Spinning It Out
After a Big, Squishy, Late December Ride in George Washington National Forest
Raptor, pedal squeak, acorn. Already felt historical. Maybe it was the trees. Definitely the trees. What a line up: Pedlar, Statons, Irish, Tye, Piney, Buffalo.
Felt asleep, indeed, that productive and distracted. Senseless to count the waterfalls. Felt radiantly asleep. Felt, considering the radiance, in tune.
Stonework. Branchbend. Some other tributary riffing on who knows what. Felt more sediment, pressed & pliable, than gravel. Must have been sin
underneath. Meant to say stone. Felt in clutch with the protective spirit of the place. Up there between Paxton Peak & Little Pinnacle and kept on past
Robinson Gap. Felt freshly forgiven. Especially White’s Gap down to Oronoco. Rowdy as seeing only six cars/trucks the whole dang hundo. Felt all
down to the next hourlong climb. Way up past the forks coming together. Swollen, those forks, but especially the main stem. You could see your mind
in every flume, and you were so out of it. All up in it. Cogs and links, as they say. Nothing but cogs and links. Up the Pedlar to Irish Gap. Felt in the clouds,
like the mountains were clouds. Every creek 100% rainfactory. Nonstop splotches of tirespray, winter’s lesser actors swallowing us one by one. As if
rift, as if defrosting their corndogs. Pointillism, swamp butt. How many turtles didn’t we see? How many elves were less than pleased? Yankee Horse
Hollow, Wigwam Mt, Stillhouse Hollow, Painter Mt Lane. We tried on gears like shirts. We changed our grip. We chewed on every placename. And the
names they replaced. The bike is very frequently a secret from the one who rides it. As are the places very frequently through which it is ridden. Riding
my bike very frequently feels like nothing I’ve ever seen. Very frequent bouts of radiant inattention being the prerequisite for the kindest rides. Fifty-
something miles in, the one store on the route closed, For Lease, so we refilled water from the church’s spigot on Rt 56 at Massies Mill, Tye River in
the backyard. Gratitude, that’s what’s up. As another spoke in your shoulder went snap, snap, snap. The creeks were, the clouds were, the mountains
were. And what’s down. Felt hysterical, that serenity, unlike any other. Maybe it was the trees. Beautiful, vivid, and a little sad, the blur of the final twenty,
from Long Mountain around the Lynchburg Reservoir up to Beverlytown and back over Robinson Gap into Bee-yoo-nah Vista. The trees, definitely.
Or the wolves - yes, wolves - howling above the North Fork of the Tye where we took a break at the bridge to see the water from standing and to snap
some pics, and before long noticed the sign: Rainbow Mt Animal Sanctuary. Prose fragments on your wheel, working all day on that night’s dreams.
Enough for a month. From Alhambra to Mt Pleasant, the one knee kept saying, “No more,” & wasn’t the Lycra made it shy. Was cosmic, see, 13k feet
of climbing's worth. Not the teeth in your eyes. Something wet, lit. Enough fretting of the tire pressure. Songs with morals! Felt arrowheadish in there,
too. Felt the route re-drawn with a stick in the deerpissed softpack. Drastic among the Christmas lights. Not of your mind. Slicing down out of the
gravelled night. Into the chilled and tired old town. Oh, how they come now out of the gloam onto the pavement like the Hell’s Angels rolling into
Monterey in 1968 (no, more quiet, tired, cold, but one could if chainwhipped imagine it). This was a salamander singing itself into hibernation. Something
to do with never recovering from it. Adjacent peaks out there: The Priest, Little Priest, The Friar, The Cardinal. Kid you not. There was a there was a
there was a there, you hear, and no, squirtgun was not the more accurate metaphor, nor communion. Pompey Mt, too, and Hog Camp Gap. This was
the consciousness of grapevine tangles, grouse the one pure thought. Sure, there was turkey scratch and deadfall and camo Busch cans and all the rest.
