No Dirt Roads

It’s a seemingly simple plan: Explore the United States and parts of Canada, alone, for one year, on a 2003 Honda Shadow 750 motorcycle. My children are adults, living on their own, and providing for themselves.

It’s time.

On May 12th, 2019, a handful of months before my fortieth birthday, I secure my belongings to this machine I’d owned for less than two years, and leave Vermont.

My riding experience had been limited to New England; the rain, cold, and occasional stray deer were the biggest obstacles. I knew life on the road would have its moments, but what my high school dropout brain didn’t completely process was the rest of the country came in dramatically different shapes and sizes.

The following weeks would teach the biggest lessons.

"No dirt roads" is the first, as two weeks in, I nearly die on some back road in West Virginia.

How I ended up on this road is most definitely my own doing, but for fun, I’m going to blame the GPS. This wouldn’t be the first time this stupid little app put me in a situation where I wondered if it was actively trying to kill me. Interstates are a last resort; preference is given to highways and local roads, and the GPS decides to shift the route due to minor construction.

I veer left. The road is pleasant enough until it’s not. By the time I recognize I should turn around, there’s no place to. The road is steep, narrow, and rutted. Methodically, I venture further down, until I reach a flat spot, directly before one narrow strip of semi-dry road. To the right is a puddle, the depths of which I’m able to determine. And to the left, is a mud pit; besides that, is a cliff.

I breathe, and move forward, aiming for the strip of dry land the width of my rear wheel. Immediately, my front tire catches the edge, and I’m pulled left, into the mud pit, my back tire follows, spins, and violently sways back and forth.

Then my right-hand slips off the break and cranks the throttle. My left hand desperately holds the clutch, as the engine roars, the front tire pointing to the edge. My motorcycle is on a mission to not commit accidental suicide, and pushes through three bumps, gravity leading the way. My feet shuffle through the mud at a cartoony pace, unable to find friction.

The human brain, when encountering a life-threatening event, can cascade through a plethora of scenarios in seconds.

In my mind, I’m already pinned under the bike halfway down the ledge, or between the six hundred pound machine and tree, my ribs cracked. I’m flung, head first, toppling over and over, endlessly.

The world is amplified, similar to a mushroom trip, sans all the fun parts. It feels like every synapse is firing as adrenaline saturates my entire being.

Then it stops. Both tires and feet are resting on the dry, flat earth.

Dirt roads are bad. Check.

Still, once I crossed into South Dakota, it became clear I was coddled. Wind speeds were added to the items to review before hitting the road each morning thanks to Interstate 90 and its sadistic ways.

It might seem commonplace to feel exposed on a motorcycle. The air, temperature, and sudden downpours are anticipated. Yet, all those became trivial the first time I continuously leaned my body against forty-five mile per hour side winds just to stay vertical. This is while moving at over eighty miles per hour to keep up with traffic. Tack on the beatings from the oscillating gusts of air when trailing semi-trucks, and I begin to feel grateful I have life insurance.

Wind sucks; noted.

Even then, nothing invoked raw vulnerability like American Bison.

This stretch of blacktop near Hot Springs, SD is littered with deer. They, at least, are nice enough to meander beyond the shoulder of the road.

Near twilight, following the twisty lines of US-385, I slow to a stop as a silhouette appears. My eyes adjust, and twenty feet ahead are two dozen gargantuan bison.

My knowledge of these animals is next to nil, and my brain shuffles through questions: Do they charge? Will they nudge me if I try to slip by? Is this even real?

They’re large, beefy, and outweigh me and my 600-pound motorcycle by more than my brain can calculate.

The headlight’s low beam is reflected back, transforming their eyes into something mechanical. Otherworldly. Undead. Two silver dots rest in the middle of each of their zombielike faces.

Gawking isn’t the right word. Dumbfounded, perhaps? Lost in extensional dread, feels accurate. It’s as if I was thrust into a cross-genre Indy Horror film.

Perhaps there’s no way to truly describe the sensation of being face-to-face with a collection of mythical creatures, at least by someone who’s been tucked away in the isolation of Vermont for the last eighteen years.

