Snakeskins and Signposts

By Sher Vadimsky

Loaded down with dehydrated rice and beans and her hunger for freedom, Sher pedals 2,000 miles from Bellingham, Washington, through the Cascade Mountain Range to southern Oregon and back. As with many solo, outdoor adventures, strangers are friends, mishaps become entertainment, thoughts get loud, sleeping on the ground is amazingly comfortable, the smell of a forest ravages the senses, wild animals talk back, the bogeyman tags along just for fun, every shift in the wind or caw from a crow is a sign to turn left—or maybe right, and home will never be the same again. Told with humor and candor, this personal tale keeps the reader perched on handlebars, stretching forward to see what’s around the next bend.

Sometimes, it’s a flat tire. Sometimes, a rattle snake. Many times, it’s the face of a smiling stranger and a heartfelt connection that instantly changes the course of the day, and maybe even, life itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sher Vadimsky
• Release date: Oct 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301969616

Sher Vadimsky

Sher Vadimsky is a musician and teacher, who dabbles with words and stone. She feels most at home sitting on a boulder along a river in a Pacific Northwest forest. Or, on sunny days, riding her bicycle. She also co-writes with her cousin, C. L. Vadimsky. Their most recent book is True Tales of Ghosts (Carolingian Press, 2021) and is available as an e-book (here at Smashwords), as well as in print and as an audiobook (found nearly everywhere you buy books).

Book preview

BURR

Are you taking a gun? my friend asked.

Had my last swig of beer not already been in a free fall inches from my gut, it would have spewed out my mouth, across the table, and onto her salad as I imagined myself climbing up a mountain pass with the butt of a revolver sticking out the back pocket of my neon-green biking vest. I couldn’t think of a better way to cultivate kindness from strangers: Uh, excuse me, sir, but would you mind giving me a lift off this cold, wet mountain? My bike seems to have fallen apart. Oh, don’t mind my .38 Special.

Seriously? I replied, seeing in her face she was absolutely serious. Then it hit me. She worked in law enforcement. She lived in a world where rape and murder weren’t just part of a plot to keep entertainment-seekers on the edges of their seats. Real people suffered real trauma, real pain. Perhaps skewed in the other direction, my world of middle-aged musicians revolved around a harmless tonic of good friends, laughter, and a couple of hours in a spotlight. To us, trauma was when a guitar slipped out of tune, a speaker blew, or one of us went to the bridge instead of the chorus, causing a disjointed scramble to find each other before the song derailed off the stage and slammed into the innocent audience. But even on our worst nights on stage, no one left the club in a body bag.

Surprisingly, my well-meaning friend would not be the only one, at the table or on the planet, who’d worry about me on my three-month solo adventure during which I’d camp most nights in a tent that apparently had a sign on it that read, Helpless woman inside. Honestly, I was more afraid of being wet and cold than I was of being raped or murdered.

I thanked them all for planting their seeds of fear into my imagination and assured them I would be okay. But who could blame them? It thrived everywhere. This noxious fear. It seemed to me that no one, myself included, could get through a single day without stepping in it, inhaling it, or brushing up against it. And it stuck like a burr. It was a wonder anyone mustered up the courage to get out of bed in the morning. Life was risky business.

The truth was, for being fairly intelligent people, my friends actually did not know where the monsters and all the things that could go wrong lived. Along mountain rivers? Behind the rotten stump of an old-growth tree? In a secluded campsite? On the passenger-side mirror of an old pickup truck? Unfortunately, I didn’t know either. Maybe a small dose of fear was healthy. At least healthier than breathing car exhaust all day.

*****

ELBOWS OFF THE TABLE

I felt caged. Fenced in. Of course I did. All my life I’d felt a rope around my neck, a bit in my mouth. Even before I could walk, let alone ride a bike, I squirmed and wriggled out of my mother’s arms just to explore the kitchen floor. As soon as I could walk and was allowed to follow my big brother into the woods behind the house, I discovered my wild animal and the joy that came from roaming free among the trees, critters, and creeks, lifting up rocks and poking sticks in the sloppy mud. That was it. I was hooked. I wasn’t ever going inside again. I would not be tamed. And then Mom called us in for dinner where I had to chew with my mouth closed and keep my elbows off the table.

