The Right Moments

The low points in a trip offer much. Grand stories that become grander in the frequency of telling. They offer humor and pain to bring forth sympathy and startled yelps of laughter from those who weren't there.

But the high points, the Right Moments are the ones that stick. The points along the trip that make it memorable. They cling like small limpet mines, waiting to explode at just the right time and cascade lush, profound memories over your monkey brain aching with the labors of normal life.

There are the moments when you realize, right down to your marrow, that you are no longer home. Like Dorothy peering at the Land of Oz and proclaiming it anything but Kansas.

Standing in North Dakota, looking at the first hint of prairie and deep washes worn smooth by the constant wind. This west coast born and raised native learns that the Midwest is anything but a tabletop. Suddenly I am twelve again and devouring a book about the plains Indians that my grandmother had given me. I smell the grass. I feel the wind threatening to etch my bones like the hills beside me.

Cursing the engineer who designed the weak lights on my bike as I drift through a Louisiana swamp. Praising the full moon lighting my way. I have heard others talk of the voodoo creepiness of these places. But now I am feeling the slide guitar strum on the nerves in my neck. The deep humid smells of rotting death birthing life paint the inside of my head as I go to meet someone I have never met before but who serves a restful haven to my storm battered self.

The sweet cold ache of home made horchada on a hot Austin night.

Squatting at the foot of red Arizona cliffs, watching the sun drop to the west. Feeling the cold wind rise up out of bed. Admiring the ochre dust painting my boots as I sit in the shadow of Everett Ruess.

Feeling the cool rain of my home pulling me back as I push those last few miles in the dark. The weight of miles and days resting on aching calloused shoulders. The warm ache of needing a bed shared. The deep need to be mauled by a candy-sticky son.

These are the moments of a long ride that lodge themselves deep. They are kept in your pocket and polished by the years. They are there to be removed and smiled over when the cold winters draw maps of your journeys in the window frost.