Bicycle Tour of the West
Day 4 – Paso Robles to Frazier Park
A first taste of remote
“At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise… that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.â€Â - Albert Camus
Today is the longest planned day of my trip – 146 miles. The first 75 or 80 of those miles are across a remote section with no towns, no services, and barely any houses. I’m up well before first light, wolfing down leftover steak from the night before, and topping off the hydration tank. I’m on my bike and riding as the faintest light streaks the eastern sky. Continue reading “Day 4 – Paso Robles to Frazier Park”
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
by S.C.Gwynne Author’s website
I picked this up expecting a slog through a dry history book. However, for some reason I’m greatly attracted to the history, culture, and story of the Comanche people, so I was willing to put up with the slog.
To my surprise and delight, this book is neither a slog or a dry history book. The author does a tremendous job of telling the history of a people (as best we can know it) in a way that’s engaging and entertaining. The detail and thoroughness is truly impressive.
The only ding I would give it is the clear “European centric†viewpoint of the author. His words, phrasing, and context tell the story from the perspective of “true civilization†– the way we white’s wanted it to be. In his defense, he’s extremely fair in describing the events in a way that’s even-handed and exposes bias, prejudice, cruelty, and injustice on both sides. However, it’s always from that “white-centric†perspective.
It may be that in his shoes, this is the most fair way to tell the story. He does appear, after all, to be white of European descent, so telling the story from another perspective might be a bit disingenuous. However, I did find it a bit off-putting on occasion.
It has been a while since I read anything by Twain, and I’d forgotten just how delightful it is to read his stuff.
Folks who are pretty hung-up on political correctness will find it disturbing that Twain crafts his Adam and Eve characters around pretty common stereotypes of males and females. I wasn’t bothered by this at all, and found it quite interesting that the stereotypes from 150 years ago seem so consistent with our stereotypes from today.
This is a very quick read, but after finishing it, I found myself looking back through it and reading parts of it again. It’s full of little diary snippets where each of the pair describes both the Eden they live in, and this other creature that they have been paired and connected with.
I’ll be reading some additional Twain for sure, now that my taste for his wonderful wit and wisdom has been whetted again…
Dragons from the Sea – The Strongbow Sage, Book 2
by Judson Roberts Author’s website
I read the first of these recently, and really enjoyed it. I believe these are actually classified as books for teens or older teens – clearly targeted at boys and young men. The last time I fell into one of those categories, the Beetles were still together…
Nonetheless, I really like these books.
Here’s what his publisher or publicist writes about the books:
In Dragons from the Sea, book two of the Strongbow Saga, Halfdan Hroriksson has escaped—for now—the enemies who murdered his brother and seek to kill him, too. Determined to avenge his brother’s death, Halfdan knows he must first gain experience as a warrior. He joins a Danish army gathering for an invasion of Western Frankia, for among its fierce chieftains and seasoned warriors he may find the allies he needs. But first he must prove his own worth in battle, and more importantly, he must survive, for he will face dangers not only from the Frankish enemy, but also from hidden foes within the ranks of the Danes. The Strongbow Saga is an epic tale of one man’s unstoppable quest for justice and vengeance that carries him across the 9th century world of the Vikings. This new edition of book two of the series contains maps showing Halfdan’s travels in this installment of the story, plus the route of the Viking fleet that invaded Frankia in 845 A.D.
This is a book I was wishing wouldn’t end so quickly. The storytelling is outstanding, even if the character development is a bit simple. But again, these books are written for young men / teenagers – I’m not sure they’d appeal to that group as much if the author got into more complex character development.
In talking to Peggy about this book, (who often gets asked for recommendations as she’s blissfully librarianing away), and told her I thought this (and the series) would be one to recommend right alongside “The Three Musketeers†by Dumas.
Now, for the other stuff.