Four decades later, nothing had changed, except that I now knew my cages intimately and had sufficiently learned the benefits of some kinds of self-taming, especially the ones that helped me to generally get along in the world. Frankly, I was glad to no longer be inclined to throw the wrong clothes in a backpack, write a note and slam a door, or to shove a chair under a desk, grab my coat and keys, and tell my boss to get his own coffee. That sort of breaking-free never did go over so well. Everyone likes a free spirit. But an angry free spirit? Not so much. Now, finally, I had the necessary self-restraint to wait until the time was right, to cool off, and to leave with a smile on my face. In fact, I became so patient with my leaving that it ended up feeling more like going. And going felt better. There was a future in going. It was a lighter load. Leaving made me feel wrong and awkward. Going felt graceful.

Yet, even when I thought I was ready, I couldn’t go. I got held up trying to justify my reasons for going, for wanting to go outside and play. Maybe deep down I knew there was chance that this might be the time I wouldn’t come back in. Or, that if I did, not just my elbows but my heels and toes would grace the tabletop as well in an inappropriate tap dance against the grain. Fortunately, I soon realized that it wasn’t my parents’, or anyone else’s, table in my kitchen, but my very own. I didn’t need or care anymore about reasons. Freedom needed no good reason, no apology. All I had to do was push the cage door open. I’d deal with my fears when they showed their faces.

So I got out my maps.

Of course I’d go by bicycle. I loved being on a bike almost as much as being on a horse. The wind and rain in my face and the ground moving fast beneath me made me feel wild. My legs in perfect rhythm, pumping up and down and feet spinning round and round, felt like a smooth canter along a soft, grassy farm road between fields of alfalfa—ah, sweet, humid air going straight to my head. I melded with my bike and my bike with the road. We worked together. I provided the energy and my bike hauled me up the hill. And like my childhood horse, it took me just about anywhere I wanted to go as long as there was some semblance of a path that wasn't too ridiculously steep. Hang my saddle bag panniers, full of camping gear and food over the bike’s rear and as sure as horses love oats, I commanded the ultimate freedom machine.

*****

WHAT IF?

The adventure I finally settled on would take me from one of my favorite breakfast places in Bellingham, Washington, the largest most northwest town in the lower 48, Diamond Jim’s in the Fountain District. From there, with a belly full of pancakes and jitters, I'd ride my first few miles to Fairhaven to pick up my friend, Alan, who agreed to ride with me for the first four days. Together we’d go down Chuckanut Drive to the fertile Skagit Valley, over Washington Pass, the northern most paved route over the Cascade Mountain Range, and down the east side of the Cascades to Cashmere. Then, after parting ways with Alan, I’d head over Blewett Pass back to the west side of the Cascades, then south past Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, crossing into Oregon over the Columbia River west of Portland, passing by Mount Hood, into the Willamette National Forest, the Deschutes National Forest, to Crater Lake, through the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon, and then west over the Coast Range to the Pacific Ocean. Before heading north again, I'd ride east to Eugene where I’d meet my mom for a six-day road trip to show her around and prove I'm still alive. Then, I’d ride back to the Pacific coast, north and east around the Olympic Peninsula, through the San Juan Islands, and finally, back to Bellingham to celebrate with friends at one of my favorite breweries, Boundary Bay. On one of my maps, it looked to be a two-foot oval. On another, it was no bigger than my fingertips and thumbs meeting around a two-person potato. Nothing to it.

I planned to be fully self-contained for the three-month journey with a twenty dollar per day budget. I’d camp almost every night. I’d work on two different farms that were a part of the WWOOF program (World-wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) to rest and fuel up on fresh vegetables and interesting people. I’d also meet up with two Bellingham friends to hike and get a taste of home.

