Ride Before Protest: The Good Red Road
Saturday morning, before heading out to protest the multitude of signs directing this country down the wrong path, there was plenty of time to grind out a couple laps Out There, keeping primarily, though not entirely to the roads. It got me to wondering how many people who ride Out There today can recall a time when all we had were those dirt roads, before the trail gnomes got busy with their shovels and pick axes, their pruners and their saws. All that work of theirs opened up a lot of that hidden, quiet middle ground that, when i wanted to explore, required me to stop pedaling, drop my bike and go out on foot. When you think about it everything around us is a small piece of an immense story. Those "new" trails, some of which probably make their lines along deer tracks, curve around and through a landscape like a tongue that helps to vocalize the vowels and consonants that make up the words of a story. They criss-cross old watercourses, descend and climb out of basins whose purpose is to replenish groundwater, they skirt and sometimes rise over old infrastructure meant to tame a once wild stream, and redirect its waters for other uses. The trails pass within feet of places where deer would bed down at night, maybe even during the heat of the day, they skirt the locations of the dens of coyote, and they slice through expanses of sage, buckwheat and other less obvious plants, sources of food, medicine and ceremonial purposes to people who were here thousands of years before our tires spun through. Most people are probably just there to ride, or run. Truth is, that is the sole reason i ride through there most of the time; when you're ready though, there is more Out There than the pursuit of another personal best, another day of training.
one of the good red roads
streams a flowing
neon glow
three musketeers
up on a distant hillside
iridescent
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