Читать книгу Miles from Nowhere - Barbara Savage - Страница 8

Some books are passed on like a secret, pressed into your hands by someone who knows you—here, read this; I think you’ll like it. When the book delivers, it feels like a treasure, something of value that you want to pass along to the next person who you think will appreciate it in the same way.

Miles from Nowhere is one of those books. My copy was given to me when I was in my late twenties by a friend who knew I had an adventurous streak. The paperback he passed along was already battered, the corners soft and bent from being shoved in tote bags and backpacks (maybe, also, bicycle panniers). The book had already been loved—by my friend, and perhaps by others before him.

My friend was right about this book. In these pages I found the sort of adventure story I craved—a journey that was not only athletic, but also emotional. The cycling was hard and physical—no one bikes the Alps, the Rockies, the Himalaya without great effort—but the book wasn’t just about feats of strength or daring, as many adventure stories tend to be. That story would have gotten old quick. This was a book about people and the world and experiencing both of those things in the most immediate way possible.

I was seven years old in 1978, when Barbara and Larry Savage set out on their around-the-world cycle adventure. Jimmy Carter was the US president, the first Star Wars film had just captivated the world, and Mount St. Helens had not yet erupted. That spring, the young married couple, in their late twenties, set out on a bike trip that would ultimately span twenty-three thousand miles and twenty-five countries over the next two years, from the desolate prairies of South Dakota and the deserts of Morocco to the mountains of Nepal and the teeming streets of Cairo, New Delhi, and Bangkok. It would change both of their lives.

Biking around the world hadn’t been their original plan. Barbara and Larry wanted to cycle across North America, then hop over to Europe and visit friends they had made while living in Barcelona. When they saw on the map how far they’d be, however, they decided to keep going. “At first we said we’d take the train through the really boring parts,” Larry Savage explains today. “But I really wanted to cycle, so Barb put up with that. It was a little bone of contention between us, but she put up with it.”

Considering what their journey became—an often joyful trip that also included dysentery, bike accidents, and a harrowing night in Nepal spent riding on a dirt road with a sheer drop-off to one side and dead batteries that prevented any illumination to guide the way—it seems as though both Larry and Barbara were fully committed to the adventure. This is not the story of a wife following her husband around the globe. If that had been the case, it wouldn’t have worked—they would have parted ways early on, as other cycling couples they met ultimately did.

Barbara’s love of cycling—newfound though it may have been—shines through in her words. “We moved slow enough to see and hear things that to passing motorists were only blurs of color and sound. We took in the textures and odors of the soil and the vegetation. And because bicycling is such a quiet mode of travel, wild animals weren’t frightened away when we came up the road toward them. . . . And, too, touring by bicycle made it easy for us to meet people. Whenever we stopped in a small town to pick up a snack or food supplies at the local country stores, people always hurried over to talk with us.” Larry may have been the cyclist initially, but Barbara soon took it on as her own.

This was one of the things about Miles from Nowhere that I responded to as a female reader. Here was a woman being just as adventurous as the man, holding her own through rough and rugged travel. Sure, she got sick—they both did, and so did Geoff, the New Zealand cyclist they teamed up with through parts of Asia. But Barbara always seemed game for adventure, strong; she didn’t scare easy. A photo of her in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt, surrounded by men in robes who tower over her small frame and bicycle, was such a striking one to me: Barbara went to places that were not expecting her, and she didn’t back down. It made me want to be more like that myself.

Barbara and Larry were not the first Western cyclists to explore the larger world and bring back their stories. Barbara wasn’t even the first woman to embark on a long-distance cycling trip and then write about it. The Irish cyclist and author Dervla Murphy published her book Full Tilt, about cycling from Ireland to India on her own, in 1965 (her packing list notably included a flask of whiskey and a pistol; both items proved useful).

What makes Miles from Nowhere stand out—both when it was written and still today—is the genuine good nature with which the Savages met the world. Over and over again, they were warned away—told the world was a scary and dangerous place. “You haven’t been robbed yet?” a bank clerk in Thailand asked when they went to cash travelers’ checks. “Oh, you will be.” India was described by a traveling businessman as “a bizarre and dangerous country.” He was so concerned for Barbara’s fate there that he gave her a Bible. “Keep this with you always in India,” he warned. “You’ll need it.” Morocco was said to be equally dangerous. “You can never be too cautious with those crazy Moroccans,” they were told. “They’ll rob you and they’ll slit your throat.”

Despite these warnings, and despite their own fears, Barbara and Larry went anyway—and, in the process, they connected with people and had experiences otherwise unimaginable. They were looked after by communities, brought in from the cold, given food, accompanied by an armed Indian bandit who, instead of robbing them, clocked their speed and politely told them how fast they were cycling before roaring off on his motorcycle. Yes, there were tense interactions—there were rocks thrown at them in Egypt, and an encounter with one very angry Thai restaurant owner—but more often than not, humanity won out.

“The best part of travel,” says Larry Savage, “aside from seeing things, is meeting people and learning what their life is like and seeing if you can work it out together.” He insists that Barbara was the real connector. “She was better at it than I was—she was more accepting. But I am always willing to listen.” This willingness and openness are the beating heart of the book.