To save the money I needed for the trip and to pay ahead on my bills, I gave up my apartment seven months prior to my leaving, crammed my possessions into a two-hundred square foot storage unit, and slept on a cot in the back room of a friend’s resale clothing store. During the day when the store was open, I spent long mornings writing in a favorite café or went on a training ride out in the county or down to Blanchard Mountain, typically in the rain. In the afternoons and evenings I mustered up just enough patience and focus to teach my guitar students one more tired classic-rock song. At night I returned to the store to dehydrate food, play music, or write yet another list of what still needed to be done or acquired. There seemed to be no end to planning. I had to laugh at myself when friends would ask how it was going and I heard myself say the same thing I’d said the week before. Still planning. In fact, the serious planning, upgraded daydreaming, the kind that kept me up late staring at the ceiling and that squeezed into all of my conversations, took twice as long as the trip. And to my delight, without any real mountains to climb, hunger to satisfy, or flat tires to repair, it was, indeed like they say, half the fun.

It was also a far cry from rocket science or brain surgery or any other adage that would adequately express the seeming simplicity of planning what appeared to be a glorified bike ride and camping trip. But still, I had to be mindful of several very important things—weight, nutrition/calories, weather, and the less precise, what-ifs. I was pleasantly consumed by thinking through all of these categories, especially the what-ifs. What if I ripped a hole in my tent? Better take a needle and thread. What if the tube of glue in my tire patch kit dried up? Better take two patch kits. What if the rain cover for my helmet leaked and my wool hat under my helmet got wet? I better take two wool hats—one for going over the wintry passes and the other for sleeping. What if I developed a bladder infection? I better take cranberry tea bags and vitamin C. What if I dropped my cell phone in a river and then had an emergency? I better take two cell phones. What if an opportunist with a weapon crossed my path and demanded all of my money? I better hide my cash in the folds of my maps and have two wallets, one real and one fake. The list went on and on, as was the nature of what-ifs in the imaginative mind. At some point, I simply had to stop and consider bringing a rabbit’s foot.

Regarding the weather was easy. I had to be prepared for every kind. After all, I was in the Pacific Northwest and I was leaving at the end of May. Except for the times I’d be on the eastern side of the Cascades, I could very well experience cold rain until mid-June and then a warmish rain until mid-July. As luck would have it, I did not. In fact, I only rode in the rain a few times, mostly over passes, and I never had to set up my tent in a hurry to escape a drenching. Probably the funniest exchange I’d have on the trip with half a dozen people went the same every time. Boy, it sure is a gorgeous sunny day! I’d remark. And he or she would reply, Yeah, it didn’t get nice until last week. Right up until the last leg of the journey, somewhere between Joyce and Port Angeles, someone spoke those exact words. Apparently, I had followed the sunshine the whole way.

Having healthy food to eat that would give me the energy I needed—as many as six-thousand calories per day—was also extremely important, especially for me. I had been born a big eater and had a slight but noticeable food anxiety. Every time I left the house, I worried about getting hungry and not having anything to eat while I was out. So I thought about this one a lot. It also wasn’t a good idea to try to climb a mountain with shaky legs or a foggy brain. Considering my twenty dollar per day allotment, which was intended for a campsite or a bike tube or a treat after a long, hard day, I’d decided to carry all of my own food. This meant I’d have to stop every five or ten days at some predetermined post office, oft times no bigger than a cupboard, to pick up a prepacked box of food successfully sent to me as general delivery by my reliable friend, Robin. I hoped.

The overall weight of my load perhaps trumped all considerations: the what-ifs and weather and even my food choices. I also found it to be the most exhilarating part of the planning. To me, simplifying life was an art and I loved the rush of creativity when pondering all the different ways to minimize, shed, shave, pare, strip, basically anything that revealed the bare bones, the core of a thing, a process, or problem. In the case of this adventure, I had endless opportunities to practice this art as my forty-five-pound load, like the paint dots of pointillism, became a vessel of 720 ounces to be sliced and diced, especially as my departure drew near and I still hadn’t put in a fifty-mile ride with, or without, my cargo. And, interestingly, the more I thought of my needs in terms of weight, the less I needed.

