“A highly developed art of urban design is linked to the creation of a critical and attentive audience.  If art and audience grow together, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millions of their inhabitants.”  –Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, 1960

As I bicycle and walk around our city, I enjoy paying attention to the landscape.  Here are some photos I took of murals and other art created by the city’s inhabitants.  Most of these pictures are from Albuquerque, and a few are from other towns in New Mexico.  I’ve pulled out some quotes from readings that I’ve been thinking about as I look around.

“At the heart of successful human navigation is a capacity to record the past, attend to the present, and imagine the future–a goal or place that we would like to reach.” –M.R. O’Conner, Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World, 2019

“Your initial goal, unrealistic or mistaken though it may be, encourages you to make an effort in your practice.  The practice becomes easier, less stressful, less painful.  You develop a deeper appreciation for it.  The goal becomes doing the practice every day.”  –Norman Fischer, Our Grand Delusion, in the Sun Magazine August 2018

“Slow streets, overnight, transformed our family life and the lives of our neighbors. We had struggled to find a place to teach our daughter to ride her bike up until this point. It always seemed like such a production. Easier to just scoot along the sidewalk and put it off. But the minute the streets opened up, we got our helmets on and headed out. About an hour later, we had a bike rider on our hands. I’ve heard similar stories from so many parents across Oakland. The only thing that may be as reliable as toilet paper selling out during this strange era is kids learning to ride bikes.”  –Courtney E. Martin, “Slow streets are the path to a better city“, Curbed, 5.19.2020

“We can easily afford to conserve what we’ve been given and to wait patiently for a wisdom that so far has eluded us, a wisdom that will enable us to convey this gift, not simply consume it.” –Barry Lopez, Testimony, 1996

“Or maybe wayfinding is an activity that confronts us with the marvelous fact of being in the world, requiring us to look up and take notice, to cognitively and emotionally interact with our surroundings whether we are in the wilderness or a city, even calling us to renew our species’ love affair with freedom, exploration, and place.”–M.R. O’Connor, Wayfinding: The science and mystery of how humans navigate the world

“In The Need for Roots, the French philosopher Simone Weil claimed that ‘to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.’…Weil defined rootedness in an interesting way, not as lineage or birthplace but as participation in the life of a community that preserves ‘certain particular treasures of the past and certain particular expectations for the future'”.  –O’Connor, Wayfinding

“We move in space through constant contact with the contours of our environment.  We are in touch with our world at a visceral level, and it is the quality of our ‘being in touch’ that importantly defines what our world is like and who we are.” –Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, 2007

“Through his studies of automobile drivers and airplane pilots, [James] Gibson came to the conclusion that perception and behavior are a single biological phenomenon, and both humans and animals directly perceive their environment in an act of knowing or being in contact with it.  We are not minds stuck in bodies but organisms that are part of our environment.  Gibson called his theory ecological psychology and it led to a new understanding of navigation.”  –O’Connor, Wayfinding

“History especially is illuminating, because where we are today is a product of ideas that we’ve inherited often from hundreds of years ago.  So you dig back into the origins of these ideas and it helps illuminate why we have the habits of thought today which might not be adjusted to current experience.”  –Elizabeth Anderson, MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2019

A few terms defined:

Vernacular–built by necessity, local, temporary, not necessarily fashionable, improvised.  Examples of the vernacular in downtown Reno can be seen in watching the people live in the street.  Skateboarders improvising transportation routes through corriders built for automobiles and walking pedestrians.

Establishment–much of the vernacular arises around the establishment’s landscape, but uses it in a way that is was not intended for.  The establishment represents law, order, property, rules, architecture.  It’s carefully thought out by planners with certain motives in mind.  Much of the built environment in downtown is representative of what the establishment were thinking, what their tastes are, what their education and expertise is emphasizing.  –my Geography 314: Cultural, field methods journal, 2001

“Selfless awareness is the state we’re in when Nature or art or music creates a sense of wonder.”  –Deepak Chopra, Forward to Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (NVC)

“Empathy: emptying our mind and listening with our whole being”–Marshall Rosenberg, NVC

Cycling has been a path into the greater world that has opened up space for me to live, learn and breath.  It’s enabled me to give up the stories I clung onto, and build up empathy.  Cycling works a lot like music or poetry or visual arts in this way.  It encourages us to be present to both ourselves and to the ‘other’ dimensions of the world, the material, the numinous, the interrelations.

Though the bicycle is an extraordinary tool for exploring the external world, what’s also interesting is the way it shines a spotlight, very subtly, on our own being.  As we cycle more and more, we discover that our powers are small and limited, but at the same time they are strong and sufficient.  And when we apply our focused selves through the instrument it is amazing where we can go and what we can achieve.