I understand that Judson Roberts has struck out on his own, leaving the publishing company who published his first 3 books. He is preparing to publish his fourth book on his own. I LOVE to see authors doing this – especially authors like Roberts who are good and proven writers. I’d like to encourage readers to support these literary entrepreneurs, who are the equivalent of a small business-person trying to eek out a living among multinational giants.
I loved the first 2 books, and have started the third. If you like adventure stories, pick these up and read them, and then find ways to stay connected to Roberts as he rolls out his next in the series – his first as an independent.
I met and interesting fella the other day. A fellow cyclist, I suspect he has several years on me. As is usually the case with cyclists when they first meet each other, we went to great lengths to talk about how slow we ride. This is interesting behavior that seems consistent among road cyclists, and a bit unique to them. In most sports, the bravado takes over, and guys talk about how good they are. With road cyclists, everyone is always talking about how slow they ride, and how weak they are, and how their bike could never go as fast as your bike. All in the hope, I suppose, that they’ll take you by surprise when the riding actually begins.
But I digress…
The conversation got me thinking about how much my style of cycling is a reflection of the way I live my life, and how much that’s changed over the years.
When I was a younger man, I liked sprinting. I was physically built more like a sprinter, and in most things I did – sports or otherwise – I went at them pretty hard and relentlessly. Point A to Point B was what I was all about, with a strong focus on getting to Point B as fast as possible.
Today, I’m much more of a savorer than I am a sprinter. While I’m still aware of Point B in front of me, and I still arrive at Point B, I’m much more focused on savoring the moments along the path between Point A and Point B than I am with reaching Point B in record time.
I like to keep my head up these days, and make sure I catch the nuances of the world as I pass through it. I like to sniff the air often, to make sure I don’t miss some particularly sensual scent as it moves across me. When I hear some crickets or lizards singing beside the road, I’m much more likely to stop and soak in the sound for a few minutes.
This summer – on my bicycle journey from Monterey, CA back to Colorado, I had one day that I’d worried about as it was coming up. It was a 120 mile day across the Mojave Desert in June, the first 90 miles of which had no houses, services, or other ways to supply myself with water. I was on my own, and if ever there was a need to stay focused on Point B, that was the day.
A tailwind developed for me, and I knew if that wind continued, I could make record time in the day. Back in my sprinter days, I would have poured on the coal, and not let up until I reached the end. Instead, I stopped and took pictures often, (almost 100 pictures that day I think), and left several voice recordings. I was so wrapped-up in the joy of that tailwind that I didn’t really care about a record time.
On one stretch, the road was a gentle descent for over 10 miles. With the tailwind, I was able to gently coast down the empty highway, rolling by bicycle from side to side, enjoying the hot breeze and the sounds of the desert lizards on the side of the road. Sure I could have grabbed a great big gear and screamed down the descent at 40 MPH, but I would have missed that gentle rhythm of rolling the bike from side to side, and the song of the lizards, not to mention the gorgeous scenery unfolding around me.
The wind stayed behind me all day, and it turns out I did set a record for myself, averaging over 20 MPH over that 120 miles. Never for a second do I wish I would have pushed harder to set a better record. The joy of that day cycling still lingers in my memory today.
Point B is still on my mind, and there’s no doubt I enjoy getting there, but I enjoy it so much more now that I’ve leaned to savor the space between Point A and Point B more than I once did.
I sat with a chapel full of people on Saturday, and said goodbye to an old friend. While he was 71, his death was still a bit sudden and unexpected. Much like the death of my father, (which I write about in Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty), my friend’s death was preceded by a coma of some short duration.
It’s a common theme today – one that most families will face in one way or another. A loved one sustained mechanically and electronically, while their mind and body seems to be reaching for the thing that’s next after this life. The journey takes it’s toll on those who must make the difficult decisions on behalf of the stricken loved one, though I feel the toll extracted is much larger than it needs to be.