So there I was, crammed in the back room of the store, gear strewn about, on a mission to lighten my load. I made Crock-Pots of beans and rice and then sucked out all the moisture in my dehydrator. Then I made hard-boiled eggs, mashed them up, and sucked all the moisture out of them, too. I did the same with apples and pears. All sorts of vegetables became delectable snacks, my favorites being daikon radishes and zucchini. I turned bunches of chard and kale into a powder that gave my dry hummus mix a nutritional boost. The easiest and best-tasting dehydrated food I prepared was bread. Yes, bread. I used one of those seed breads that are chock full of flavor and nutrition. Without the moisture, it became a just-out-the-oven fresh, crunchy, crouton-cracker hybrid. I rounded out my menu with granola, energy bars, hot chocolate, and yerbe mate tea (because it weighed less than coffee and of course I could give up my rich, dark roast for three months for the sake of a lighter load). Of course. No problem.

I knew somewhere in our universe existed a lighter sleeping bag and tent and stove than I owned, but in general I was confident there was nothing more I could do to lighten my load. And then, sitting on the edge of my cot the night before I was to leave, staring at the pile of possessions I was to haul two thousand miles up and over many mountains, I freaked. I looked in every compartment of every bag. I waited for a flash of genius. Of course! I thought as I spied my toothbrush through a clear plastic bag. Well pleased with myself for having had such a grand idea, I dug it out, held it with both hands, and snapped off the handle. This led to other thoughts of handles, which prompted me to call my friend, Anne. Would you bring a handsaw to breakfast tomorrow so I can cut off the handle of my hairbrush? I asked. Amazingly, without a poke or laugh, she simply said, Okay. So how’s it going? The next morning, Anne showed up to breakfast with a handsaw in her backpack, but by the time I remembered I’d even had such a brilliant idea—picture-posing time—I felt a tad ridiculous and decided that if I did find myself halfway up a mountain and feeling the weight of my hairbrush zapping all of my energy, I would just eat another handful of fruit and nuts.

I couldn’t have been more ready.

*****

I'M REALLY DOING THIS

What a scene after breakfast at Diamond Jim’s. Anne, Robin, Adam, and Mary stood in a half circle around me and my bike that leaned against the cinder-block wall along the edge of the parking lot. Adrenaline-crazed and over-caffeinated, I rifled through my neatly packed panniers, holding up various items, as Robin said, Yes. No. Yes. No. Apparently, I was able to pare down even more. The sight of my bulging rig leaning against the wall had prompted the last-minute repack. Of course I didn’t need the case for my camera, just the camera. Nor one hundred feet of string. Nor did I need two wool sweaters (I hoped), nor a plastic flask of bentonite clay. I wasn’t even sure that ingesting the stuff would really help absorb any of the toxins I'd no doubt breathe in from passing cars and trucks. I never did have time to research that. So out it all went into a pile of miscellaneous adventuring items in the back of Robin’s car. I was grateful to have such a friend—someone who knew my frenzies well and loved me anyway. Without a fuss, she would simply take my pile of extras home with her, box them up, and store them in a corner of her room next to my guitars until I returned to reclaim them.

By the time I finished stuffing everything back into my panniers and strapping my sleeping bag and pad back down, the drizzle had stopped. Robin took pictures. I absorbed my friends’ smiling faces as I hugged each of them good-bye. They wished me well as the moment swelled like a balloon. I swung my leg over the saddle and put my right foot on the pedal. Bye! And off I went. Left onto Meridian, right onto Broadway, I floated higher and higher.

Even though my repacking frenzy delayed my start, I stuck with my plan to stop at Boulevard Park just a couple miles across town for a last farewell with its peaceful view of the bay stretching out to Lummi Island. Just as I leaned my rig against a park bench, Alan called. He still hadn’t left his office or packed yet. He's at work? Not packed. Wow. Okay. So now, needing to kill some time, I just sat there, tethered to the bench, people watching. Dog watching. Seagull watching. People watching. People-watcher watching. Waiting had never been so hard, and the longer I waited the harder it became. Too hard. Unbearable. So up I jumped. Strapped on my helmet and saddled up. I figured if I rode slowly enough Alan would be packed and ready by the time I got to his house. Surely, when he said he hadn't packed he meant that he hadn't stuffed everything in his panniers yet.

