything to go as we envision it. We want adventure, but only the adventure we have planned. We want a cheesecake and coffee tour. We want to know where we are going and what is going to be there when we arrive. We want reality to meet our expectations.

But that isn’t why I tour. I tour because I am not imaginative enough to expect a Will. I tour because the real world is so many times more interesting than the one I can plan. I leave my home and my predictable life because the world is filled with swamp compounds, Southern gentlemen, civil war buffs, and flooded roads. It is a story that unfolds itself before you, but only if you break free of the planning, release from the control, and experience life with all its rough edges. We need to stop trying to regulate the world and instead embrace the majesty of imperfection. Once we do we might just find that it is a thousand times better than anything we could have planned.

8 days into the tour…  now that’s a biker tan!

I can hear it.

Over the clamor of daily life…    louder than the voices in my head that counsel restraint and diligence (which, to be honest, have never been too loud)… it is the Siren’s call.

The road…

What is out there?

What haven’t I seen?

What am I missing?

Is that GREENER grass I see?

Ohhh, damn, you succubus, you got me again.

The final shakedown ride has been done. My gear is packed and loaded. I am seeing a friend tomorrow and then I am off on another tour.

This one will be up the Mississippi River Trail from New Orleans to Lake Itasca in Northern Minnesota. Then, I hope to go to both Voyageurs National Park and Isle Royale National Park. From there it will into Canada and around the northern side of Lake Superior and then down through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Wisconsin, and ending in Chicago.

As with all my tours, I am excited and nervous. Wish me luck, and if you can’t come along on the actual tour, you can join along on this blog.

Visit my previous tour blog at: https://scottandrewparkinson.wordpress.com/

Here is the general route I plan on taking for the start of this tour. Nothing is set in stone. Weather and whims, being what they are, can always alter everything.

But for now, this is my intention.

You broke camp before sunrise.

You’re alone on your bike.

The sun slowly breaks over the desert. The wind caresses you. The air is crisp and chill. The smell of desert sage and mesquite drift on the breeze. The light is perfectly balanced with the desert dew to create an almost sacred brilliance. The only sound is your wheels meeting the ground beneath you. The harmony of tire meeting earth in total stillness generates the Cosmic Om.  That primal melody pulls you into the present, pushing your senses away from their ego-centric mission, transforming them. They have turned outward. They no longer exist to bring the world to you, but rather to share your consciousness with existence. For an instant, you belong…  

This achingly pure moment is transient…  it doesn’t last…  it cannot last…  but the memory does. It becomes etched onto your soul. It is now as much a part of who you are as your name or your childhood. For in that moment, you touched eternity and it changed you. It is these rare moments that keep pulling me to the Road.

Bike touring in a contemplative endeavor. There are reasons why we can have such powerful experiences. Why they are so vivid and indelible. It is because, at a fundamental level, the very nature of bike touring manifests the path of the mystic and—whether we know it or not—we are on it.

Every tourist has the heart of an ascetic—a turn from the physical world to search for something more substantial. We leave our possessions behind, stripped down to only what we need to survive, and venture into the world bare. The gaudy baubles we have decorated our lives with are cast aside. Instead, we ask the world the to provide both the beauty and the sustenance. We understand there will be times of discomfort, even pain, but that is part of the experience. There is a sense of liberation that comes with this lifestyle. There is a simplicity that marks the tourist. It is near impossible to explain to someone who is focused on acquiring more material goods why this renunciation is so freeing. Someone who needs a luxury car or expensive jewelry will never know the simple joy of finding a sink to wash his riding clothes in or the profound pleasure of a level, dry spot to sleep. He still measures himself by what he owns; the tourist by what he does not.

Additionally, as tourists we have grappled with humility. Or, more correctly, loss of ego. The road takes the measure of every person and in the end we are all found wanting. Every tourist has had THAT day.  It can be any one of a thousand things—physical exhaustion, sickness, fear, disorientation, hunger, thirst—but regardless the tool of instruction, the lesson is the same: we learn we are not bigger than nature. We do not impose our will on it. We know that to be hubris. One night in a tent in a thunderstorm and we know our place in nature. Yes, we understand humility.

We also share the mystic’s journey. We are each a pilgrim and every tour a pilgrimage. What we seek, I cannot know; but that we seek, I am sure. The very purpose of a tour, its fundamental essence, is exploration. The mystic’s questing purpose finds companion in our spirit.

In many of us there is an unarticulated angst that is driving our wandering. Often we don’t know THAT we are seeking, much less WHY. We grapple with an inchoate urge. This need for something else, but what. What is it we want from the road?

 Put simply, we seek to belong. And in that we have engaged in a spiritual endeavor. Our journey may not be traditional, but the path is the same. We are following an ancient urge to ground ourselves in reality. We are 21^st century mystics searching for meaning in a complicated world.

“Wander a whole summer if you can…time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.” –John Muir

I spent the day noodling around New Orleans on my bike just soaking up the sun. I had coffee and beignets in the Park and then rode to the river through the neighborhoods.

Everyone I saw was smiling and waved. As most people toiled in their offices, missing a once in a lifetime spring day, we were the happy spirits free to roam. The city is in bloom and smells like azaleas and freedom.

As my wheels crunched the gravel on old city streets, my spirits danced with the spring breezes, and my mind wandered to my next tour.

The road kept whispering about our upcoming adventures. The bike was pulling me to leave today. Mustang Sally is like that—she doesn’t like being off tour. She has the wild spirit of her name. And the river wanted me to know it would be a wonderful companion.

Such a day. I hope all of you have countless days like today. I did nothing and I did everything.

As I get ready for bed, my skin has a slight glow from a day in the sun, my dreams are of shady bike paths and lonely country roads, and Mustang Sally is in the other room plotting our escape.

Good night.