Blazes

A week before Election Day, the husband and I drove six hours west on I-70 to the town of Fruita, on the sun-warmed Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains. Our campsite was a short walk from the banks of the Colorado river. Gold-topped cottonwoods offered shade, and renegade fall mosquitos flew in clouds around our heads. I could almost forget about the pandemic, about the anger and fear swirling in its wake.

In a burst of forgetful optimism, we went to a Chinese restaurant, deciding that if it got crowded, we could leave.  But soon after we dug in to our steaming entrees, a short woman with light brown hair and no mask stomped past the Masks Required sign that was posted by the door. Her bare-faced family trailing behind, she paused only to tell a carefully masked and gloved server, We’ll go to our favorite table. And there she strode, with a look on her face that said nobody was going to stop her. Certainly not the staff, all of whom, I think, were immigrants and who know much better than I how much casual racism has been give free rein when the sitting US president uses terms like Wuhan Flu and Chinese Plague.

Was I angry first or scared first as we took a few more bites and rose to leave? And was it the fright or the outrage that roiled more powerfully in my belly? Almost immediately, it felt good to resent this woman, to know that she was wrong, wrong, wrong. Us-versus-them thinking, in which we are always the better people, might be built into human DNA. But that doesn’t mean I want to play along, to taste the sourness of self-righteous anger like bad whiskey on the tongue.

As we drove to Moab the next morning, I sang along to Alanis Morissette’s song “Ablaze,” in which she cautions her young children about Some separation from each other, yes it’s a lie we’ve been believing through time immemorial. But I struggled with how satisfying my resentment toward that smug woman felt.  Anger is one thing–a natural and often clarifying emotion. But a grudge is something else; resentment morphs into a heavy and barbed burden. The trick is reminding myself, over and over, that I can put that weight down. And yes, the fact that contemplative biking is part of my package of privilege is not lost on me. Easier to feel the oneness of all life with a full belly and secure housing, not to mention the presumed acceptance that my whiteness still too-often conjures. I’m spoiled and I’m forgetful, losing my way every single day.

Amid the shales and sandstones of Moab’s trails, where shrubs grow in low gaps between rock slabs and root in crevices along cliff walls, few options exist for way-finding. Blazes painted directly on slick-rock hummocks dot the route like lane markers. But a rider must trust the blazes, must believe that the dashes do, in fact, reveal the optimal route. Trusting the blazes, even when they seem at first glance to offer a more difficult path, could save you mashing your body between a bike and a very hard place.

As I pedal up and down under blue sky, still ruminating about the maskless woman, I trust the blaze that tells me I can’t hate just one person. I look for the loving blaze that tells me to be less afraid and more generous. I swoop and swerve and am reminded that gravity will be gravity. The world will be the world. And a more loving perception is always an option.

Post-election, we are home in Denver where Covid 19 marches relentlessly on its own destructive path. Close friends get sick. Two of my nephews test positive. A week later, after a few unmasked minutes with a loved one who soon got sick, we isolate. We wait for our own test results. Thanks in part to sheer dumb luck, they come back negative. Our loved ones were also lucky, recovering well from non-severe cases. And this week, the election results are sticking, like yesterday’s soothing blanket of snow.

Today, gratitude hunkers down with us, mingling with memories of that restaurant and those blazes of light. I see the yellow-crowned cottonwood framing our view from camp under a blue dusk sky, how the perfect black commas of starlings flew and circled, then fell like rain to their evening roost. A perfect trip, really, one to draw joy from over a long winter.