I am fortunate today. I'm camped at Wild Goose Campground on the Lochsa River, about 1.5 miles from Lowell, where I stayed the last three times I cycled this stretch. Twice behind the building (2007 and 20014) and once in nearby campgrounds (2003). This time I wanted something quieter and I didn't want to talk my way into behind a building again, so I checked out a forest service campground 1.5 miles before and it's perfect. The water isn't safe to drink, but I have a filter so I can drink right out of the river, so it's very Divide like.
Honestly, drinking the river just is a cherry on top for my river thoughts today. This is exaclty where I wanted to be on my 2nd to last night.
Today I have a lot to say. Firstly, White Bird was super fun. That town is doing great. I hung out at the cafe/bar for hours, met a wedding party, chatted up several people, listened to them discuss the debate, learned from how they saw things, tried to convince a young conservative Wisconsin kid to follow his heart and move to Idaho and remember to live not just work, etc. That kind of thing. As a teacher, I've learned that often all you want to do is plant seeds and let them grow in their own way.
Then I played music in the park by myself and got some sleep.
The climb out of White Bird was beautiful and intense as usual. I had a quick breakfast at the same place, left at 8, and reached the top, 3.6k feet and 11.6 miles later, at 10:30 with 1:45 on bike. Then a quick 10 mile downhill into Grangeville which took less than 30 minutes and I hit that town at 11. The weather was cool and wind inconsequential.
In Grangeville I ran into someone from the wedding party last night at a cool coffee shop, so that was neat. I left around 12:30, hit Kooskia at 2:30 or so, and then Wild Goose Campground at mile 67 with 5:33 on bike around 5:10 pm.
Additional highlights, before I talk about rivers, was the 3 mile screaming downhill out of the Grangeville fields (looks like the midwest but different crops), where I had to stop often to let my rims cool off from braking, and the last 23 miles along the Lochsa River. The pavement is also much better than last time I rode this - now it's smooth - last time it was fresh chipseal and that can slow your average speed from 16mph to 13mph with the same effort - which if you are going 65 miles like I am tomorrow is about an entire extra hour of biking. So that's great! The wind forcast is also for light winds.
Tomorrow I do 65ish miles of slight uphill to the Lochsa lodge, it'll be between 4 and 5 hours on bike with no turns - just me, the river, and light traffic.
So here's the drama for the day. Heading into Grangeville a work truck with a trailer rolled coal on me pretty good. It was the first time I'd been gotten good like that since the LAST time I was in this area (Kooskia that time in 2014). It really soured my mood, and suddenly I was seeing everyone as a threat. I mean, who does that to someone? Especially since this was obviously an adult. I think maybe the debate got them all stirred up, but honestly it probably would have happened anyway. It's different then when the guy pulled over outside of Prineville too - that was conflict that was resolved - this was just straight up bullying.
So I was in a sour, sour mood the entire time I was in Grangeville and riding out of it. I hated this area of Idaho. I hated Grangeville and Kooskia. I knew some cool people had to live here, but in general everyone since this happens every time I come here. I was angry, upset, suspicious - I have a history with being bullied a lot. Growing up with a stutter was rough, and despite years of work on it I have buried hate that can be triggered when bullied again, 3 some-odd decades later.
I was also mad at myself - I'd had a terrible time for at least two hours - and that was exactly what the bully wanted. He was winning. It was ruining my day, and a section of the ride I'd been looking forward to doing again for a decade was being ruined. I didn't want to give the bully that much power over me, but it was hard. I ended up stopping in a particularly pretty, sunny spot and full on went through all the meditations and breathing excercises that I teach kids, and focused on forgiveness. Forgiveness, to me, is letting go of hate and anger. It's not for the person who wronged you, it's for you. And - it worked - I started coming out of it.
Then I rode and thought - you don't get mad at rain, headwinds, hills, or heat. There is no point, they are things to weather - they make life interesting and the ride difficult and some things are worth doing just because they are hard. I've learned to love them all because they all make my life amazing. Likewise, there is no point in getting mad at bad humans. Zooming out, humans are just as natural as wind or rain. Bad humans will always exist, they will always make your life hard, but they deserve no more emotional investment then a rainstorm.
That's not say you should just accept things the way they are. We build windbreaks for the wind, roofs for the rain, sunscreen for sun - and the science behind manipulating humans into being better humans is strong and as well developed as any engineered flood control device. There is no reason to get emotionally invested. I felt this deeply - accepting and adapting to human failings deserves no more negative emotions than accepting and adapting to any other barrier in life - and the best way to accept a barrier is find the good in it - then it is no-longer a barrier. Someone rolled coal on me today, and it helped me process past trauma. This was not a bad day.