We count on those around us to have the courage to make the hard decisions that must be made on our behalf when we can’t make them ourselves. We count on the love of those closest to us to help us successfully negotiate the end of this life when we need that help. Providing that help should be an honor, not a burden. Being chosen, or asked, or even forced by circumstance into that role of both honor and pain is a privilege we should bear with pride.
The words just roll right on to this page, as-if it’s easy. But it’s not. I hope and pray that we can evolve our culture to fear death less, and to embrace all aspects of this wonderful journey we call life – including that final aspect we call dying. But until that happens, I’m certain I’ll continue to see the deep pain and heavy burden of hard decisions on the loved-ones who do the right thing for those who trust them to make good and right decisions.
While I don’t look forward to death, I also have no fear of it. I’ve had several quite mystical and spiritual experiences in life that have left me completely confident in the uncertainty that lies beyond that vague window at the end of this journey. These, also, I write about in Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty.
It may be that my end comes as a rapid and certain event, or it may be that I’ll need the help of those whom I love to find that window at the end of the journey when it’s time. In the event that I do need that help, I do all I can while I live to make sure those folks I count on for that help understand in advance how much I’m counting on them, and how much I appreciate the love and the courage they’ll show in helping me.
It’s a discussion we should all have, but a discussion that’s hampered by the fear of death that we seem to have in our culture. Getting over that fear should be a primary focus of growing up, shouldn’t it?
Not sure how I missed reading this classic in high school, but I must have, because I remember nothing about it. It’s pretty common fare for high school literature classes, and I think my kids have all read it.
Here’s the Amazon description of the book:
“In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write “something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned.” That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald’s finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author’s generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald’s–and his country’s–most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning–” Gatsby’s rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.
It’s also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means–and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel’s more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy’s patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.”
What a great story it is though. It reminded me of how “cheap†words have become in these days when we can all crank out so many of them on a keyboard at 100+ WPM. I’m as guilty as anyone else. As someone trying to build a living as a writer, it’s quite critical for me to get lots of “stuff†out there in the market. To publish lots of blog postings, and do lots of guest posts, and send out many emails.
But in the end, the written word suffers. In Fitzgerald’s writing, you can feel the depth of the prose, and understand clearly the care that went into the construction of each sentence. It was really a rich reading experience, and made me realize how “cheap†words have become today, and how rare it is to read something with the sort of richness you can find in an author from this era like Fitzgerald.
As enjoyable to me as the richness of the prose was the depth of the characters he built. This is one I listened to as an audio book, and Tim Robbins was the actor who read it. I suspect that some of that character depth may have been the really excellent job that Robbins did, but even accounting for that, I really enjoyed the characters. Gatsby especially was a character whom I could see and feel deeply as the story moved around him.
A bonus of this audio version was a series of letters Fitzgerald wrote in the years as he was trying to get Gatsby published – letters to his publisher and others. I think I enjoyed listening to these letters almost as much as to the story.
I will say that had I read this book in high school, I don’t think I would have gotten nearly as much out of it. My identification with and enjoyment of the characters could happen because life’s experiences have given me a deep pool from which to draw empathy, and my appreciation of the prose is enhanced in comparison to what I feel capable of as a writer.
Corsair – An Oregon Files Story
by Clive Cussler and Jack DuBrul Author’s website
Another in the Oregon Files series, right out of the same mold that seems pretty successful for Cussler and DuBrul. While I like the characters, I’ve got to say I’m getting tired of the interjection of the authors’ politics into the characters. There’s no good reason I should object to this – it’s part of the character they’re creating. However, I do find it very objectionable.
I suppose it has to do mostly with the fact that the political bent that is represented is very different than the one my mind creates for the characters, and that creates dissonance for me as a reader. Just goes to demonstrate how much we invest of ourselves into the characters we create in our minds with the help of authors.