Alan had been a guitar student of mine. He’d often show up to his lesson with his road bike hanging off the back of his white camper-van. As was true with many of my adult students, his lessons were a mix of music-making and talking. I wasn’t exactly sure why they paid me good money to talk about work and family and health problems, but they did. I often tried to steer them back to the chord progression at hand, but to no avail. Eventually, the end to the lesson presented itself and that was that. After a good run of lessons, life took him in other directions which made practicing nearly impossible, and without time to practice, what good were lessons? (If only all my students understood this.) For the next couple of years I would occasionally run into Alan downtown or on a popular biking route. One of these times I'd mentioned that I was thinking about going on a long bike tour. Without ever having giving it a thought until that moment, I blurted out, Why don’t you ride part of it with me? His face lit up, and I could tell the seed had been planted. In my own face, he no doubt saw Holy crap, I guess I'm really doing this.

By the time I arrived at Alan’s, I’d gotten used to my load and was pretty sure I could handle the weight and, hopefully, not have to push too hard just to keep up, especially the first four days with Alan. I really had no idea what to expect having never ridden with him before. Was he superhuman? He sure looked it. Was I just kidding myself, at 46, that I had the strength and stamina? After all, I'd had some very unrealistic dreams throughout my life, like playing basketball on the women's Olympic team and performing on big stages with big names. I'd gotten used to not having the right stuff.

I walked into Alan's living room and instantly relaxed. He was dressed in the appropriate bright tight uniform and piles of gear and food sat next to half-stuffed panniers on his living room floor. Though I no longer worried about getting a late start, I could see that the poor guy hadn’t developed a taste for dehydrated food and so would be carrying tubs of peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread, and enough macaroni and cheese to feed a kindergarten class for the week. For the next hour, I sat on floor stretching while he buzzed in and out of the room, stuffing sacks, folding, tying, and finally, shoving it all into his bumble-bee-yellow panniers. Revved up and ready to peel out of town, he pumped up his tires, strapped down his sleeping pad on his back rack, hugged and kissed his wife good-bye, and off we rode, down his driveway and onto Chuckanut Drive.

Chuckanut Drive, named after the Chuckanut Mountains that are the only mountains in the Cascade range that meet the Salish Sea. The road, known as the liquor runners' road during Prohibition as it was used for illegal rum running from Canada, is known for three things (besides rum running): stunning beauty as it winds through lush forests where sandstone mountains meet salt water with views of the San Juan Islands, having a six-inch shoulder, and sight-seeing drivers gawking westward. Cyclist ride it anyway. The beauty is just that stunning.

It didn't take us long to find a comfortable pace. To my relief, Alan was not superhuman. Or, maybe he was, but I was too! We would have easily maintained an eleven miles-per-hour average pace if we hadn’t ridden twenty miles on the gravel rail trail instead of smooth-but-busy Route 20, from Sedro Woolley to Rasar State Park. But the scenery was worth it. The trail led us through the backyards of little homesteads where goats and horses grazed between farm equipment, hawks perched on fence posts scouring the high grasses, and scruffy farm dogs warned us of their ferociousness. For a long stretch the trail hugged the bank of the gentle Skagit River before veering away through alder trees and wetlands already thick with skunk cabbage. The last couple of miles to the campground set the tone for all of my last couple of miles for the next three months. I was hungry and thirsty, my legs felt like anchors, my sit-bones were tender, and every crossroad ahead had to be the turn-off. Finally, the big brown sign appeared. Rasar State Park. We glided into the park and found the perfect campsite tucked back in the woods under a thick canopy of mostly Doug-fir and western red cedar. It seemed that we were the only campers there. Considering that road crews had just finished plowing through the unusually deep seventy feet of snow on Washington Pass the week before, I wondered if we would be the only campers for a while.

In a sea of giant, bright-green ferns, we set up our tents, a ritual I knew might get old by the end of the summer. The late-afternoon sun sliced through the canopy between limbs and branches, causing shadows and bright spots to mix with all the different textures of bark and leaves, needles, moss, and stone. With the contents of both our loads strewn across the picnic table and benches, we found our stoves and began making dinner. Despite the simplicity of camp food, it always seemed to require extra attention to prepare it as I could never quite remember where I’d packed everything I needed, especially the damn Bic lighter. I should have gotten the orange one and not the black! My dinner of rice and beans was exceptional. Not because it was particularly tasty, but because I was hungry. Alan seemed to enjoy his dinner as well, his arms wrapped around a pot of macaroni and cheese until it was