|
|
This mantra, unbidden, formed itself in my head this afternoon... blowing around in my skull like a sheet of newspaper caught in a windy alleyway. Never escaping... only drawn away, then back again. After another tempestuous two-hours of intense focus over the controls, from where the music comes out, I had to bug out the glass doors of the Commons for a smoke. My other cravings, the opportunity to hear nothing, and breathe in the healing dampness of the air to free my sinuses after being baked in a room with cabinets full of electrical current (and the dust of the Mummy's Tomb that is a broadcast studio). Healing. Dampness. Two words that I would not instantly equate, ordinarily. A steamy sexual reference, maybe. Not necessarily for pre-precipitative February skies. No Food Or Drink In Studio. Sometimes, it sounds more like a jail sentence. Or at least sensory deprivation... brainwashing techniques to spur efforts for the job at hand. Creating a mood. A theme. A soundtrack. Evocative enough to instigate people to call for no more reason than two notes that sound good together, or two songs that melt into each other seamlessly for them. And no giveaways, or derisive Commentary. Except for FratBoy and Dickless. This imagined rhyme, though... ...came about while I was sitting on the upper tier of the stands at the old rugby field. More like roman ruins: a columned esplanade arching away to the south. Rising above, the lacy skeletons of trees framing the uneven darkness of faceless steel skies. The first sound that registered, the hoarse, nasal, humorless laugh of a crow. They love it here, there are so many. No wonder Poe did, too. Though I don't think his love as a healthy one. But the scene was completed. And the words emerged. Doloroso. ....................................................................... Hostel Environment Day Nineteen: Council to New Meadows As this trip through Idaho began, along the shortest distance across the state, the history section of the guidebooks reminded us that the road we would take had been storied in recent past (and all of "American" history is recent, eurocentrically). Not only was it the path that Lewis and Clark travelled, but also the road to exile for the Nez Perce Indians. The Trail Of Tears. The tribe that would fight no more, forever... chased out of the country with blue coated bigots nipping at their heels, killing as they went... forcing them on. Another opportunity to have shame for the color of my skin, and the root of my language and morals. Not a bright prospect with which to begin a ride. Over the Ochoco pass, for beginners, tracing the origins of the Little Salmon River.
Behind the eroded borders of Hell's Canyon, trees could survive... for this leg, no constant baking in the sun, back bent over cranks. Still, warm, another world. Only one small town serving as civilization's intrusion on the landscape, until New Meadows. Again, belying the first impressions that Idaho was sterile and lifeless. Little patches of dense forest, bordering claustrophobic green meadows... like photos I'd seen of Germany's Black Forest (where my father's people originated). The change in climate reminded sore muscles of yesterday's exertions. Skies thickened, darkened, as we approached the campsite curiously named Packer John's. Sounded like an effeminate character on M*A*S*H. More like a trapper. I chose this time to tear down the bike; overdue, the need to repack bearings, scour the wind-blown sand from moving parts, exorcize the funk. That done, and dinner over, we followed a suggestion that there were hot springs nearby... something I'd never experienced. A short pedal and hike later, as dusk approached, we found the manifestation: a steaming pool of water, vaguely sulphurous, ringed with boulders, sitting above an impatient, rocky stream. Perpared with swim trunks, I sank into the boil, deep enough to find rock to sit on, with my shoulders above. Oh. Yeah. Nature's hot tub... on the skin, in the lungs. Sapping muscletone, insidiously. Instead of sinking, docilely, forever, we broke the surface, and dashed for the stream. Fifty degrees cooler... enough to freeze the doo-dads. Back-and-forth between the two, until it became a question of if we'd find camp again, in the dark. Mounting my strangely-unladen bike, then rolling downhill, the handlebars and front wheel began to first oscillate, then shake unnaturally... threatening to pitch me over into A-Number-One-Boom-Boom on ragged pavement. Road rash and bone breakage. Then it stopped. It could have been my own trail of tears, but the Big Price had already been paid. |
|
|
