Be Brave, Be Strong

by Jill Homer

  I looked up at the tall nylon ceiling, flapping in the night breeze. It was only my second night in the large tent, the one we purchased together to serve as our home away from home over the long summer. That was in late March, well into our trip planning. Did Geoff know then that he was going to break up with me?

  I listened to my restless heart pound as the silence swirled. After what seemed like hours Geoff asked me if I was “okay with things.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t have much of a choice, at this point.”

  “Good,” Geoff said. “Because you still mean a lot to me. I want things to be good between us.”

  I felt strong affection for Geoff, and I tried to fight it. The words that passed between us were going to be mostly meaningless at this point, because they wouldn’t do much more than assuage his guilt and massage my ego. I was too tired to argue, too resigned to question. I just wanted to sleep beside him for one more night and pretend the big tent still had room for both of us, in a world where two people really could find complete fulfillment in partnership and didn’t have to troll the lonely desert in search of something more. Everything Geoff said only confirmed this delusion wasn’t true, but after two days of solitude, there was something soothing about simply listening to the sound of his voice. We talked until 2 a.m., about running and Juneau, about the Great Divide and the blank slate of the future, until my heart slowed down and I drifted in and out of consciousness. Geoff said good night and I dropped immediately into a hard, dreamless sleep.

  The next morning, I chugged two more quarts of Gatorade. Geoff dropped me off at the top of the White Rim, a wide plateau that covered the heights of a region known as Island in the Sky. I dropped down the steep, rocky gravel road and pedaled hard along the rolling sandstone shelf that rose more than a thousand feet from the Colorado River. Towering pinnacles cast long shadows over the red sand, which was dotted with salt brush and yellow sprigs of rice grass. I felt significantly stronger than I had on either the first or second morning of the trip, the result of a couple gallons of liquid and a successful straddle over my typical day-two hump. My theory about long-distance cycling was that it only took two days to get over the worst of the mental and physical fatigue, and then pedaling became second nature for an indefinite number of days after that. I could only hope that my theory was true.

  Still, on day three of my desert tour, miles had never come more easily. The hard sun throbbed in a cloudless sky and temperatures climbed into the eighties, and then low nineties. But I was surrounded in the cool breeze of my own swift movement. Sweat streamed down my skin. The day seemed like it had hardly begun when I reached mile fifty. The trail made a series of slow climbs that culminated in a pinnacle-cresting monster of a climb called Murphy’s Hogback. I dismounted my bike and walked up — no need to kill myself — and greeted a group of vehicle-supported, multi-day touring cyclists at the top. Despite that fact that it was mid-May and this was one of the more popular distance rides near Moab, the group was only the second I had seen all day. Six or seven mountain bikers crowded around the bed of a white truck as the driver sat next to a clear five-gallon jug of water and doled out refilled bottles. The jug looked nearly empty — only a thin layer of liquid sloshed around the bottom as he poured — and I didn’t see any other provisions in the back of the truck. Maybe they had another vehicle further down or a nearby camp. Most cyclists take two or three days to ride the White Rim, with vehicle support, and they camp along the way. But as I passed the group, they regarded me indifferently, their eyes glazed with fatigue and their faces coated in white salt. I wondered if they were truly that low on water, but they had that truck, which could certainly head up the canyon and fetch more for them. I didn’t have anything I could offer them, so it didn’t feel right asking them if they had any to spare.

  I said hello and goodbye and dropped down the Hogback, toward another open, shadeless plateau. It was just after 1 p.m., and I was proud of the time I was making — fifty-three miles in four hours. At this rate, I’d complete the loop before dark. I had been slightly concerned that six liters of water wasn’t going to be enough, but confident enough in my supply and sure enough about the limited water on the route that I left my filter with Geoff. Which is why I was beyond shocked when hollow slurping sound rang through my water tube, indicating there was nothing left in the bladder.

