Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [36]
Much of bicycling is hard. Besides hills, there’s weather and potholes and cars to contend with. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Bicycling doesn’t let me off the hook from the galaxy of impending environmental disasters that seem headed straight to earth, but the clicks of simple gears and the deep breaths I take coasting downhill reassure me there is a plan B, and that I am living it. It doesn’t matter as much if gas becomes unaffordable or disappears like the dinosaur; riding my bike means I can ignore short-term stuff like car payments and be at peace for the long-term about how I’m going to get around. Beat that, post office: neither global warming nor an end to oil will be able to knock me from my twelve-miles-an-hour pace.
More difficult than the actual biking has been the disbelief from car-commuters, also known as my friends and relatives. Before gas prices went up the question I got most was Why? (Lately I think car-commuters have been answering that one themselves.) Now they’re on to a new one: how do you do that?
In fact, the how has been the easiest part: I move one pedal and then the other, and keep going. I pack rain gear, just in case, and have slowly learned to take advantage of big bike bags and what’s within my biking radius: the close grocery store and eye doctor and bank, the flatter routes and quieter streets.
The more uphill battle has been trying to convince those who ask How? that it’s not just me who’s capable of pushing down one pedal, then other, and eventually ending up somewhere. Spinning classes and Lance Armstrong have put recreational bicycling on the map, but bicycling with a full load of groceries in work attire still challenges our ideas of business—or cycling—as usual.
What’s left mostly unsaid when people ask How? is a statement of belief: “I could never do that.” It’s the same kind of self-doubting and self-defeating feeling I had when I first began to model myself on the P.O. We believe we are not strong in the bike-to-work sort of way; we know we do not have or like or look good in skin-fitting clothing, we are overwhelmed by the logistics of such a venture.
But our beliefs about ourselves sometimes get in the way of who we are and who we are becoming. These days, with my bike routinely dusted and its tires properly pumped, I know that we do not have to be strong to begin. We do not have to feel invincible to make it from location A to location B. We do not have to be young, or European, or look good in Spandex. We don’t have to know exactly what we’ll do when it first begins to rain, and we don’t have to keep on biking when we’re tired and on an uphill.
We merely must be willing to begin: to begin to see another way and to be willing to see ourselves in another way; to keep moving through whatever comes, be it drought or self-doubt or uphills or downhills. And so with my bike carry-ons, I carry on, delivering the messages of pleasure and freedom that come bungeed to this forgotten choice: adapting, shifting, coasting, and preparing for a sea change as, pedal by pedal, I find myself moving once again.
Dana Goldman has worked as a writer, public radio journalist, teacher, and wilderness guide. Her work has appeared on National Public Radio, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and in the anthology Quarter Passed. She lives in her hometown, Atlanta, and is now studying to be a licensed professional counselor. In between classes, she facilitates outdoor explorations with her husband and his company, Sure Foot Adventures (www.surefootadventures.com).
Every Day We Choose
FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ
Living fully during a time of historic crisis for our planet is possible, I believe, only if we are able to grasp how our individual choices address its very roots. The planetary social and environmental catastrophe we face can feel overwhelming. But I’ve learned that even when a task seems huge—cleaning out the attic