Here’s the author’s (or publicist’s) description of the book:
“When the U.S. secretary of state’s plane crashes while bringing her to a summit meeting in Libya, the CIA, distrusting the Libyans, hire Juan Cabrillo to search for her, and their misgivings are well founded. The crew locates the plane, but the secretary of state has vanished. It turns out Libya’s new foreign minister has other plans for the conference, plans that Cabrillo cannot let happen. But what does it all have to do with a two- hundred- year-old naval battle and the centuries-old Islamic scrolls that the Libyans seem so determined to find? The answers will lead him full circle into history, and into another pitched battle on the sea, this time against Islamic terrorists, and with the fate of nations resting on its outcome.”
I see I have one more of this series to read (actually listen to as it’s on my iPod). I’m guessing this next one will be the last of them I’ll read, just because of this dissonance between what I want the characters to be and what the author turns them into.
All that said, it’s an adventure story, and it’s written as a good and enjoyable adventure story. As Cussler books go, I prefer the Isaac Bell series, followed by the NUMA series. This one probably ranks pretty low in my ranking of his series.
A Bicycle Adventure Across The West: Day 3 – Lucia to Paso Robles
A Steep and Beautiful Climb Away From The Coast
“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.”  - Hermann Buhl
I’ve only got 70-something miles to go today, so I have another leisurely morning, enjoying breakfast. I know there’s a steep climb first thing out, but figure it can’t be that bad, and then the rest of the day should be easy.
Dave Meyers, (the fella I met the night before), is finishing up his early breakfast as I sit down, and he’s headed out for an early start on the day. We’ll both end up at Paso Robles tonight, so I could see him along the way. After a leisurely breakfast, I walk outside, hanging out and enjoying the beautiful morning.
A car pulls up with two young girls in it. They’re visiting from France, and apparently couldn’t afford the prices at the Inn, so decided to just sleep in their car. They look like their night’s sleep was not a good one, and I chat a bit with them before getting on the bike and heading down the road. I’m a couple miles down the road before it dawns on me that I should have offered them the use of my room to shower and rest. Of course, the folks who own the Lucia Lodge wouldn’t have been happy had they found out about it – they missed out on the chance to move a little more silver into their pocket. But the girls would have appreciated it I’m sure, and I could have bragged about the two pretty French girls who spent the morning in my hotel room. I would have left out the part about me not being there… Life’s about creating good stories…
Headed south through Big Sur on the morning of Day 3
The first four miles follow the coastline up to the point where the road is closed, at which time I turn left, cross a cattle grate, and begin climbing on the Nacimiento Road. Those first four miles are really enjoyable, since there’s not a car on the road with the road closure. The morning air is cool and moist, and I savor the coastline, knowing this will be the last bit of riding I’ll get alongside it.
After crossing the cattle grate, I drop into my lowest possible gear, and will rarely leave that gear for the next hour and 20 minutes or so. I’d been told it was a steep climb, but hey, I live in Colorado and climb steep grades all the time. Such arrogance… The climb is a little under 3000 feet in about 7 miles – about 400 feet a mile, an average of 7% to 8%. A couple spots hit 16% and 18%.
Continuing to climb away from Big Sur - on a VERY STEEP road
That’s steep, and the extra weight I’ve packed isn’t helping at all during the climb. I stay lathered in a nice coat of sweat thanks to the hard work of climbing. I stop to take pictures a few times, but the chilly air gets me moving again quickly to stay warm.
The road is really quite beautiful, and the views back down onto the coast from the steep mountainside are stunning. There are spots where you’re climbing through stands of towering Redwood, and other spots where you’re pedaling beneath lichen-covered branches that overhand the road. Mixed in are vistas with views that seem to go forever back down the mountains and across the Pacific.
Looking back north along Big Sur on the steep climb over the coastal range
As I’m climbing, the support van from the touring group I passed yesterday passes me. Turns out they’d sagged the cyclists up to the top of this steep climb, and the cyclists then rode from there to their next destination. I wave at them as they pass. Their route is slightly different from mine over the next few days, and I’ll get ahead of them and not see them again. By the time I get to Colorado, they’ll be about a week behind me.