  I stopped and opened up my pack, removing the shriveled red bladder from its pocket with a sinking feeling of dread. What happened? Did it spring a leak? I would have felt the water running down my back. Did I really burn through six liters of liquid in fifty miles? What about the next fifty? I knew the trail dropped down to the Green River eventually, but that was at least twenty miles away. And everything before that was just open, barren plateau, where even puddles of urine only wet the sand for a few short minutes before disappearing.

  Sweat evaporated from my skin as I stood in the sun. I felt dizzy. Far below, the Colorado River churned toward its nearby confluence with the Green. As a bird flies, the greatest river in the West was less than two miles away. But the sheer cliffs dividing the river from the plateau made it seem as far away as Alaska.

  I pedaled a few more miles, feeling increasingly more distressed. Dark blotches began to cloud my vision, and a thick, salty film formed around my lips. I stopped frequently to try to assess whether or not I was about to pass out, but I genuinely could not tell. I had no knowledge of desert thirst. I had been an Alaska cyclist for too long, too concerned with warding off hypothermia to pay attention to dehydration. But I did know that my strength was flagging, that I felt weaker and more helpless than I had during my mental collapse on the foggy hills of the Marin Headlands, and that I was still a daunting distance from the only thing I truly needed — water.

  I stopped near a shallow rock outcropping and crouched beside the hot sandstone. In the afternoon sun it provided just a strip of shade, not even large enough to reach my legs or tall enough to cover my head. It was the only shade for miles. Everything else was barren, open and blazing beneath waves of heat-condensed air. I tried to force down some gummy bears and pumpkin seeds, hoping that the sugar and electrolytes would somehow bring me back to balance. I wondered if I should crouch in this spot until nightfall, and seek out the river when the relentless sun had faded. But shade was nearly nonexistent, and I knew that spending more hours in the hot sun would only hurt my chances.

  For the first time in the trip, I felt truly scared. I was in completely unknown territory, a place where heat kills much more swiftly than extreme cold. The heat wasn’t too extreme — my thermometer indicated 94 degrees — but it was more than I had experienced in well over a year, and I was in direct sunlight, atop pale, heat-reflecting sand, without water. I knew the details didn’t really matter. My only choice was to continue moving. I might meet another group of touring cyclists along the way, or campers willing to share with me. I might not. But, either way, I had to find water.

  The trail dropped slowly off the plateau, so gradually that I still felt like I was pedaling uphill. The smooth surface of the Green River snaked below, taunting me with obsessions about ice-cold quarts of Gatorade and Coke-flavored Slurpees. After nearly three hours of increasingly slower mileage readings on my odometer, I reached the Green River basin, still out of sight of water. I continued along the road, wondering if I should leave the bike and walk directly toward the river. But the late afternoon sun had dipped low enough to be hidden behind the massive canyon walls, and in the shade I felt a renewed sense of confidence.

  The road eventually butted up against the river, which was still below a steep embankment. The loose, sandy slope seemed slightly dangerous; the frothing river looked like dirty dishwater that hadn’t been drained for days. I was desperate, but that was disgusting. I pulled out the complimentary map given to me by Canyonlands rangers and saw that there was a primitive campground not more than three miles away. Perhaps someone there would be able to give me clean water. And, if not, the road was
never more than a short distance from the river.

  A mile later, the sandy road began to climb again. My throat had withered beyond simply being dry to a hard, almost solid mass that made it difficult to swallow my own saliva, of which I didn’t have much left. The effort of climbing made my vision go dark, but I reasoned that it could only be a short hump because the road, as the nearly featureless map indicated, was supposed to follow the river.

  But the route continued to climb. I pedaled until I swooned, actually slumping sideways on my bike and jerking my body in the other direction just in time to stop myself from toppling over. I laughed because I was too tired to feel fear, but I was conscientious enough to realize that I was in bad shape. I slid off the bike and staggered up the road, taking slow, curving steps like a drunk driver trying to walk a straight line. My personal policeman was the bad decision I had made to ride away from the river without collecting water, my drunkenness the dehydration that had worked its way into my blood.