It’s a long journey!  And it is both a social and a solitary one.  Sometimes when I go somewhere the simple goal of returning home is a monument. You’re out there in the weather, that relentless summer sun, digging into the breeze, looking deep within yourself to muster up the strength to get back home.  Adrift and alone in a precarious situation!  We have to measure our energy stores, use our planning faculties and read the topography of the land.

It’s exciting to stretch your limits little by little.  Like a yoga class, we work into those postures gradually.  We recognize the form when we see it in our teachers and classmates, and we know we can picture our body getting there.  But it takes time and continual practice. Once we put our minds eye on the destination we begin the process of figuring out how to get there. It can be as basic as cycling to work or school or the grocery store.

I’ve experienced several disruptions in my cycling life, but each one has been particularly useful.  When I started driving a car somehow I dropped cycling.  I loved the range motorized transport brought me and the scale at which I could view the countryside.  But when I came back to the bicycle I found the intimacy and detail wonderful.  All of a sudden it felt like I lived in the places I was moving through.  The way the bicycle opened my whole being to listening in a way and activated all my senses.  It’s a mystery the way the world becomes incorporated into our being, but from what I can observe, a lot of that process is happening directly while cycling.

“What is true is that the world has a great deal to tell us…”  –Cormac McCarthy in Nautilus

The social part of cycling for me is about the communion we can build with other people.  Cycling is a lot like a community of artists, or scientists, or any profession, wherein the practice is a joint learning enterprise.  There is a collective knowledge and experience that forms the cultural foundation and shapes the education and expression.  Cycling culture reminds me of the way Luther’s reformation re-introduced congregational singing of vernacular music into church services, therefore enlisting the broader community in an active role in shaping the spiritual scene.  When I participated in the Slow Roll 505 ride in Albuquerque, or the Iron Horse, it is like being in the middle of a church choir song in nature’s cathedrals.

And so I keep circling back to our cycling traditions, the faith in its power to restore our  empathy with individual selves, our families and communities, and all of nature grows stronger.  In Barry Lopez’s interview with The Sun magazine in December 2019, he suggests what our present situation really requires is attention to stability and justice.  “Who provides stability in the chaos of modern life?  It is people living in a prayerful way” (The World We Still Have, p. 15).  In a metaphorical sense I recognize the force cycling brings into my daily life.  It is so plain, mundane and ordinary and beyond compare.

References:
Morten Lauridsen on the writing of “O Magnum Mysterium”

Yes, we all experience terrible things… I like to see it as this is our species-wide endeavor.  How do we change what happened to us into how to live better.  That’s the great great conundrum.  –Ocean Vuong on PBS

Every year I read the MacArthur Foundation awards.  The writer Ocean Vuong was amongst the class of 2019 MacArthur Fellows.  Over a series of a few days I watched the two or three minute summary videos posted for each fellow.  Ocean’s stood out to me, but it wasn’t until a few months later when I came back to it, and found more interviews with him that I started to understand why his work resonated with me.  There were parallels to the way he was trying to write about a new way of being in the world to what I have been trying to do here, write about cycling as a way to live that is powerful and vibrant.

In Nevada my friend Dave and I rode the horse trails across the Humboldt Range after getting our bikes lifted to the start on 4-wheeler by his father Burl

Ocean’s novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, is a lot of things, but a central theme has to be American masculinity.  What does it mean to be a man?  On the bicycle I discovered I had strengths I didn’t recognize before, and one of those was a loving heart.  The heart literally drives your motion on the bicycle.  This is so powerful to let your light shine this way but somehow rather than celebrating it universally our society can sometimes be critical of those who ride bicycles.

Writing helped me understand, that although you can technically be a victim…whether you live in victimhood is up to you.  We can’t change what happens to us.  But we can change how we live in order to have a successful life.  I think one of the great powers of writing is when you can take your story and present an alternate future of where it is headed, you can take control of your life.  —Ocean Vuong

There is a wisdom to accepting what happened is beyond your control.–Ocean Vuong

What I learned from these refuge women is you don’t have to talk it out.  That is the great western myth.  That you got to talk it out, get a therapist, lay it all out.  –Ocean Vuong

A lot of the times I ride it out, and work it out by using that energy to try and understand where people are coming from.  One of the great gifts of cycling is it helps cultivate self-empathy if you let it.  And starting with self-compassion, you can expand your awareness more to what is going on with others, who are unique, and also not so different from us.

One of the greatest joys is riding with my family

What they can do is say regardless of what happened, I care for you, and I’m going to find a way to keep caring for you.  —Ocean Vuong

Recently my mother told me to keep riding my bike.  This kind of verbal encouragement and acceptance of what I do, of who I am, means a lot to me.  It starts here, creating that culture of encouragement between our loved ones, within our families.