At the summit of the climb, I put on my jacket and start a cold descent. The road twists and turns as it drops, and after about 10 minutes or so of shivering, I’ve descended into warmer air that’s noticeably more dry than the air on the other side of the mountain.
It’s amazing how quickly the landscape changes from one side of the coastal range to the other. On the wet side of the mountain, there were towering Redwoods and plants that were almost tropical. This dry side of the mountain, though, reminds me a lot of my home in Colorado, heavy with grasslands and pine.
Reaching the base of the descent, the road passes through the gate into Ft Hunter-Liggett. In normal times, the gate is manned, and you’ve got to show your drivers license and proof of insurance if you’re in a car. However, since highway 1 is closed, and traffic is diverted to this road, the gate isn’t manned, and I pass right through.
The base of one of the giant oak trees on the inland side of the coastal range in Ft Hunter-Liggett
Largely deserted, the highway is a beautiful ride through oak savanna. I believe the oak trees that are abundant along this ride are Valley Oaks. They’re giant trees, massive trunks and beautifully shaped crowns. These trees are up to 600 years old, and I stop and enjoy a little rest, leaning my bike and my back against one of these old ents, soaking up that ancient energy again.
Continuing along Nacimiento-Fergusson road to Mission Rd, I make my way through Ft Hunter-Liggett, eventually coming to what they call “the G-14â€. (An unusual language usage in this part of California is that people refer to roads like that – “the G-14â€, or “the 1â€, meaning highway 1.)
I head southeast along the G-14 into a headwind that’s a little frustrating. It’s not a heavy wind, but I’d had my expectations set for that NW wind that is supposed to be blowing this time of year. For much of the ride, the wind is very light, but at times, it gets between my ears and messes with me…
At Lockwood the road turns right. There’s really no town or anything else here, just a tiny store on the corner, and I stop and calorie-up a bit. As I’m sitting in the shade, I eavesdrop on a conversation some locals are having. A gal has gotten a new job with the county, and she’s telling her friends all about it. After they leave, I go over and talk to her, as I’m interested in what she does.
Turns out she catches bugs. I’m in wine country now, (though I haven’t really seen the evidence yet), and they go to great lengths to assure that certain particularly destructive bugs don’t make their way into their region. She goes around all day setting traps, and investigating what she catches. She’s really excited about her job and what she does, and tells me WAY more than I need or want to know about bugs. I politely tell her I’ve got to make my way down the road, and pedal off, leaving her making notes about bugs in her bug log.
Another 20 miles down the road is a little intersection called Bee Rock. I catch up with Dave Meyers here at Bee Rock, and we enjoy a sandwich together. Like Lockwood, there’s nothing here but a store. The store here is much friendlier than the one at Lockwood, with nice tables to sit at. Dave and I enjoy a nice long lunch here, chatting and enjoying the beautiful day. When I’m ready to leave, Dave isn’t quite ready, so I head up the road ahead of him.
And up it is. For the first 2 or 3 miles out of Bee Rock, there’s a steep little climb that’s a bit of a surprise. My legs are toast after the climbing this morning, so they complain quite a bit headed up over this grade. At the top of the grade, though, there are beautiful views in most directions. Lake Nacimiento is off to the right, and Lake San Antonio is behind and off to the left.
The views after climbing south from Bee Rock
From here to Paso Robles, the road gets quite a bit busier, with steady rollers lasting a good bit of the way. The road has little or no shoulder in spots, making for a few nervous moments with cars and trucks squeezing me to the edge of the pavement. By the time I reach Paso Robles, the wind has turned a bit, and sometimes quarters at my back. Still a light wind, but anything not in my face is appreciated.
Paso Robles is a nice little town. I can easily see coming here for a little vacation. It’s quite bicycle-friendly, and smaller than I expected. It’s probably not much more than a mile from the north end of town to the south. It’s a warm “homecoming†sense I get when I see my hotel – a feeling that I’ll come to expect and look forward to at the end of each day. I know there’s a warm shower and a soft bed waiting for me.
