Marc Kitteringham
I needed a moment today. Things in the past week have been so tumultuous that I needed a break to get some perspective on things that really matter to me. It feels like the whole world is turning into something that I would never have considered to be possible. I’m watching a once-great country turn into something from a less-enlightened time. The images coming from the south are more like something out of a dystopian novel than real life, and that scares me. Things don’t seem real right now, and I needed to get outside of the bubble of hate that is going on across the world. I needed to get back to myself.
I started out heading north, on a multi-use path cutting through the heart of the city. It eventually died out when I reached the end of the city limits and I turned into the dirt road curving away from civilization. There were no buildings around me as I sped up on the soft road. It paralleled the highway and I shot eastward across the prairie. The wind was warm for November, keeping me cool as I pushed up the hill. At the top was an old RV storage site; a field full of coyotes, brambles and old dead thistles; old tire tracks from when local hooligans went out for a rip; and a seemingly endless expanse of land. I rode on.
I’ve been working at getting back to my roots – to a part of myself that I once forgot about, discounted and ignored. That part of me was also the happiest I’ve ever been and I was wrong to ignore that. It is who I am. The past four years of education, urbanity, struggle to make enough to survive and personal turmoil have turned me into something that I did not set out to become. I’ve changed for the worse, and I made a step to get back to myself today.
I pointed my bike towards the unknown and just escaped.
Part of riding in the prairies is that sometimes what looks like regular dirt turns out to be sticky thick mud. I had ridden through a low-lying part of the field on what originally looked like solid hard-pack. I took a few pedal strokes before realizing what I mistake I made. Stepping off my bike, I sunk my cleats into mud with the consistency of peanut butter. I had to walk out, shouldering my bike I realized that my tires were around ten pounds heavier. Each step sunk me further into the slag, but I eventually made it to the grass. The dead grass didn’t offer much to help with cleaning my bike, but a few thistle branches did enough to get my tires rolling again. I sat on the thorny plants and dug out my cleats with a swiss army knife. Finding a stick in the middle of the prairie is difficult. I eventually wound up using a broken-off thistle to gouge the mud out of my wheels. Eventually I was able to ride again and I took off rolling over the bumpy grassland.
A coyote stirred off in the distance. He bounced through the grass, unaware of my presence.
Where I went doesn’t matter, it was the sheer act of getting out and away from the toxic environment of bigotry and hate and reminding myself of the important things that mattered. I rode for a while, through grey autumn, over crunched leaves, around jogging locals and eventually wound up lost. I took a few dirt roads, got myself stuck, thought, reflected and came out a better version of myself.
There was a train coming. I climbed a small hill that overlooked the crossing of the busy highway and the traintracks. Nobody could see me there, cars passed by in a wisp of metal before disappearing forever. The occupants’ lives briefly intersecting with mine before they left, never to return. They were so fleeting that they almost didn’t exist. I calmly sat beside my muddy bike – invisible and out of mind to everyone. The train passed within a few metres of me, but not even the conductor noticed me. I was alone amongst thousands of people, passing through life at my own pace without even the slightest acknowledgement of my existence. This feeling of anonymity continued as I rode on, past the thousand windows of suburbia, past livingrooms glowing blue from the screens portraying evil orange men, past children watching out the window for something that might not ever show up, past smells of fried chicken, barbecue, and various suppers being prepared. Nobody noticed me. The thousand windows lay empty, like eyes unblinking, yet unseeing. I passed on quietly and anonymously. That was just fine by me.
I remembered what it meant to not need a car, to not need a map and to just explore for the sake of exploring. I wound up in a place that was inaccessible by bike, scraped some mud off my wheels, watched a train ramble by, explore suburbia, sprayed leftover mud down the streets and eventually came back home. It’d been a while since I did something like that and I needed it.
When the world is a shambles, it is too easy to get caught up in the negativity and bullshit of what is going on. Days like today remind me of how I once was. I was curious, optimistic and idealistic. I let my mind wander, and had faith in my creativity. I was unspoiled by pessimism and negativity. I enjoyed things. Lately, I’ve been making strides back to that ideal, but it has been hard lately. Getting lost helped.
I pulled back in to the cul-de-sac. A little over an hour had passed and I’d ridden about 20km, but felt like I’d gone back years. The sun was setting, and for once I got to look at it and just appreciate that it was beautiful.
That felt good.