My adventure began on 9th of October, 2007. Rain gently watered the earth throughout the night, tailing off to a humid mist at dawn. In the low light, I packed the last few items into the dry bag and strapped it to the single speed bicycle I called the Stead. With eyes as humid as the mist that enveloped me, I bid farewell to my little farm, savored a last drink from the living Amador Canal, and coasted down the hill of the neighboring ranch.
My destination was halfway round the planet, in the southern Andes of Patagonia in Argentina. This trip was not just an adventure. After spending three summers growing food in the foothills, I was picking up roots and heading to a part of the world where it seemed people were more focused on their own experiences, less influenced by mass media, and certainly less involved in international warfare.
As we made our way south to the rim of the Mokelumne canyon, I walked the Stead and its cargo up several grueling hills. Onboard were an assortment of saved seeds, dried fruits and vegetables, my homegrown rice, a single change of clothes, and a few cooking utensils. Those first few hours taxed my strength and I often considered turning around. At last, I reached the rim of the canyon on the old Ponderosa Road, where the sun warmed my face and the journey suddenly became effortless, as the magical force of my dreams, optimism and intention carried me onwards.
By the afternoon of that first day I had almost reached Highway 4 on Summit Level Road when I heard my parents’ pick up behind me. The three of us savored the evening together looking back at the Jackson Butte and across the Great Valley to Mt Diablo. Over the next several days the scalar force of Yosemite pulled me through the stunning greens and golds of autumn. I arrived in Foresta in time for a wedding and the next day rode down into the Yosemite Valley to fulfill a cherished dream of free-soloing the East Buttress of El Capitan.
Then I turned East on the old Big Oak Flat/Foresta Road until it joined Highway 120 over the Tioga Pass. At the summit I donned all the clothes I had and sailed down to Lee Vining and then effortlessly out across the desert on Hwy 6, with a fierce freezing wind at my back. Two days later I was gliding no-handed past Joshua trees on the North Road into Death Valley National Park. That night in the Panamint Valley, a fighter jet dropped out of the east and did a barrel roll so close above me that I could feel the heat from the exhaust.
The next day I climbed the date palms at Furnace Creek Golf Course and filled my bags with their delectable fruits. Stead effortlessly carried me onward as we rolled into the lowest point in the USA and then out of Death Valley along the sandy bumps of South Road. That night the tranquil stillness of the full moon was shattered by the loudest booms I had ever heard. These booms reminded me of the mid-day booms I often heard in the foothills. The Mother Lode Booms were later discovered to be obsolete munitions destruction in Hawthorne, Nevada. (https://www.abc10.com/article/news/scientists-identify-source-of-mother-lode-mystery-booms/103-181857322) Lying in the dust I wondered if I was breathing the depleted uranium the people of Kosovo and Iraq were exposed to, all funded by my taxes.
The following morning, while pondering a path to universal peace, a Mojave green rattlesnake crossed directly in front of me just as my homemade rack fell off the bike. Twenty-four hours later after pedaling a hundred miles with the dry bag on my back, I arrived in Baker, California, where I wolfed down an enormous meal at a Greek fastfood restaurant. It was the first meal of food I hadn’t produced since leaving the farm. Then I went to find a new bike rack.
Baker is a highway town of blowing dust, flapping metal and dilapidated mobile homes. I could write a whole book on that day’s experience, but suffice it to say that by afternoon, a 30 pack of beer had granted me access to the junkyard and I had built myself a new rack. I was just about to set off South again when a local I’d shared a beer with earlier in the day showed up with a paperboy rack. Reason won out over my ego as I set aside the rack I had built. Twenty minutes later the Stead and I were sailing south with a rack that a month later would prove sturdier than the front end of a Pontiac traveling at 90mph.
Leaving Baker we traveled south and reached Amboy the next morning. Already parched by the desert heat, I gratefully turned the tap on the side of an abandoned gas station, which to my dismay only offered up a thick saline solution with which to fill my water bottles. I had little option but to push on through the salt flat for the next 120 miles to Joshua Tree. I arrived at Hidden Valley Campground the next afternoon, dehydrated and sore, but elated to meet up with my fellow climbers in the rocky wonderland.
