Minnesota Memory

They grow up out of the loamy soil and fill the car. Uncles, now old or gone, are young again, and I hear their voices. They stand with a beer in hand and laugh with their brothers. They don't notice a younger me watching, absorbing, imitating. They talk work and things but stay away from feelings, from talk about love, from fears of what might come next. So-and-so got a new boat; and that new Impala, the '65, has a curvy shape, a wing over the the rear wheel. They say the 350 is the best ever. But there is more going on between the lines. I can see how they love each other but hold back while they lean into the time they have together. There have been wars, a brother lost to alcohol. They are bound to each other. I want to know how to do this thing they are doing, this being a man, so I watch closely. I am nine years old. Their voices fill the car as I drive past the rolling, verdant, fecund hills and waters of Minnesota. This is my homeland, my roots, and the voices are everywhere. I worry that I have not lived up to the job given to me by these men of my past. I worry that somehow I have failed to become the kind of man I was supposed to be. I shake my head and the voices fade back into the ground. I am here, watching and listening and trying to fill out this body that is now much older than they were, back then, showing me how it was done.

Joy Looks Like

Packing up a wet tent as a prayer of gratitude for shelter from the rain. Arriving at a destination you didn't know you had. Finding what you didn't know you were looking for. Seeing pomegranate tea as the color of blood and finding in it a comfort from the cold. Seeing what is right there in front of you and not wanting it to be anything other than what it is. Loving the sound of the word "Lolo." Finding eleven dollars rolled up in the grass on the side of the road. Watching eyes open wide when someone sees what you are doing because that person has been where you are now. Tasting the first sip of a cold beer after a long, hot climb while hearing music that makes you want to sing along. Seeing the bleached bones of a deer and knowing that someday you too will lay that burden down and feeling no fear. Watching emerald water slide over stones that have traveled down to the river from the tops of mountains and knowing the truth of what you will never understand much less be able to say. Saying hello to a friend that you have never met but who has eyes that you fall into. Entering a stretch of road that offers no help while showering you with beauty. Extra black beans on a steaming burrito. Standing up for a break from a butt so sore you wince at the price you pay for pedaling into a future so rich you almost forget the pain.

Oxbow

Although only eight-thirty in the morning, the sun heats the pavement as swarms of flies hang over the road. There are clouds of them, down here by the river, that I ride through, careful not get one stuck in my eye. I took a wrong turn already and wasted precious strength climbing over a hill that led to a long road into Hell's Canyon, a beautiful place, but not where I am headed. I am on the right road now, the one that climbs first over the Oxbow Dam, then the Brownlee Dam, and finally up the long haul out of the Snake River Canyon that will lead to lunch in Cambridge, Idaho, many miles above.

 

The rivers here are bloodlines, oases, green fingers surrounded by high desert. The hills are so steep they defy any sense of angles of repose. Looking at them, I expect all of the high ground to come sliding down in a tawny massive mess, but they hold firm. Oxbow hosts river rafters, fishermen (and women), speed-boaters, and many others seeking recreation, mostly with some form of motor. 

Oxbow has been a lesson in accommodation. No longer can one just show up at a campground with hopes of registering for tent camping or overflow. Now, one has to reserve a space on-line, navigate the web, plan far in advance. The campground is run by the electric utility company that also runs the hydro-electric generators in the dams. It is all business.

Luckily, some other cyclists had done this and were willing to share the small tent site with extra vagabonds.

Here, space is tight, and the grass is coifed to a crew-cut, and watered daily. Most of the campground is filled with monster RVs, some with cars in tow. They have more stuff stacked up outside under shade and rain structures: refrigerators, TVs, crates of beer, folding chairs, and on and on.

I pitch my little tent right next to the road on a sliver of grass just big enough to hold my sleeping body. Then I share what food I have with some of the other cyclists, many of them "through-riders," riders who are going all the way across the country. They are tough, seasoned, wind-dried. I like them and their stories. Like me, they started touring in the 70s. Unlike me, they did not take a thirty-year hiatus. Unlike me, they likely don't have cramps at night, their quadriceps knotting into a skein from the long climbs of an eighty mile day.

I am the newbie now, the newbie again.

We drink some tequila and talk about the great rivers of the Northwest: the Snake, the Salmon, the biggest of them all,the one that swallows everything flowing west, the Columbia. All of them are our passageways, our meandering companions. And we leave them all at some point to move away from their westward flow.

So today, here, this morning I climb after following the great Snake, out of the depths, and onto the desert ridge, heading east.

Independence Day -- Hamilton, Montana

These are my friends this morning, a day marking the potential woven into independence. They are my comforts when the day yawns, cool with dew, in front of me: my stove and pot full of hot water, my goochie-ultra-extravagant titanium cup, my orange steed ready to carry me down the road, the tent that keeps the rain and bugs outside when I nod off into utter vulnerability in these strange places. There is also the stainless steel water bottle I found in a dumpster, my cushy sleeping pad that carries the weight of my dreams without complaint. Yes, my socks are cold from walking through tall grass wet with morning, and my eyes are those of an old man -- bleary, sunken with age, too little sleep, all but blind to things up close, but sharp still to all that is far away -- but I sit with all these friends while birds sing and the road waits. I do not know what I will see today, who I will meet. All of that is mystery that can only be revealed by the courage to stand, gather my belongings, and move into the unknown. It helps to have friends who say I will help you; you can do this, even if you feel the cold wind of solitude, the driven rain of exposure to the surprise and possibility of traveling alone with friends.