Frontier

When I finally got moving out of Cedar City, I was faced with one of the longest, steepest climbs of my entire trip. My energy was returning... I had been in a bit of a stupor, maybe even a touch of depression, but it started to shake and slide off of me as I got moving.

Whenever I have to do a really big climb, I prepare myself with a hefty dose of acceptance. I keep telling myself that the climb isn't going to end... so there's no point in taking a million breaks, complaining, or focusing too much on how slow I'm going. Mostly, this helps, and I drop down into my granny gears and forget where I am, let the burn do it's thing, and lose myself in my thoughts.

The climb started out easier then I expected. There were long stretches at maybe 5 or 6 percent grade, which at this point I can climb fairly readily. When the grade jumped up to a 7 or 8, I really started to feel it. Around that same time, the air cooled, and I realized I was quickly heading from the warmth of the desert, up to the snow line.

The rocks rose up around the road in stunning displays, first red, and eventually a bleached tan color. The snow appeared on the road as I pushed through a 2 mile area with slide warnings. The little patches of snow were packed up at the side of the road, holding on against the melt as if they had been there forever. I didn't stop for the entire two miles, partly because the slide warning signs said not to, and partly because the warnings gave me a psychological trick to keep me from taking breaks.

At the end of the slide zone, three climbers were top-rope climbing on a perfect rock face up above the road. They were within easy walking distance, and I almost considered asking if I could ride their rope... but the climb stayed me. I needed to hold on to all of my energy... besides, I didn't have the right shoes.

The trees came in and it started to feel cold. The bright sun-lit red rock disappeared, leaving me in a damp ponderosa forest, patches of melting snow all along the road. It wasn't the most inspiring of rides, and my energy was fading quickly. I hit a state campground after 14 miles of climbing, and I called it a day.

The campground was mostly covered in snow, but I was able to work my way into a site. I was feeling depleted, and setting up camp felt like a chore. I found a perfectly shaped stick for raising my food bag up into a tree to protect it from animals, and hung the bag 15 feet up over a small broken branch. It was only 4pm when I climbed into bed.

I was feeling a little sick that night, and a little lonely. I couldn't imagine how I would make another 7 miles of climbing the next day... it seemed impossible. I couldn't understand why my energy was so low, and it worried me a little. I sat up late writing, struck by an incredible sadness. In the middle of my reverie, I picked up my phone and re-read a poem that my friend Seneca had sent to me back in Berkeley.

Kindness -Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Reading this, in the state I was in, shattered my heaviness. I cried for a moment, feeling relieved, and feeling my heart open. I remembered that I set out on this journey to challenge myself spiritually as well as physically. I wrote a sad little blues on my tiny old guitar, and fell asleep sated.

It rained all night, sounding like fire where it hit my tent... or like sparklers on the fourth of July. I usually love the sound of the rain, but the hissing and fizzing against my tent was disquieting, and I slept awkwardly, waking on and off with a start.

In the morning, after sleeping for what seemed like forever, I woke still exhausted. I packed up slowly, as if I were carrying a great weight, and nearly fell over as I pushed my bike up onto the road. I got sick in the woods... nothing terrible, just a sick stomach. I realized at this point that the elevation was taking it's toll on my body.

I had climbed to around 8,500 feet, and the day ahead demanded that I climb up to around 9,600. I set out on the road and could barely move at all. I had a little breakdown. Then I met a little kindness.

A car, containing three teenagers on a day trip, came by and they asked if I needed help. I thanked them, but said that what I needed was a truck, because the help I needed involved getting me over the top of the hill. Then the boy driving had a ridiculous idea.

"Let me ride the bike, and she can drive my car!"
"Um... you do realize how hard it is to get up this hill, right?"
"Let me try... Go on ahead in the car and I'll meet up with you guys."

I was too tired to argue, and too disoriented to realize how completely flawed his plan was. I jumped into the car, nearly crying for relief, and watched the boy on my bike behind us, spinning the wheels way too fast, telling me that he had no idea what he had just gotten himself into.

The girls in the car however, were thrilled. The one in the passnger seat tells her friend:

"I can't believe he let you drive! He just met you!"

The 16 year old at the wheel was psyched to be driving in the mountains. She had come on the trip to support the other girl who didn't want to go hiking alone with the boy. I smiled at this, girls looking out for each other, but I stayed pretty quiet in the backseat. My hands were trembling and my stomach unsettled. Elevation sickness had hit me, and I couldn't ignore it anymore. I felt terrible.

The girls decided to drive ahead all the way to Duck Creek. I explained to them that Duck Creek was a days bike ride away, but they seemed happy just to drive, and weren't paying too much mind to the fact that their friend was miles back on my bicycle. I started to worry that we would spend the whole day on a wild goose chase of some sort.

When we got to Duck Creek, the girls decided we should ask someone with a truck to go retrieve their friend. Lucky for us, the first guy I asked agreed. I jumped into the truck, and we followed the girls back over the mountain.

The driver, Jimmy, was the owner of the lodge in town. They bought the lodge as an investment a few years back, splitting the buy with some friends. They had planned on keeping the place for 4 years, but when the economy fell apart, they were stuck. Unable to sell, and not wanting to under-sell, they surrendered to another season on the mountain.