For the next two weeks we feasted on food I had canned, delivered to camp a month earlier by my twin brother from a different mother, Bob. Our days followed a pleasant routine. Each morning we would free solo 15 or 20 rock climbing routes, have breakfast and then hike out to test our abilities with some much more challenging roped climbing. At night we regaled each other with stories around a pallet fire, fueled by hard booze, somewhat tempered with wholesome food.
I rose early on November 20 and packed the paperboy rack. After breakfast and a few solo pitches with friends, I mounted up, heading out of the park and then east along Highway 62. Vehicles seldom passed, but those that did hurtled by at such speed that I sheltered in the deep ditch below the road each time.
Bob was leaving for Prescott, Arizona that day and I traveled on in the fading light, waiting for him to pass by for one last hug before we bid farewell. The approaching whine of a speeding car warned me to take refuge in the ditch. I looked away to shield my eyes from the oncoming headlights, but a rising sense of unease compelled me to turn my gaze back to the west and I realized the car had left the road.
I leaped off the Stead and pushed it forward, just as the car careened through the spot where I had been a moment before. The bike bounced up from the car bumper and smashed through the windshield as the passenger side mirror knocked me to the ground. The Pontiac nosedived into the roadside berm, and I jumped up to see it rolling end over end through the creosote brush. On one of the rolls, the trunk opened, and marine uniforms flew out like confetti. Instinctively, I ran towards the vehicle as it rolled out of sight over a rise.
The wheels were still spinning when I reached the upside-down Grand Prix, but a young man in a red shirt with a Canadian maple leaf and the words “INVADE CANADA” screened on it had already scrambled out of the disabled vehicle. At first, he allowed me to sit him down and examine him, muttering, “I was just trying to scare you, sure didn’t think that would happen… guess this damn car isn’t a Humvee.” But soon the young Marine became combative. In shock, I walked back towards the road.
Still fifty yards from the white line, I watched in despair as Bob drove past in his white Toyota, unaware of the crash. I shivered and noticed the blood oozing from my shoulder for the first time. Twenty-five minutes later, Ian, the Marine, flagged down the next car that passed. The female motorist was kind enough to turn around until she got cell service and call both 911 and my friend Bob. Forty-five minutes later the authorities arrived.
It was now pitch dark and the temperature had dipped below freezing. I was standing there with long hair and un unkempt beard, wearing sandals, board shorts and a down jacket. I was treated like a vagrant by the authorities. No one could find the bike and I didn’t even have my wallet. When I started arguing with the road god that Ian was being put in the fire truck when he needed to go in the ambulance, I was handcuffed and placed in the back of the highway patrol car. Luckily Bob arrived a few minutes later and I was released.
Bob and I spent the night along one of the canals that steals water from the Colorado River to satiate Los Angeles. In the morning we returned to the crash site and found most of my belongings. I called my parents who decided to drive to Prescott to meet us for Thanksgiving. There, in a tiny studio apartment, we gathered to share a homegrown feast with some of my closest friends. That evening Michael Kriletich learned to hula-hoop to the beats of Blackalicious.
This series of events shattered my dream of moving to the Andes. I could no longer run away from what I continue to believe is a fascist militaristic society. My parents and I spent the next few days exploring Sedona, the Grand Canyon and the Dine ruins. On our return to the Sierra foothills, we received word that our friend Deirdre, a young mother of two, had been killed in a car crash. As I listened to the terrible news and saw Michael’s face blanch, I thought to myself “why do some of us get to stay?” Two months later I heard that Ian, the Marine, had died due to inadequate treatment for cerebral hemorrhaging suffered during our encounter. I asked myself again, “why do some of us get to stay?”
Since that fateful time, I have intentionally focused my energy, striving for the dream of developing bioregional community systems that operate free of the destruction wrought by the military industrial complex. That bellicose game of one upmanship results not only in wars, but also wastes vital resources, human, financial and material, feeding the machine’s insatiable appetite for research, development, and experimentation, with the planet as the testing ground.
Like it or not, we all play a tacit role in this destruction. Today, humanity is that Marine behind the wheel of the Pontiac who intentionally strayed from the road. Our current trajectory surely leads to destruction. However, we still have a moment to make a course correction and choose the road to universal peaceful consciousness. The future of life on Earth depends on our doing so. The future starts now.
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