Clouds

Say the sky is a great canvas, for truly it is. God is the painter. Where rain clouds are mere acrylic, snow clouds are gouache. The former is black and white, but the latter has an elegant complexity that is immeasurable. 

Life is metaphorically identical to a grand cloud. It can only be appreciated from a distance, both for beauty of form, and for understanding of meaning.

Ten Miles from the Magic

I stepped out of the car into the thirty-two-degree wind, plugged in to the music of Blue Highway. Its mood was slightly tense and almost martial. I pull my bicycle out of the car, not knowing how many more miles she has left in her before her pedal shaft locks up. I put her together dutifully and pull up the seat, locking it into place. The moment I begin into the stiff air, the music changes to a calm repose, and I get that rush of motion along with the distinct impression that things are perfectly okay. It doesn't take many pushes on those pedals to get my allotment of inspiration. I pass a deforested field to the right, quickly overtaken by red-brown growth. The sky is blue. A half-moon hangs only slightly above the denuded treeline. I marvel, as I have done many times before, over the indestructibility of beauty. It is the daytime in what would be expected to be the dullest place in South Carolina, but here is this ethereal scene. There is always the sky, and in the south, there is always the comradery of the warm sun, no matter how the north wind may rage.
As the music changes from a country-hall-dance violin in its playfulness to a contemplative shimmering introduction to The Seventh Angel, I am caught, as are the pines, between my eyes and the half-overcast sunlight. It is captivating. These winter pines caught between me and my southern sun, vivified by the muse coming from the headphones got me thinking I should pair my bicycle rides with music more often.

Why Bluegrass?

The answer to this question is simple:

It is the sound of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Now since that response wouldn't make for a very good post, allow me to expound. I've given the immense background -- the 'how' (which was far longer than I had intended) -- now here's the 'why'

I feel bluegrass is a reflection of my soul. It is simple, playful, and demonstrates the brighter, braver side of human nature. Even when the lyrics are sad, the music is happy. It is also the most ambrosial of musics when the tempo slows. After having listened to a lot of jazz, with its beautiful color palate of chords and scales, turning to bluegrass has been refreshingly simple. Its not what notes you play, its how you play them. It matters most the spiritual energy you put into what you play or sing. It comes out as clear as any language of the tongue. One thing I've noticed about the singing through listening to bluegrass is about how the notes are filtered through all the singer's years and joys and sorrows. The stretching sadness. You can hear the miles in their voice. The longer the road, the more powerful it comes out. Its all about how it sounds, how it feels. The sheer variance of instrument tones is something so special too.

I say, give me banjo or give me death. The banjo, the one-instrument musical army, is the five-string harp along with the Gabriel's trump that is the train horn. It is the icy wind blowing through the lonesome pine on the high ridge. It is the old jailbird walking into the setting sun. The dobro is the yearning outcry of the adventurous soul. It is also the romancer. It is the very voice of angels. But it is also the darkest tone of bluegrass. The mandolin, on the other hand, is the light-hearted hobo whistling down the road. It is the hard blizzard. The mandolin is the happy ending, it is also innocent love's beginnings. The fiddle is the processional waltz. It is even the never-ending train, both engine and whistle. It is the fire.

Banjo is spring. Fiddle is the summer. Dobro is autumn. Mandolin is the winter. The upright bass is the mountain. The guitar is the road.

And while the people in the bright city drink and talk idly, the river below rolls forever by.. 
"And the river rolls on like an endless ribbon, and the sunshine glistens on the rocks below. He can hear her voice in the rippling water sayin' 'please be home before the cold winds blow'"
~ Blue Highway

How?