Rage and anger are energies.  They are raw energies ready to be recycled and reused.  But if we use them, anger is a force that extinguishes the wielder as well as the world.  I’m more interested in using the energy of compassion and understanding.  I’m at my best when I say, I’m angry about this, but I need to know why you are doing it to me.  —Ocean Vuong

It is true we are all alone in this world, but equally true we couldn’t do anything by ourselves.  Vuong gives ‘the ten books he needed to write my novel’ here at Literary Hub.  I’ve tried to document my sources of inspiration here on this blog, including the first hand experience that I am having on my everyday rides with my friends in our community.  The really beautiful and exceptional thing about cycling is everyone can embody this identity and experience the world in this way.  That’s why I keep inviting people to join the fun fun fun.  We can actually do what Thoreau urges us to do, and experience the world through each other’s eyes, like what literature does.  Hope to see your light shining on a ride!

What a man leaves behind is what a man is.  –Toni Morrison, “A Mercy”, quoted in The Sun Magazine, March 2020

Further Reading: A previous post on Comprehensive Planning as a tool for humanity’s development: https://bikeyogiblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/planning-for-a-healthy-legacy/

After spending Friday riding in Albuquerque, Saturday September 28 seemed like a good day to explore the countryside.  I had been curious about a road on the map to Capilla Peak in the Manzano Mountains.  It appeared to go all the way to the crest of the Manzanos, which is unique because most of the high country is designated wilderness.  But the road to Capilla Peak was not, which meant I could ride my bike there.  I headed east out of town through Tijeras Canyon, crossing over to the eastern flank of the Manzano range and headed South towards the town of Manzano.

(This song is named Albaycin, which is a district in Granda, Spain.  Since the Manzanos were named after the Spanish word for apples, it makes a good match for this ride.  It lends a sense of motion.)

I figured this ride would be over a 100 miles so I stopped at the Ten Points General Store at the top of the climb up South 14 above Tijeras.  Country neighbors were touching base there as they picked up supplies for their weekends.  The US Forest Service had just suspended firewood permit sales a few days earlier in five national forests in New Mexico, including Cibola.  This was a big deal since many people heat their homes with local forest wood.  While I was fueling my own engine with assorted snacks and beverages I purchased at Ten Points, another customer was saying how thankful he was for he wood he already had stored away.  He was already getting offers from others to purchase his wood, but he said he wasn’t selling any of it.  A week or so later the Forest Service modified their rule to allow personal firewood cutting and gathering, again.  I pedaled on enjoying the day with anticipation of the unknown journey unspooling down the road ahead.

In Manzano I turned right on Forest Road 245.  The pavement ended.  I felt like the ride was just beginning.  I was heading up the mountain and would climb all the way to about 9,200 feet above sea level.  A beautiful road with very light traffic.  I passed through New Canyon Spring campground and one lone traveler was packing up his tent.  We waved at each other.  I climbed higher and higher through burn scars and into the clear blue mountain light.  The scrub oak was turning bright colors.

At the very top the road intersects with the Manzano Crest trail, and there is a trail leading to a raptor viewing area staffed by HawkWatch International.  Since 1985 every late summer and Fall HawkWatch does a raptor count and studies the migrations through the southern Rocky Mountain Flyway.  The raptors catch the thermals rising over the mountain ridges.  There is also a campground at the top where the HawkWatch crew stays during the migratory season.

I felt like I was on top of the world.  The viewshed was open in every direction, and the clear dry air was transparent.  To the east the sparsely populated Estancia Valley stretched out to the white salt basins and plains beyond.  To the west I could see the green ribbon of the Rio Grande.  There is something magical about seeing the beauty with our own eyes what for so long had been unknown or just a line on a map.  The joy of accomplishment and discovery bubbled up inside me as it felt so good to be present in this unique moment time, enfolded by the landscape.

I couldn’t stand around for long, however, as I still had to get home.  I was careful on the dirt road descent, but that road really flows.  I hit some washboard sections pretty fast but managed to hang on and use the gravity to soar downhill.  By the time I came into Tajique I was almost out of liquids but Rays One Stop Store was open and I bought three cans of soda.  He might have been selling gold as far as I was concerned, and it was enough calories to get me home. I can see the Manzano Mountains from our kitchen windows.  Even though I have been looking at them for five years since we moved here, after this ride, my feeling of connection changed.  There is something intimate and comforting realizing more about the nature and the beauty of the land that enfolds us, especially the quiet, unheralded, but still awesome Manzanos.

References:

HawkWatch Manzano Mountains, NM https://hawkwatch.org/manzanos

Ten Points General Store in Tijeras (or Escabosa) https://www.facebook.com/TenPointsTijeras/

Buy apples in season at the Manzano Mountain Retreat https://www.manzanomountainretreat.com

A nice story about a fifth grader in McIntosh, NM at the base of the Manzanos saving two barn owls when their family barn collapsed in high winds https://edgewood.news/hawks-aloft-and-carson-dismuke-release-rescued-owls/