"It's fun work." He says happily.... and I can tell he isn't entirely frustrated by the change in plans. I wonder to myself if years from now they'll have realized they don't want to leave, completely sold on a way of life.

We found the boy walking my bike uphill about a mile and a half from where we left him. He smiles and says to me,
"... and you rode this how far?"
I laugh and tell him that he did a good job, and that maybe he will ride cross country someday. He says, "Yeah, maybe once I learn to ride uphill."

I thanked him, and thanked the girls, after the guys put my bike in the truck bed.
"You've been great rescuers!" I told them, and they smiled. They seemed happy to have had an adventure. I was so grateful to them.

Jimmy drove me back to Duck Creek and dropped me at a diner in town. I sat and ate, trying to get the shake out of my body. I wanted to keep going, and the rest of my ride promised to be easier, so I took time to fortify myself.

When I left, I was still shaky, but I was pretty sure the road was downhill from Duck Creek back up to Lake Panguitch. I took a good steady pace as the hills set in, and was sure I wouldn't have any problem getting to the lake in time to camp.

Thing is, I had to take an alternate winter route. The regular route would have gone higher into the mountain, up to 10,500 feet into Cedar Breaks National Monument. That road stays closed until June, so I stayed on SR 14. The road to rejoin with 143 wasn't on my elevation map...

...and it started uphill again. After about 8 miles of sweet and easy downhill riding, I was climbing back up to meet 143 at elevation. The climb I had avoided earlier was back in order. I was feeling a little stronger, and did all right for awhile. I pushed through a few miles of climbing, and when a truck stopped to ask if I needed help, I turned it down. At the time I thought there couldn't bee too much farther to go. I didn't realize it was uphill the whole way.

When I finally hit 143, about 4 miles of climb later, I was bleary with exhaustion. I imagined that there must be about a mile to the lake, and that it should be downhill. So imagine my surprise when I found myself facing another long climb, a mile and half later.

I stopped to rest, feeling the sun starting to drop, and the temperature with it. A couple in a fancy, shiny SUV (too clean to imagine asking them for a ride), stopped to check on me. They were French, and had trouble telling me how many mile it was to the lake, but we figured it was about seven. 7 more miles. I was screwed.

I stood there dumbfounded, still shaky, still sick, and completely out of energy. Then I noticed a truck pulled over back down the road a few hundred yards. I stared at them. I was partly just drained and hanging my eyes wherever they fell, and partly trying to see if they looked like a safe ride. I noticed that they were a family, and started riding back down the road towards them. Before I could get there, they had driven up to meet me. Within moments, my bike was loaded up, and I was sitting in the front seat of a white pickup, between Ben Shorty and Cody Smith.

Some people are impossibly likable. Magnetic, and compelling, they have a natural humour that catches you off balance, and a thoughfulness that suggests wisdom. The Shorty and Smith families, respectively, are such folk. In the back seat were Annie Shorty, her daughter Breann Smith, one year old Nathan Smith, and a poodle named Peaches.

They asked me all the usual questions about my journey, and then moved on to teasing me. They were headed to Panguitch, yes, but after a short detour.

"We could be psychos! It's a detour! We're hunting humans!"

Things like that. They were headed to drive up to their property to see if the snow had melted enough for them to bring the camper up for the season. Ben's family has 1000 (or 10,000? I don't remember) acres of land up in the hills between Lake Panquitch and Hatch. The road cuts clear through, a dirt ranch road. We chatted as we bounced through the country landscape.

Ben is Native, and grew up on the reservation. I'm guessing that Annie's daughter isn't his, because she doesn't look Native, but I don't ask such personal questions. Ben and Annie spend their summers up on this stretch of land, hunting and living very simply. They love it.

Ben says that it took him a long time to learn to do the work of being in the world. By "in the world" he means "off the reservation". On the reservation, he says, everything is free and simple. You don't need a lisence to fish or to hunt, and the work you do is the work you need to do to live. His family teases him about being Native, jokingly telling me that he hunts in a loincloth with warpaint on. This is not true. He does however, bow-hunt rather proficiently, and it is nearly always his job to clean and cure the game caught by his family.

I have a lot of respect for subsistence hunting. I explain to Ben that I used to be vegetarian, until I realized how much processing went into vegetarian products. I've grown to believe that eating locally and seasonally is the kindest way to live with nature, and that includes eating meat in the winter.

When they ask me why I set out on this journey, I do not feel inclined to mask anything. I tell them that I am on my Saturn return, when the planet Saturn comes back to the place it was in when you were born, and challenges you to become an adult. I tell them that I wanted to welcome Saturn like a friend.

Ben responds by saying softly "It must be very humbling", and I smile inwardly.
"Yes. Yes it is."
Annie says something like "You must be finding so much of yourself, and leaving so much behind."
I am so grateful to speak with people who don't find my internal language strange, and yet who are so different from me. I feel so blessed to have met them.

Ben is a Sun-Dancer, and we talk about sweat lodge for a minute. He wants to go back to Sundance and do his Blessing, a ritual which involves being suspended by hooks over a crowd and shaking their hands, giving your energy to them. (I don't know if that is exactly how he would describe it.) I am impressed that he would be brave enough... blessing rituals are hard trials of the spirit and body.


.... There is much more to say, but the cafe I am in is closing. I will finish this in the morning.