The easterly hills of the southern Appalachia is where my life of wanderlust began. Think Rosman, Brevard, and finally the entire Asheville land. I wasn't born there, but I got there as soon I could. I did not get there all at once either. First came Salem, Carolina. I wasn't even aware of the great stretches that lay out of sight to the north of the Cherokee Foothills as I sped west from Traveler's Rest, the high reaches above veiled by the night fog. From my first morning in Salem creek -- wading in, tasting the water, not even thinking of the mountains (that were SO close!) from which it came -- I knew I wanted more. Cleaner, purer, from a greater altitude. But not yet.
Next came Lake Jocassee, the clearest water in South Carolina. The lake was beautiful and blue along with the small mountains that contained it. Still I did not imagine my mountains. I had lived in this state my entire life. I never knew of rivers and lakes such as this. The most I had seen is black-water of the Pee-Dee and sediment-laden dinge-water of Charleston harbor. All this time, how wearily my soul must have been searching for my body: Wandering the empty vales of the lower Blue Ridge Mountains, spending blustery nights atop Balsam Range, adding its howls of thousands of other lost souls of the wind, winding up and down the Parkway hitching rides countless times, wondering while overlooking the gentle foothills from NC-281.
After a few days of Lake Jocassee, my soul beckoned. It called me up SC-130. When I hit Whitewater Falls just beyond the border, I thought I knew why. I walked further up the state road past the falls, and climbed down a hill and sat by the river under the bridge. While walking back to the car, I caught sight of a clearing of trees. I just sat there and pleasantly contemplated the scene. The impression was unmistakable: You will come back to this spot. I would not see it again until three seasons later. I woke up to the morning horizon outlined in red behind the pines where I was, camping near the head of a trail that leads to the same waterfall. A mile up the road my body and soul found each other. I walked up to the small clearing of trees, and held this same view, but it was softened with the coolest purple and red airs. It felt like home. I felt a gentle warm emotion that the land is all for my joy, that I've known it all along.
With the afternoon came Brevard. I was charmed with the city, mountains seemingly tall from the viewpoint of the valley town. It was a precursor to Asheville. I then turned on the radio and heard bluegrass, and continued to hear it during my drive into Hendersonville. From that point on, the memories of the mountains and the sound of bluegrass banjo pinging my ears like the cold wind were swirled together. All I need to do is listen to that old lonesome music, and I'm back in the Blue Ridge.

Third Times A Charm

This past weekend, I caught a ride up to Columbia for contra dancing and to spend time with a family of a good friend of mine. It took dozens upon dozens of phone calls, but I finally secured a ride. I would bicycle a good portion of the way home. I looked forward to it.
The weekend held some noteworthy moments. Firstly, I got the opportunity to go sailing with a brother of my good friend (he is in England on a mission right now). He is very dedicated to his art. He is spending an entire year saving money while working full time so he can buy a sailboat of his own and go on a grand sailing journey. I learned a great deal about the true ancient way of water travel, and I look forward to the sailing trip with my friend after my mission.
After getting back to their home, right back out the door I went! Bicycling to downtown Columbia was old and brown. I had a spare tire wall with me and I put it on the bicycle before I left. It turned out to be unreliable and I traded it out after I lost two tubes to it. I hugged a railroad track for a mile and a half before finding the road to Knox Abbot St. Even in the night, bicycling across the Congaree River and over the lonely railroad track was beautiful and poetic. The moon was burning at full, as I knew it would be. The rocks that edged just above the water shone in the night. The smooth steel of the rails and imagination also were galvanized. I went under the bridge that went humped over the next set of rails, expecting to catch glimpses of a bum taking shelter. None were there. I was in a vastly empty part of town. I enjoyed the emptiness of it. I took some pictures of the cottonball clouds and the USC Campus. I prowled Finlay park like a five-year old. It was huge. It was a maze of water and stairs. I then enjoyed contra dancing. I didn't move much on Sunday. I spent a lot of time at church. Monday morning the brother would drive me fifteen miles south.