Larry says their uniqueness had a lot to do with how they were received. “We were a novelty,” he explains. “Where we went, they hadn’t seen many Westerners—and certainly not Westerners on bicycles. We were as entertaining to them as they were to us.”

Barbara and Larry were traveling at a time when two Caucasians appearing on bicycles in Africa and Asia was not only unexpected, but often a first for those who encountered them.

“Two foreigners—and especially a foreign woman—on bicycles with huge packs will be one of the strangest sights those people have ever seen,” they were told before venturing into rural Egypt. “As a matter of fact, in some of the settlements, this year will quite probably be referred to in the future as the year when the fair-skinned aliens appeared riding their bizarre bicycles.”

Their mode of transportation certainly softened the reception they received. On the road to Fès, for example, they met a policeman who could not believe they were Americans. “‘Americans travel only tour busses,’ he said. ‘But you no. You bicycle. That good. Come, we help.’”

The first time I read Miles from Nowhere, I realized something that has become only more evident with subsequent readings—this is a story about humanity. Though the Savages’ journey took them to stunning vistas and through stark and beautiful scenery, it was the people that ultimately made the biggest impression—both on Barbara and Larry, and on the reader as well.

When I think back on Barbara’s stories, I remember the long days of cycling, but more than that I remember the American cyclist who was sprouting his own food as he rode along, the Portuguese waiter who found a huge tank and filled it with drinking water to make sure Larry and Barbara were adequately hydrated to make it over the Spanish border, the Thai policeman who not only insisted they camp in his walled compound but also assigned an armed guard to watch over them, and the Germans who refused to let them camp in a snowstorm. Barbara’s words bring these characters to life and her compassion makes them feel real, even when some of her language is, by today’s standards, out of date.

There is a curiosity and appreciation of all who cross the Savages’ path that renders Miles from Nowhere the treasure that it is—a book that remains engaging and interesting forty years after it was first published. “Americans don’t really travel,” explains Larry Savage. “At one point only 10 percent of Americans had active passports. Because of this they don’t really think of other cultures—it’s just something we see on TV. But everyone is a person and you’re not better than anyone else; you’re just different. Putting your expectations or mores on them is a really bad idea.”

It’s almost hard to imagine the Savages’ journey today—in an era where Google has mapped the world; where hotel reservations and campsite locations are a click away; where, if you develop potentially life-changing symptoms after cycling the cobblestones of Portugal, as Larry did, you can get medical information in mere seconds. We know so much now—and maybe that is part of our problem. Barbara and Larry went into their journey without the vast stores of knowledge we have today, but also without assumptions.

The Savages set out to meet the world on bikes that look old and heavy to us now. They had no lightweight gear, no carbon fiber, and when cold they cycled in sweatpants. But in other ways they had everything they needed. In their good-natured openness, they connected with the world in a deep and genuine way that has stood the test of time. “Even more than our desire to experience adventures and see the world,” wrote Barbara at the close of their trip, “it was the people who had kept us going, giving us a home and a family away from home.”

IN PREPARATION FOR THIS REISSUE of Miles from Nowhere, I read everything I could about Barbara and Larry Savage, including a number of reader reviews. I was struck by how many people had read the book multiple times. How many mentioned having two copies (one to keep, one to loan out). How many people were inspired to take bicycle trips of their own after reading Barbara’s words (and a few who enjoyed the read but admitted they were definitely not up to the challenge). One woman told of being inspired by reading the book when it first came out, but she had small children at the time. Now, thirty years later, she is embarking on a trip across the US.

One of the reviews I read was simple: “Read this book and went straight out and bought myself a $250 Specialized bicycle and started my first bicycle tour. Changed my life.”

The name attached to this review was familiar to me: Andrew X. Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala, a book published some twenty years after Miles from Nowhere, about Pham’s own bicycle journey through Vietnam, an attempt to reconcile his adopted American homeland and the country where he was born. This book went on to win the Kiriyama Prize and the Whiting Award; it was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Sometimes a good bicycle story can change your life.

I know the spirit of Barbara and Larry has infused the cycle trips I’ve taken—up the coast of Ireland, through the mountains and rice paddies of Japan, on the same US West Coast they traveled. I’ve tried to be as open as they were in engaging the world, to have more faith in humanity than I have fear of it.

Though Barbara’s words and stories stand on their own, both intriguing, educational, and often laugh-out-loud funny, they are irrevocably connected to the fact of her death: on her bicycle, shortly before the book was published. It seems impossible to reconcile this engaging young woman and her bright spirit with an early death. It feels a little like losing a friend—or someone you would have wanted to be friends with. I’m not the only reader who has wondered how this couple, who managed to successfully survive such an arduous journey together, could ultimately be separated by fate.

I have to believe, however, that Barbara’s spirit lives on—in all the cyclists and adventurers who have been inspired by her journey, in fellow authors who have written their own travel adventures, in the women who have felt validated or activated by her travels, in the fact that this book, four decades later, is still finding readers, still being passed along from hand to hand, still changing lives.

Here, read this. I think you’ll like it.

—Tara Austen Weaver