The Rising Wind

I have done enough of these long bicycle treks to observe patterns in the ways they develop.  The first few days are for getting in shape and for arranging all my things so that everything has a known place and is accessible according when I might need it—day things, evening things, emergency things.  Eventually, there comes a time, perhaps on the fifth day out, when a rhythm settles in.  I’ve been gliding along, taking in whatever lies along the view—the lightning-shape of mesquite branches, the shapes of sharp deterrents on barbed wire fences at the right-of-way lines, for example.  And I’m caught up in the cadence of my feet on the pedals, unaware of any conscious thought about it all, perhaps like a mantra brings meditation.

Boundaries between self and world dissolve.  The movement of clouds and my movement merge and become parts of the same flow.  Some call it oneness, for there is suddenly no you that exists apart from the world around you.  And as soon as I start to describe it, as if trying to measure both the position and momentum of a quantum particle, my separateness returns, and I lose the thing I began to describe. 

Gage Hotel in Marathon

Famous Burro Restaurant in Marathon

I find satisfaction in dealing with something as neatly bounded and cozily finite as a bicycle where everything has a place and I know where it is.  So it was that for three days I ignored the wind and settled into conditioning for the long haul, either because the wind was non-existent, weak, or coming from behind.  But on the fourth day, the sixty-mile stretch from Sanderson to Marathon, a span of desert without shade or habitation, save an occasional distant ranch house,  the wind came forcefully to my attention.  Coming from the west, it slowed my speed to half.  Pedaling on the level seemed like uphill.  I dragged into Marathon, slid into a chair in the Famous Burro and ordered coffee and food, then nearly fell asleep before the drug took affect.

I still had a short ride out of town to an interesting-sounding place I’d heard about and hoped to spend the night. La Loma del Chivo (Knol of the kid?) is an eclectic assortment of buildings, chickens, dropouts, and an energetic host, Ingrid.  I had called her the day before, told her of my pedaling, to which she said, sure, come and stay, no charge.  

She showed me around and explained that all the buildings are made out of papercrete—Portland cement and paper mixed together like concrete, but much lighter weight.  I stepped inside one of the buildings and it must have been ten degrees cooler inside.  It’s the insulating effect of the papercrete, she said.

She put me up in this little house trailer that hasn’t trailed in many years.  I used my own sleeping bag and was quite comfortable.  I could have stayed in a larger building with some of the others, but when I told them I wanted to get up at 5am to try and beat the wind, their expressions directed me back to the trailer.  

In a pit under this dome building is a tree, or what used to be a tree.  There’s a stairway going down, and the inside is otherwise mostly vacant. It must have been used for some ceremony or ritual, but nobody seems sure.  I have slept in an assortment of quarters on this trip so far and have no complaints about this one.