Tonight, I’m using Marriott points and staying at The Courtyard in town. It’s a great little hotel, and the folks are quite friendly and helpful. After I get checked-in and showered-up, I spread my stuff out on the bed, and start sorting through to create my second package to send back home. The steep climb this morning, followed by rollers all afternoon, taught me a hard lesson (again) about weight. I send home my iPad, iPod, tiny speaker, Kindle, 700-lumen headlight, all the chargers associated with this electronic stuff, 3 or 4 of my tubes (leaving me still with 3 or 4), and probably a few other items. While I don’t put stuff on the scale, it seems to me that I’ve cut my weight in half with this package.
It’s a nice lesson to me on simplicity and minimalism. When I was packing for the trip, I remember laying everything out, and going through some dry-run packs. I’d thought about trying to bring the iPad with me – I’d even found a pretty strong case with a keyboard built-in – seemed like the perfect solution for somebody like me who likes to write when I have a little spare time. The iPad only weighs a couple pounds or so – not a big deal. And of course the Kindle was pretty small too, and weighed only half a pound or so.
In the end, I had in my mind that I wanted to stay under 20 pounds, and I was able to do this and still carry many of these items that I might find handy. It all fit – why not take it?
Sitting in my room in Paso Robles, after climbing during the day that felt much more brutal than it should have, I have my answer. My culture has taught me that it’s “good†to have everything you might need. Having something is good, being without something is bad. That’s the world-view from which I’ve developed my values and guiding principles.
So of course, the lens through which I’d been looking when I packed was one of “how much can I take, within my constraints?†Tonight, looking down at all my gear spread out on the bed, my lens has changed a bit. Now, I’m looking at my gear, and asking instead, “how little can I survive with?â€
It might seem like a small difference, but it makes a big difference in what gets packed. Frankly, it makes a big difference in how I look at every day of this trip I’m on. Tossing my iPod in the package to ship home, there’s no whisper in my ear asking me to consider, “but you might want to listen to podcasts or tunes…†I’m delighted to put as much into the package home as I can, with no regrets or “what if†second thoughts.
Climbing away from the Big Sur coastline
Getting rid of stuff is a cleansing sensation. Almost like “stuff†weighs down the soul. It happens to me when I clean stuff out of my house too – a liberating sense of “giving†and “lightness†happens after I go through and give away (or toss) large swaths of stuff.
I think it’s a “place in life†thing to some extent. When I was younger, I seemed more focused on “accumulating†than on “distributing and cleansingâ€. At the point I’m now at in life, I find myself constantly re-evaluating just how much “stuff†I want around me. Accumulated stuff is clutter and flotsam that I’ve got to wade through over and over again. It keeps me from moving along the path. It’s as though each “thing†I accumulate attaches a string deep into my heart and soul, connecting me to the thing itself, making continued movement down the path difficult.
Why do we do this? It feels like an addiction we’ve developed – an addiction to accumulation. This little tendency to take a little too much with me on a bike ride is one tiny symptom, but if I look at my culture at a much higher level, it seems we’ve built our entire civilization on the same addiction and sickness. Look at how much of our life’s energy we put into “accumulating wealthâ€. This is seen as a very good thing, this accumulation of wealth. We advertise how much wealth we’ve accumulated with the homes we live in, the cars we drive, and our pride in our continued pursuit of greater wealth.
We’ve accumulated so much wealth that there’s no way most of us would even attempt to climb the tough hills and mountains of the back roads of life. Instead, the vast majority of us stay on the flat and busy interstate highway system, where everyone else is. It’s just the way we live – stay on the well-traveled and flat expanse of “the bypassâ€, and you don’t need to confront the difficult climbs and rollers in life.