An unknown amount of time elapses, then I snap out of it. I need to find the campground--assuming it’s real. Two of the previous ones weren’t. I ever-so-gently scoot between the colossal ghostlike beasts, and softly beep the horn and delicately rev the engine, as they glance at me with their living dead eyes like I’m kind of an idiot. Uninterested in my menial human existence, they saunter around me as I move forward, and the risk of being trampled to death fades into the background.

Safely through, I accelerate, as the sun is now behind the line of the mountains. Within a mile, my right hand and foot depress the breaks, and the motorcycle jolts to a stop.

The headlight steadies on the vein of road pouring under an ocean of a hundred or more bison. Their bionic bodies and sonic silver eyes wane into the field at the base of the Black Mountains.

There are two parked cars taking in the magic of the encounter. They have time. And doors. And a place to sleep that isn’t a popup tent which needs to be to set up in the dark at what is currently Schrödinger's campground. That and they can’t fit their vehicles through the gaps of zombie bison.

Deep breath in. Hold. Exhale. Repeat.

“Please don’t kill me.” Once more, these godlike beings grant me passage as I navigate through their trek into the darkness. The experience doesn’t register, until I’m at the campground, unscathed by wildlife. I set up the tent by the lake, far from other campers, and devour two protein bars.

Gnashing the chocolate rectangles, my body vibrates through the spectrum of emotions.

Disbelief.

Trepidation.

Bewilderment.

Astonishment.

Gratitude.

Exhaustion.

Drifting off to sleep, I hear footsteps on the loose gravel.

“Hello?”

No response. There’s splashing. Then silence.

My head shakes in annoyance. After safely merging through two herds of bison, whatever was lurking outside was of no concern. The need for sleep outweighs my curiosity, and my body sinks deep into the thin air mattress.

When I wake and unzip the tent, two geese stare at me. Why are you at our lake, one seems to hiss at me. The other hisses, leave now as I pack up. and I hiss back.

Bison are chill. Geese are jerks. Got it.

When I arrive at my cousin’s home in Denver, their couch becomes my bed. Time is moving in geography now.

“I haven’t done laundry since Iowa. I’ve had this granola since Pittsburgh. This condition since Ohio.” Days of the week are a social construct that no longer apply.

Elevation, however, is brutally real. It makes it way above wind speeds on the list of things that may kill me.

While scouting out the exit plan, my cousin shows me a road. All my riding brain saw was the curvy road displayed on the GPS. I was seduced by it, like Sirens calling me to the mountains. His comment about perhaps running into snow doesn’t connect. It’s the middle of June.

A simple search would have revealed the altitude, which climbed over eleven-thousand feet, this point aptly named, Iceberg Pass. But I didn’t know this. Similar to dropping out of high school at sixteen, embracing motherhood at eighteen, agreeing to, what would be a short-lived marriage at twenty, then doubling down parently with child number two at twenty-one, I went in dramatically unprepared.

Rocky Mountain National Park, similar to my ex-husband, is unforgiving. And like my children, a wonder to behold. And like both my undergraduate and soon-to-follow master’s degree, which I made the oh-so-familiar-no-research decision to start months before embarking on this journey, I make it to the other side.

A woman is standing behind the counter at Sloppy Grill. She speaks in a tone that affirms she’s lost count of how many times she’s asked, “Was it snowing at the top?” My red face, which was either sunburn or windchill--probably both--is the tell.

“Yes,” I reply in equal parts of a matter-of-fact and straight-up lunatic. I’m so disconnected from my body, nothing matters except food.

My fingers thaw as they cradle a cup of tea. When the food arrives, all the tension from the ride fades into the pile of grease dripping from what still stands as the best bacon cheeseburger I’ve ever consumed. It feels like it is made of pure dopamine. That I am borderline starving, amplifies this. It’s possible I’m in shock, but that didn’t matter, because I’m warm, my hunger is sustained, and I can process what I’d endured.

Each moment while riding is where I am; everything is felt intensely, in real-time.

At the start of the ride, I cry. Full-on ugly crying. The scenery is so unworldly that it’s beyond my comprehension. The snow-covered spiked peaks of the Rockies are life-changing.