  I topped out on a narrow ledge five-hundred feet above the river, and saw with overwhelming relief that the road dropped quickly back to the dark brown line that mocked me far below. Although I felt too drunk to ride, I couldn’t help but coast as quickly as gravity would carry me to the bottom. I pushed my bike through a tangle of tamarisk, propped it against a cottonwood tree over a small clearing and started stripping off all my clothing. The Green River was known to be polluted with a number of parasites. I didn’t want to become too eager while I waited for my iodine tablets to kick in, so I planned to soak my body in the cool water for the entire half hour I was supposed to wait. I was certain I couldn’t ride another meter until I had liquid in my cells, so waiting seemed to be my only option. I walked naked to the silt-choked shoreline, where I sank to my knees in quicksand. I grabbed a tamarisk branch and yanked myself out, only to sink in even deeper with my other leg. The chocolate-colored water lapped alongside me, and I could see no way to drop into it without becoming treacherously stuck in mud. Defeated, I crawled back onto the more solid, sandy part of the bank, gripped a tamarisk branch to support my outstretched body, and reached my bladder as far as I could into the putrid water. I collected three liters, dropped in my iodine tablets in and continued down the bank, looking for a solid entrance.

  That’s when the mosquitoes found me. At first, I just felt pinpricks on my bare butt, and then the stinging sensation moved up my back. As I looked behind me, I noticed a large cluster of black insects latched onto my shoulders. I yelped and tore into the tamarisk, unconcerned about the sharp branches scratching my skin as I slapped at my back. I sprinted back to my bike and pulled on my shorts and jersey, grabbed my toxic bug repellent, and sprayed every square inch of exposed skin, which was at that point coated in either the foul quicksand of the river bank or a gritty film of sand and sweat. I had never felt so disgusting or dirty, and I wanted nothing more than to jump in the river and swim upstream as long as I could, maybe until I reached the road junction or even the town of Green River, more than a hundred miles away. Even if both were impossible, I never wanted to leave the river. But there was no way to even enter it.

  I pushed through the tamarisk to retrieve my bladder, grabbed my bike, and continued down the road. I looked at my watch and promised myself that I’d wait a half hour, but that seemed like an eternity. I pedaled to a raft-launching point called Mineral Bottom and began climbing a steep series of switchbacks that carved their way into the side of a thousand-foot-high canyon wall. I stopped often to look at my watch. It seemed like seconds were moving as minutes, and minutes as hours. I couldn’t believe a half hour hadn’t passed yet.

  When it finally did, I stopped beside the narrow ledge of the road and sucked greedily at my bladder. A thick, silty liquid filled my throat, cool and bitter and more than slightly foul. I gagged, rubbed my watering eyes, and sucked at the bladder again. The water was sickening but I needed it. Despite my revulsion, coolness began to return to my light head, and I felt more grounded than I had since early afternoon.

  I reached the plateau and continued the long, infuriatingly gradual climb to the paved road, where Geoff had promised to meet me at a nearby campground. Clouds had begun to collect on the now-open horizon, and a muted sunset slipped somewhat imperceptibly into twilight. I continued to force muddy water down my throat; the grit coated my teeth and I couldn’t stomach the thought of eating. My energy was flagging fast and I felt a strong urge to roll out my bivy on the slickrock and sleep, but I knew that if I did, Geoff would come looking at me. And, anyway, the one thing I could think of that sounded more appealing than sleep was a shower, and I certainly wasn’t going to find one of those on this desert Island in the Sky.

  Soon I was simply following the yellow orb of my headlamp, a small oasis of light in a sea of night. The sky had become overcast. There were no stars, no distant town lights, just seemingly infinite black space that my headlamp did little to diminish. Logic dictated that the road had to go somewhere eventually, but I continued to pedal for what felt like hours, going nowhere.

