The Freedom of the Bicycle
A photo story of life lessons while bikepacking the Olympic Discovery Trail
If it weren’t for the hospital details on my birth certificate, I would be convinced I was born on the seat of a bicycle. Bikes were my greatest source of inspiration as a child and young adult. They motivated my decisions on where to work, where to find friends, how to spend my money. Everything centered around my experience on the bike.
For the longest time, following this passion shaped my identity. It gave me purpose in a way no other motivation could at the time. Eventually, I learned the hard way that wrapping up your entire identity into something external is a recipe for losing yourself. Long story short, failed aspirations to compete at the top level and a series of life altering injuries sent me on a very different path than the one I originally thought I’d follow on my bike through life.
Fast forward to present day. I still love bikes, but my relationship with them has expanded. I use that word intentionally: expanded. Mainly because it took an uncomfortable amount of work to get to the point where I feel empowered by change. Generally speaking, when we realize the purpose of a difficult change, we’re usually delighted and accomplished by it. For most, the time in-between is the most uncomfortable dead space a person can mentally dwell. The familiar purgatory often reduced by terrible cliche phrases like, “trust the process”. For the longest time, I didn’t want to blindly trust any damn process, whatever that was supposed to mean. I wanted to Jay Gatsby the shit out of my life and relive the past. Every day being motivated by familiar goals turned into days being motivated by getting back to the way I thought I was supposed to be.
As I slowly started to release my death grip on these unhelpful beliefs, an incredible and unexpected realization happened. Having a passion for something isn’t about the something, it’s about the passion. In other words, I am a passionate person and it was my choice to create a reality that allowed me to express that. It’s about seeing and being seen, experiencing vulnerability, accomplishing something, all the parts of me that exist no matter where I place my attention. That’s when photography became front and center as a new way to express my passion for bikes, or more accurately, express the passion I innately have for life.
No trip to date has expanded that awareness more than the few nights I spent bikepacking the Olympic Discovery Trail along the western Washington coast.
It was my second ever bikepacking trip, having just completed a couple of boujee nights touring the San Juan Islands a few weeks before. I was still pretty gear focused, in planning mode, excited for a more remote adventure with some great pals.
We decided to depart from the Port Townsend ferry on bikes, a roughly 80 mile road ride to the first campground. It was mid-July and the hot sun felt like a fresh blanket out of the dryer on our pale, overcast sky skin. The long road slog ahead seemed well worth the time in the sun, and more than a few folks had the same idea.
After about 10 hours of saddle time that placed us well into the Olympic National forest, we found ourselves in a bit of a predicament. One of the gravel road routes we thought to be a shortcut took us to the gate of private land where the residents were actively firing guns for the fourth of July. We decided not to stick around for a Most Dangerous Game situation and headed another direction, which lead to an old logging road in the middle of nowhere. We were lost. It was now pitch black outside, riding by headlight, and we were all completely exhausted. I stopped my bike on the side of the road, pulled out my tent, and called it, much to my friends’ horror, since most of them had never dispersed camped before.
The night was disillusioned hellfire and chaos. I kept thinking to myself, “why did we think it was a good idea to camp on the Fourth of July?” The skies thundered with gunfire, explosions, and in true dramatic fashion, a tree toppled over right next to our camp in the middle of the night. Safe to say not much sleep happened.
The sun streaming through the trees was a welcome sight the next morning, still in a haze from the gun smoke of the night.
We’d made it through the night. This was the first moment I sensed a separation from reality, recognizing all that mattered now was the present moment. The mundane daily life stress disappeared and all that remained was the here and now. This was the start of a new found reverence on the path to freedom.
I’d experienced moments like this before, but something about this time was different. Maybe it was the immense amount of exertion, heightened moments of stress, and the vehicle under my feet feeling like a source of unlimited potential, amplifying the whole experience. Maybe I didn’t get enough sleep, food, or water to think all that rationally anymore. Maybe I was taping into a shared collective conscious which living organisms on Earth have exchanged for thousands of years, only now becoming aware of its primal nature. Whatever the reason, it felt profound. It reminded me of a story I’d read years before called Being A Human by Charles Foster, where he says, “If science addresses itself properly to its subject of real existence rather than to neurotic affirmation of its own presumptions, it will be an epic and mystical calling, for existence is epic and reality is mysterious.”
The bicycle has a long history of being correlated with freedom and liberation, especially for women. It’s no surprise I had a reckoning of my own with it on this journey, challenging all the ways I knew it to be. Instead of the rigid athleticism and routine I once placed on my bicycle, it was about the simplicity and joy of it. A novel concept, right? Bikes are fun? Bikes are fun! They are a whole world of possibility in a simple moment. Push, push, coast. Feel the wind. Breathe the sea air. Bikes bring me closer to my sense of self and from this, I’m able to form meaningful connections with others and my surroundings. It’s the kind of joy and freedom that reminds me experience comes from the inside out. For my creative self, this is the origin of inspired creativity.
As we continued the journey through the snaking single track and down into the valley, we spotted the most welcome sight of Lake Crescent. A much needed cleansing of the previous day’s events.
Shortly followed by a breezy coast into our campground in Salt Creek.
Salt Creek Campground is a time capsule of past and present American lifestyles. Everything from moving homes towed by lifted trucks to a tent strapped to a bicycle, there are few gathering spaces in the states more expressive of individuality than a campground. Each person using their own approach to take some time away from the ordinary to appreciate nature and leisure.
The grounds are also adjacent to an abandoned bunker used during WWII by US troops to monitor the Washington coast. What was once a place of serious tension and reserve is now no more than a sketchy playground full of interesting smells and graffiti.
Before making the long road pedal back to the ferry, we sat along the coast at low tide, taking in the last night of our whirlwind journey together. What was only a few nights felt like something of a lifetime, or at least a series of moments that stick to you, like the best memories do. In the process of reconnecting with myself and my bike, I discovered another new way to appreciate life, through the lens of my camera, and a renewed sense of purpose.
I’ll wrap up this one with a reflective moment on perspective and present mindedness, shared by one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda.
Ode to bicycles
Pablo Neruda
I was walking down a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.
A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.
Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.
I thought about evening when
the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn’t
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it’s needed,
when it’s light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.
This is a great story and set of photos! Lots of things I resonate with and some things I needed to read. Thank you! p.s. over three decades of mountain and road biking here, looking for a way to squeeze it back in.
Amazing story and photos!