Continuing to climb away from Big Sur - on a VERY STEEP road
But that’s where the best life has to offer is – out there along the steep and windy backroads. The questions and issues are hard ones, and require deep and honest introspection, but the rewards are beyond words. I’m pretty sure that’s where we find the doorways to heaven – out there along those difficult backroads of life where the climbs are steep and the roads wind their way through tough questions.
Looking back to the great sages of the last few thousand years, I find that message loud and clear. I grew up in a Christian tradition, and Jesus was pretty clear when admonishing followers to avoid the temptation of accumulation of wealth. He instructed followers to leave all they owned behind if they wanted to become a disciple. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, He said, than for a wealthy man to be able to find heaven.
Morning along the Big Sur coastline
That’s on my mind this evening, as I look with satisfaction at the pile of “stuff†I’m sending back home. I’m grateful to have met Dave Meyers yesterday, as his inspiration gives me a bit more confidence in taking the drastic approach I’m taking. I don’t have any illusions of finding heaven on this trip, but the last thing I want is 7 or 8 extra pounds in my bag that might slow me down if I catch a little glimpse…
Sex at Dawn – The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha Author’s website
This was really a fun book. While it certainly does hold true to it’s billing – talking about how our sexual behavior may have developed as we’ve evolved as a modern creature – it’s really about more than sex.
I suspect that if a reader has really rigid ideas about what human nature is, and how people can, do, and should relate to one another, they will be troubled by the book. The ideas in the book really did cause me to re-think quite a bit about what I thought was “general and accepted wisdom”.
Here’s the author’s (or publicist’s) description of the book:
“In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, SEX AT DAWN unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do. A controversial, idea-driven book that challenges everything you know about sex, marriage, family, and society.”
The book uses our adaptations and development of sexual behavior to explore the notions of ownership and control in our modern cultures, and how this may differ dramatically from the deeper “human nature†that developed as we evolved. The book develops a heck of an interesting argument about the “nature of human nature†with regard to how we “own†and “hoard†assets, taking and controlling as much as we can.
We’ve taught ourselves for many generations that this is the nature of the human – to conquer, take, and control assets. Our stated sexual expectations reflect our insistence on making sex reflect these values of selfishness, even when the actual behavior of the vast majority of humans makes it clear that meeting these expectations is not part of the true nature we developed over our evolution prior to recent times.
But is this conquering, taking, and controlling really part of our most basic nature? The authors make a heck of an interesting argument that it’s only since the agricultural age began that we’ve developed these traits of ownership and control – that prior to this the bulk of the evidence suggests that we lived in very cooperative and egalitarian groups. They argue that the group survived and thrived because of this tendency to share openly and to help one-another. Hoarding and selfishness were likely among the worst of “sins†an individual could commit. The very antithesis of our values today.
Of course, the authors spend a great deal of time discussing how sex likely played a role in this sort of culture, and present some pretty convincing evidence to back up their ideas. But to me, the more important ideas were the more broad ideas about how cultures likely operated.
I’m no anthropologist, so maybe these ideas have been out there for a long time, and nobody has brought them into mainstream thinking. If so, what a shame that we continue to reinforce and convince ourselves that the selfish and warlike tendencies that get us into so much trouble are simply part of our “natureâ€, when there’s pretty convincing evidence that this simply isn’t the truth. By nature, we’re more likely to be very cooperative, selfless, and egalitarian. We’ve just done a great job of teaching ourselves to operate against our nature.
I’d really recommend this book. It’s not at all an “academic†book, and it reads quickly and easily. I can only imagine the changes we might be able to make within our culture if we were able to get folks to stop and think a bit about how we got to this selfish and warlike state that defines our “nature†today.
Today is the longest planned day of my trip – 146 miles. The first 75 or 80 of those miles are across a remote section with no towns, no services, and barely any houses. I’m up well before first light, wolfing down leftover steak from the night before, and topping off the hydration tank. I’m on my bike and riding as the faintest light streaks the eastern sky. Continue reading “Day 4 – Paso Robles to Frazier Park”