There are elk everywhere. In the thirty-mile stretch through the park, I saw as many elk as I have moose in my entire 18 years in Vermont. I craved more; I didn’t know what was I was riding into.

There were warnings beyond my cousin’s caution of snow, like the woman at the gate, “I hope there’s good weather for you.” It didn’t connect that this was an ominous warning. The Siren’s song of the curvy road drowned out her words.

“I’ve ridden through worse.”

Spoiler: I hadn’t.

It’s a common misconception motorcycle riders are fearless. While I can’t speak for others, it wasn’t so much my lack of, rather my ability to move past it. Just because something scared me, didn’t mean I wouldn’t do it. More often than not, it was the reason I’d force myself to try.

There was an ever-present trepidation about riding west of Denver. It’s not something I’d done in a car, let alone a motorcycle. If I’d done any research, I’d know that Mount Mansfield--the highest peak in Vermont--is around a third the elevation of the highest point on Trail Ridge Road. Maybe I would have chosen a different path. But I didn’t know this.

My eyes fall upon road signs stating, “icy road,” and shift past them to the next breathtaking view. I credit my inane stubbornness on why I didn’t turn around then.

I could have made better choices, but I would have missed the clarity that comes from almost dying on a mountain. This is a bit of an overstatement since, at the time, there hadn’t been a fatality since 1995, but it felt like a real threat at the time. This is amplified by my intense fear of heights and extreme disdain for cliffs without guardrails.

I move at a snail’s pace, so when I see the short stretch of the road appear, my body has time to scream, no no no no no.

There’s intense wind, a flutter of snow, and lining this narrow two-lane path are sharp dropoffs. Even with the extra layers, my whole body is cold from the elevation. Yet, when I cross this little patch of death, the side of my eye catches the edge of the world stretching out into oblivion. Unlike nearly sliding off a cliff in West Virginia, where my mind flickered through every synapsis available, this time every molecule in my body froze.

But the motorcycle moves forward, and I safely cross.

Feeling near paralysis, I pull over.

To one side, is the road, coated with the Siren’s song, a seductive giggle wafting off the pavement begging me to make one mistake. To the other is a snowbank piled higher than the motorcycle from where the plow trucks had cleared the pass two weeks prior. There’s thunder in the background, and it’s starting to snow harder. Behind me is a van with a warm, happy family.

I approach the man in the diver’s seat and ask if it’s like this the whole way.

He assures me this was the worst of it.

“If you’re going through hell, keep going,” Thanks, Churchill.

I ask him for a snack because, on top of everything else, I had not planned my food intake properly and the idea of shuffling through my bags was beyond overwhelming.

I ravenously consume a granola bar, which probably saved my life, and watch his family have a snowball fight. The wholesomeness is palpable.

My blood sugar levels return to normal, as I carefully push my motorcycle off the kickstand. My mind calculates the sturdiness of my footing buried in the slush, and I take countermeasures to assure I don’t slip too far in one direction or the other. I’d overpacked when I left Denver; the weight increase mixed with the cold, hunger, and realization that at this altitude, the carburetor might fail, is all sluffed away as I close my eyes and push the ignition button.

The engine reluctantly, and angrily kicks to life, drowning out the Sirens’ song.

When the road snakes past twelve thousand feet, I spot another motorcyclist coming in the opposite direction. The rider’s face is a deep shade of red, and my frigid cheeks are suddenly grateful for the full-face helmet. Their presence renews my confidence. If they could ride it up, I could make it down. At the bottom, my body relaxes, the tension subsides, and the Sirens go silent.

With the cheeseburger being redistributed as energy, my body starts to function at nearly full capacity. I book a hotel in the next town and ride there effortlessly.

The Colorado River appears, the mountains beyond it, and I weep again. Maybe from the vision, but more likely from the trauma.

Soaking in a hot bath, lost in the music, my body melts off the altitude, wind, mud, and snow it's accumulated over thirty-eight hundred miles during the last thirty-three days.

One month of twelve, one moment at a time.

Rested, Outside, the crisp air and mountain views from a fresh sense of awe and respect for nature, A simple, yet all encapsulating, word escapes in a whisper, “Beautiful.”