Читать книгу Wild Rides and Wildflowers - Scott Abbott - Страница 19
Оглавление3 July, from the Great Western Trail to Mad Dog Cycles
This is going to be a hot one—that’s evident the minute the morning sun breaks from behind Cascade Mountain at seven a.m. When we finally stand in the meadow at the top of Frank, trembling from heat-exacerbated exertion, I exclaim, “Well, that’s the worst of it.” Two hundred yards down, riding swiftly on a smooth trail, I find that that wasn’t the worst of it at all. I catapult over the front wheel and skid on my back across ground that looks grassy but feels like a gravel pit. Sam rounds the corner to find me apparently taking a rest. I remount and bounce my way down a rocky trail. At some point, I realize that my front wheel has lost its true and is banging against the brakes with every turn. The wheel has split, thinned by hundreds of miles of brake pressure. I nurse my way down the remainder of the trail, getting off to walk down the last steep stretch. When Sam pulls up beside me, I step aside to let him pass. He is dusty and sports a deep red scratch from elbow to armpit and down the side of his chest to his waist. “Just a little trouble getting over those rocks at the top,” he explains.
My next stop is Mad Dog Cycles. I have no hankering to die of equipment failure. Besides, a guy can go only so long without new gear. “Hardtail or double-sprung?” Randy asks.
From the bike shop, I limp over to Utah Valley State College where I sign a contract. I’ll be an Associate Professor of Integrated Studies and Philosophy, which will expand my work from the more narrowly focused discipline of German language and literature that has been my academic home. And, at a state school protected by laws a private religious school can ignore, I’ll enjoy the full fruits of academic freedom and a wider range of colleagues and students. That’s the theory, at least.
5 July, Orem
How do you like that? Scott falls off his bike on Friday, tacos his front wheel a little bit, and goes right out and buys a new bike. Hell, if I bought a new bike for every little fall I took, I would have a house full of bikes. (Nancy says I already have a house full.)
“I could have structural stress throughout my bike,” Scott says. “Can’t take chances with old gear.”
Such a deal, this new bike. A Specialized Stumpjumper FSR XC Comp with sapphire Superlight A1 welded frame, FSR XC suspension and sealed bearing main pivot, STOUT hubs, Mavic 222 rims, ForeArm Elite crankset, alloy HeadFirst headset, XT/XTR 0sp transmission, Avid 25 v-brakes, Kevlar-bead Dirt Control/Master Comp tires, not to mention the TPC-cartridge Manitou SX-R fore and Fox Air Vanilla FLOAT aft.
This is a shock. But if it is any consolation for me, Scott is now riding the best gear on the trail and he can’t hide it. That means every bike jock we see expects him to be a hell-of-a-rider just to be the equal of his gear. That’s no small burden for an old guy. I guess I’m looking for a new bike myself. With my proceeds from this column, I am onto one after 120 more months.
10 July, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Dry and hot. We ride listlessly, not paying much attention to anything but our overheated bodies. The trail is littered with smashed grasshoppers, corpses alive with hungry fellow grasshoppers sucking out the juices, recycling scarce moisture. “It’s reasonable,” Sam says, “but repugnant nonetheless. Why does it seem so macabre?”
“Because of how we feel about cannibalism?” I wonder.
“Or because we know it is our ultimate end as well?” Sam offers.
The grasshoppers that aren’t dead or feeding on the dead hug bare stems of sweet clover in stacked pairs, hundreds of thousands of conjoined couples. Chewing, sucking, copulating insects. “I hope I don’t fall,” Sam says, “I wouldn’t want to go down among those ravenous, fucking bastards.”
We pick up our pace and for the first time since last year we both ride Frank from bottom to top without touching down. We stand in the high meadow sweating and puffing and try to analyze our unexpected success. The luck of the bounce, we decide, lacking any other possible explanation. Near the mouth of the canyon, large and brilliant yellow flowers stop us. Five pointed petals frame a riot of bristly yellow stamens. Blazing star (Mentzelia laevicaulis).
11 July, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Neither of us touches down—the second time in a week that we have both ridden Frank perfectly on the same day. We are jubilant. In case the bike-hubris gods are looking on, we try to look nonchalant. On the way down we stop to look at the trumpet-shaped blossoms of salmon gilia, and at the mullein stalks filling with yellow flowers (Verbascum thapsus). A light rain begins to fall. A marvelous scent rises from the dry, spent, yellow sweet clover, a pungent odor that like many other precious scents seems to rise out of childhood memory.
12 July, Great Western Trail, Mt. Timpanogos
Yesterday Scott and I came across our first salmon gilia of the year. This plant is a dead ringer for scarlet gilia except for its rich salmon-pink color. For several years I have thought of these two as separate gilias, plausible since Stan Welsh recognizes 25 species in Utah. But it turns out scarlet and salmon gilia are variations on a theme and both belong in Gilia aggregata. A couple of ecologists from Northern Arizona University recently discovered that the scarlet-colored phase is pollinated by hummingbirds and the salmon-colored phase is pollinated by hawk moths. The proportion of floral color depends on the proportion of pollinators. In the autumn, hummingbirds often migrate to lower altitudes or southward and the gilias may begin to produce more salmon-colored flowers to attract the remaining hawkmoths. Attracting two pollinators is not a bad strategy in a fickle world.
17 July, Great Western Trail, South Fork of the Provo River
Today we cross the Provo River to explore the section of the trail that winds up a canyon on the east side of Cascade Mountain. It’s seven a.m. and overcast when we start up Provo Canyon, eight a.m. and drizzling when we reach the trailhead several miles up the South Fork of the Provo River. It’s a cool and beautiful climb up to Big Springs. Along the spring banks stand masses of yellow monkey-flower (Mimulus guttatus), expanses of white geraniums (Geranium richardsonii), stretches of purple and aptly named monkshood (Aconitum columbianum), and rivers of yellow columbine (Aquilegia flavescens).
We look up at the snow-capped crest of Provo Peak. We breathe deeply, stand silent.
From the springs, the trail climbs more steeply. Sam points ahead. Five wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) rise tentatively from their pineneedle beds, stretch legs and wings and long necks, and slip into the woods. We continue the climb, grateful for our extra-low “granny” gears. We suck the thin air deep into burning lungs, will trembling legs to push and pull us up one more climb, then another climb, and another. The trail wins, as it always does, and we stand down without having reached any specific destination. We are soaked, less from the intermittent light rain and more from the thick wet grasses that have crowded the trail. After an easy ride down the canyon, four-and-a-half hours after setting out, we are home again. Wet, tired, and jubilant.