So I think about rivers a lot, because I bike by them all the time, but also it's a main analogy in Siddartha and they do it well. A river doesn't get mad at the rocks it flows over and around that block it's path. If anything, it enjoys them - it's something to do. Rapids sound happy. And - it's not something that ever ends. I'm sitting here looking at a swell that is always there. The river is consantly flowing over and around the same rocks over and over and over again - slowly making them smaller but they are there. My past with bullying is the same way, I'll always need to be flowing around and over it - it will always be behind me, in front of me, and around me, all at the same time - and that's ok. It's a just a part of me like that swell is a part of the river.
Rivers are also really good metaphors for the idea of a conciousness within time. A river is at all times it's start and end, always changing and always the same. We are the same - we are our young selves, our old selves, and our current selves, but also moving within our own timeline. We are like a whole river but at the time time a single water drop traveling the entire length. How do you define and categorize something that is both entirety and transient, like a river or a timeline?
From Siddartha:
"He saw that the water ran and ran incessantly, and nevertheless was always there at all times, the same and yet new every moment. The one who grasped this and understood this was great! He did not understand and grasp it, but felt some inkling of it stirring, a distant memory and divine voices."
The metaphor works for anything - oceans waves, wind, orbits, even life cycles. Subsequent birds live in the same tree, always new and always the same - trees live in the same forest, forests live on the same planets, planets reform in the same universe - always there yet always changing.
The barriers are like trials - but not even that - maybe features. The wind doesn't get angry when it has to flow around a tree or a cyclist - it just does and maybe enjoys the change in pace a little bit. It has no goal, it just enjoys the flow. It doesn't care if it's a natural vs human-made object, it just is. We can learn a lot from that attitude.
Heck, even the rocks in the river are their own cycle. The river is the barrier now - always wearing them down, but they reform into other rocks, other types, will be shot out of volcanoes, crushed under pressure, and eventually melted and spread into the cosmos by the sun and one day form another planet. Many of those minerals may find their way into living things, and take an entirely different path for awhile.
One game I picked up on the divide is looking at things - anything - natural, not natural - a brick, a bird flying, clouds flowing - and asking myself "what can I learn from this? What is the universe saying here?" - Its mostly a bridge to introspection - a way to conciously realize truths you already know but don't know "out loud." It also can be thought of as opening your mind to the language of the universe. What we see are reflections of truths - like how we see a black hole by it's affects on what is around it - we can read the source code of the universe by how it manifests in the visual world.
Or - again - it's just a tool for introspection. Doesn't matter, really.
I've been staring at this river for awhile now, and I've "learned" two insights from it so far.
First, there a little backspray section, where the river takes to the air and goes upstream only to fall back down and flow down again. To me it looks like part of the river is trying to fight gravity - but you could think about it as a reaction to an obstacle if you want to take a different lesson - but I'll go down that road later - something about having fun with healing. What it looks like to me now, however, is the river having fun. It's accomplishing nothing - make a big show, trying to go back up river, but in the end nothing is happening besides a little erosion (and there is a lesson there too) - but the lesson I see now is that "fun is not folly."
I see the river playing, having a good time. Not everything has to be productive - if a river can try to go back up stream, only to crash down and do it over and over again - why can't we? The river feels no guilt for not marching straight down stream as "it's meant to do." Likewise, we should forgive ourself for not always being productive. We are the same, after all. Just sticky molecules flying around the sun, taking turns being rivers and humans.
Another interesting effect that I'll meditate on more - is the optical illusion where when you look away from a river or waterfall and all the trees and everything else are going the opposite direction. The science is pretty basic behind it, but I think there a many insights we can take from it - including that our brain is hardwired to find balance and to adapt - but zooming out - so is everything. The river is flowing down but equal moisture is flowing up to replentish it. The world is always balancing, and we are of the world, so our eyes and brains can't help but play and show us this truth.
There is a molecular language under everything. There is a cosmic conversation always happening - and it's not a language that can be spoken or written, and it sounds absolutely silly and confusing when someone tries to explain it, and it has nothing to do with science. There are myriad ways to open yourself up to it - rivers, wind, cycling, doing hard things, art music, whatever - but it's easily blocked out by every day life to the point where it can be very hard to hear.
Humans are natural animals, we used to have quiet lives - very dififcult lives - but quiet. We are able "speak" the language of the cosmos, because we are the cosmos.
Maybe - scientifically - it's all just mind games toward introspection and understanding our subconscious and being able to hear the things we need to hear to reach homeostasis, or maybe it's something more. Maybe it doesn't matter.
I wrote a song while out here, and it talks about this a lot. This is the chorus, I'll post the rest later. The chorus has become a bit of mantra for me, running through my head when pitching my tent in a windstorm, or climbing a hot hill, or just riding and enjoying life.
The journey is the destination
The search is the reward
Focus leads to frusteration
Don't leave the path ignored
With time, words fade away
Their useless for these thoughts anyway
Whats learned can never be conveyed
There's magic in the mess.
(The magic in the mess line came from a sticker Kira gave me forever ago)
