On the Worst Part
I finished the bike ride and I’m proud of that. It was incredibly difficult but coming with an idea — executing it, just going out and doing it — is something I am good at. I wasn’t scared. There were moments of fear, like seeing the man wandering around the campsite at dusk, sleeping with a knife next to me and playing The Cranberries on repeat through the night.
There were moments of desperation, like being isolated on Mt. Herman road, knowing that I was in a terrible situation I wanted nothing to do with, one I wanted only to get out of. In that moment I was angry for being the only one responsible for putting myself there, the only one to blame. In that moment I had only myself. If I wanted to cry (which I did) only I would hear me; if I needed to scream only I would know. I felt the desperation and I sat in it, literally and figuratively. I sat in the shade of a brush and I cried inside, because no tears would come. “What should I do?” I wondered.
I began to walk the bike forward. I walked slowly and without conviction. I’d be grateful for the shade of the trees but scared of the mountain lions they could hide. I’d be happy at the opening of the forest but bitter by the expanse of land that it revealed — the great expanse of land that I needed to traverse in order to end what I was in. I walked and I grew resentful.
It was not one bad moment — it was a bad moment that came after two terrible days — two days where I was faced with the fact that I was not physically or mentally prepared to do what I set out to do. Two days of uncomfortability in my body, two days of heat that made so nauseous that I pulled to the side of the road repeatedly to vomit. Two days of riding through suburbs, developments, business access roads adjacent to highways and new thoroughfares being built with metal scraps and nails littering the tarmac. It was two days of country roads through wheat and cattle fields without a tree in sight, road that stretched without the hint of a curve for miles and miles into the future, with no end but only the horizon that never moves.
It was two days of questioning, of doubt. It was two days of picturing every beautiful thing in my home: my tea mug, my morning chair, my slippers and my cozy, ratty sweatshirt. Of putting my nose into my dog’s fur and inhaling his earthy musk, of sidling up to my boyfriend as he worked at his desk, stealing a hug and making a joke. It was my kitchen, full of fresh and healthy things to eat — it was road stretched out before me with only convenience store victuals and bad hamburgers. It was warm, stale water that had been sitting in my saddlebag for a few days and it was the utter lack of hope. It was all this inside me, boiling, rejecting myself, rejecting what I imagined myself to be.
It was so much anger. I stared at the road beneath my feet, scorched by the Colorado sun. It was full of holes, full of gashes and ruts. Rocks and boulders jutted out every few inches, gravel scattered itself about, and no part of the road was level, no part was clear. It curled around itself, unfurling as it climbed to 9,000 feet, ponderosa pines shooting up from every crevice that wasn’t a rock, every inch of dirt where a shrub wasn’t already living.
“Watch out for the crazy people that live up there,” I was told that morning before I left Lake Palmer. I had spent the night in a stranger’s home, the owner of the bar where I had had a hamburger. “I’m looking for a place to stay,” I told the bartender, and soon Melanie was offering me her daughter’s room. Their house was a mess but there were towels on the bed waiting for me and I was so grateful. In the morning, I didn’t need to hear what her husband was saying. “Just be careful. It’s a national forest so the cops really can’t do anything. There’s a bunch of encampments and I’ve seen some pretty weird shit up there. You’re leaving early, so that’s good, but I wouldn’t want to be up there once the afternoon hits.”
“What do you mean?” was all I could respond, not giving space to what wanted to grow inside of me.
“There’s just been some incidents with people living in the mountains. You know — vagrants and stuff. Some of them have gotten violent, mainly it was a few years ago. Take Melanie’s number and just call it if you need anything — she’ll come up there and get you. It’s a wild road. You’ve got balls for going that way. Super beautiful.”
But it wasn’t beautiful. It was forsaken, and I didn’t have balls, I had ignorance. It was a road where no one would find me for days. It was an alternate plane — one I crossed into as soon as I passed the metal sign riddled with the bullet holes that said NO SHOOTING. It was stillness, it was the lack of life, it was the feel of death. It was the wilderness — the one you tried to get out of. It was me, hating myself, hating the things that came out of my mouth without forethought. It was my fears in front of me. It was walking into them because they surrounded me.