  And yet, despite my fatigue and hunger and the horrific state of my hygiene, the farther I pedaled into the darkness, the more I felt connected with the space outside my body. Some philosophers have speculated that if you could peer inside of the particles that make up an atom, you would find small particles surrounded by empty space, and if you looked inside of those particles, you would find even smaller particles surrounded by yet more empty space, on and on into infinity. Therefore, the world and everything in it was nothing more than infinitely smaller particles of energy and empty space. Substance was an illusion, a construct of perception from a vast distance. That theory had never made more sense to me than it did that night. The hardness of the world had stripped my needs down the barest of essentials. I emerged in the darkness with understanding that, for all of the convention we inject to fill the remaining space, those throbbing particles of energy really are all we have, and all we are.

  Chapter Seven

  Indecision

  The next three weeks slid away beneath the edge of sharp focus. After his trip to Moab, Geoff promptly left Utah for Alaska. Before we parted ways, he asked me whether I still planned to ride the Great Divide.

  “Not likely,” I told him, meaning it. “But I’m going to milk my time off for all it’s worth.”

  And for the next three weeks, everything went into my bicycle — my time, my energy, my attention, my occasional bursts of joy, and my creeping angst. All of it siphoned from my body, flowing through the rotating pedals and filling the hollow steel frame until my bike was full of character and I was little more than a fatigued shell, albeit fit and vaguely content. As long as I could ride my bicycle, I didn’t have to approach the gaping void of my uncertain future. And as long as I had the Great Divide — or at least the cover of Great Divide race training — I had no reason to leave my bicycle.

  My routine was as focused as it was frivolous. I woke up in the morning, often late. I had breakfast alone in the spacious kitchen of my childhood home long after my mom, dad, and youngest sister had left for a day of real-world activities. I put on a jersey and shorts and went to the garage to sit next to my bicycle for a half hour or so, lubing the chain, fiddling with the brake pads, thumbing through Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance, and kidding myself into believing I was effectively learning trailside bike repair skills. Then I opened the garage door into the rich brightness of late morning in Salt Lake City in May. It was generally eighty or ninety degrees, prompting grumblings about the heat. I switched on my GPS; the elevation registered as 4,500 feet, prompting grumblings about the altitude. Then I sweat and struggled on my way up to 9,000 feet in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Some days I rode farther north to hit up singletrack in Millcreek Canyon. Sometimes I sought technical terrain on the maze of trails in Corner Canyon. Other days, I rode south to American Fork Canyon or west to the Oquirrh Mountains.

  Everywhere was directly connected to the fresh-cut grass and rumbl
ing traffic of the suburban Salt Lake Valley. But in my wanderings, I discovered surprising pockets of deep solitude that I never knew in twenty-five years of living just a short tangent from these wild places. There was Oquirrh Summit, reached by a steep gravel road that had been wash-boarded into teeth-chattering obscurity. It looked out over the gaping wound of the open-pit Kennecott Copper Mine, a stair-cut blight with no bottom and no soul. I found a rim trail in the Stansbury Mountains, dropping into canyons so lost, so quiet, that they seemed to wend back in time. Just a few miles south of my parent’s home was Tibble Fork, a narrow canyon still clogged with snow in late May, where a hidden stream roared beneath the white crust. I became acutely aware that I was a small person in a big, mostly empty world. It made me wonder what it would be like to spend more than three weeks immersed in these lonely places by myself. Alone.

  In the evenings, I returned home to tap out the logistics of a Divide ride. I had gear to buy, gear to test, transportation to plan. But there was also the matter of picking an event. In the summer of 2009, there were two organized races on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route that followed the exact same course. Both applied a similar list of rules that demanded absolute route adherence and self-support. But that is where their similarities effectively ended.

  The Great Divide Race was to start on June 19 at the border of Montana and Canada. There was no direct organization, no compiled start list, and no specific information the Web site. It simply asked that participants show up at a certain time, in a particular place, and ride their bikes on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route all the way to Mexico. On the way there, Great Divide Race (GDR) participants were strongly discouraged from riding with other racers, broadcasting their position to the outside world or seeking visitation by friends and family, lest they be tempted to wander down a slippery slope of support that would detract from the solo, self-supported nature of the event. The race rules forbid cell phone use and mandated strict time cut-offs along the course.