I began my journey back home in the same area where I ended my three-week trip by bicycle, intending to tie up loose ends and finish the gap between Orangeburg and Charleston, down U.S. 178. The fog clung just above the cars as we drove down. We arrived to where I would begin to bicycle. I thought of when I breathed in the red dusk in this exact same spot on my way back from Columbia in the spring when I had a car. A truck balled past me, appearing out of nowhere. Having a mist between you and everything you see makes it all a little bit more mysterious, pulls you in just a little bit stronger out of curiosity. It was fifteen miles into Orangeburg. As I made my way, the fog cleared pleasantly, ascending as did my mood, from grounded to high in the sky. I dictated as I rode, "Its the same scenes a thousand times over, whether it be U.S. 21 to Orangeburg in the fog or S.C. 133 out of Clemson." It brings my mind back to a time when I traveled with my mother and a few other people to see Niagra Falls. As I was intently watching the Horseshoe, one of the ladies told me in her gentle Honduran accent, "You can get tired of seeing what man has made, but you never get tired of seeing what God has created, even the same thing day after day." A gentle clack sounded under my bicycle seat, and I knew what it was, though I didn't want to accept it. No more bicycling. The axle had broken. This had happened on my way from the tops of the ridges of Balsam Range to upstate South Carolina, and while it bought one of my greatest stories and inner changes, I did not feel like walking fifty miles. I caught a ride home from Al, he was coming down from Florence to Charleston. I spent the next few days catching as much sleep as possible. This is the second time I finished my trip prematurely in Orangeburg. We brought the bike home, but its useless until fixed. Separated from my Frankie, I am like a bicycle without a back tire. I'm not going anywhere.

Everything in a Blink of an Eye

- photograph by Philip Rodney Davidson Jr

Ah poor mind of man, and lonely man alone on the beach, and God watching with intent smile I'd say . . . and I dreamed of home long ago in New England, my little kitkats trying to go a thousand miles following me on the road across America, and my mother with a pack on her back, and my father running after the ephemeral uncatchable train 

~ Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums

Different stories down ev'ry line

People workin' hard just to live and die

I saw it all once upon a time

Through the window of a train

~Blue Highway

One Year - Transformation

I'm happy to roam
I can find my way from the mountains to the ocean foam

I keep thinking of my descent out of the mountain. The rain came, soaked my sleeping bag and everything, and when I left the mountains, I seemed to take the cloud with me. After the first night of rain on Balsam Range, having gotten no sleep, the prophesying wind came hushing through the ridge where I had set camp. It not only brought cleaner air, but it blew the old out of me and breathed the new in. I know this is so. However, the elements were not done with my psyche yet. Next came the gray. It soaked everything as did the rain. At one point, I thought my skin was gray. I was in a fog for two days, all the while rain was ever-so-lightly yet ever-so-steadily drizzling. I was not at all dry that entire time. It soaked through every part of me. My bicycle was broken. Mile after mile passed under my prune feet, and achingly slow was my lot. I have never been so wet in my entire life, but I kept walking. Each hill which I was so sure was the last before the NC/SC border was surely not. How inspiring of Humility was it all!

I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged like the Prophet that has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was Wow

I came into Clemson wet, dank, and dirt-bummed. I think after the wind had flung some intangible thing from out of me, the water washed away something just as indiscernible. I know this because after I made it out of the mountain, having mostly walked on paper-thin soles, and arrived in Clemson, the looks I got were incredible. My hair was plastered onto my forehead. Thought I smelt damp and earthy. Ghost-white hands clenching the bicycle handles, my pack was laboring and huge on my back. Poorly wrapped around it was Dunbar's blue frayed tarp, secured with bungee cords spanning from side to side. nobody could understand what I was, but nobody could deny it. In their eyes I truly was strange and ragged. It was the virtue of being unfathomable. The last night I had spent in my wet sleeping bag may have been a cocoon. What was different about me did not wash away with the dirt and damp as I showered at a friend's dorm on campus. Until now, I never knew what it was. As I dropped out of the North Carolina mountain, down the Blue Ridge Escarpment, from NC-281 to SC-130, the trees changed. The air changed. The sun momentarily came out. Now before I entered South Carolina, I passed a water-glazed field. The fog didn't dull as it did everything else before. It lent a sullen softness to it. Oh, how marvelous is it that a small field such as this can emit so many fragrances and speak such a variety of emotions! I remember walking into Salem, the town where my traveling life commenced. I found this town at the end of my rope: an hour past dark, the thirteenth hour, speeding through cloud-laden SC-11 (never once had I looked to the right to try to spot what great secrets were concealed above the fog) not being able to find a place to camp for the night. "Oh, go down Burnt Tanyard Road" said a gas-station attendant just about to close the store. I took his directions into this rusty town with a brook running through it. It was beautiful, and I've kept coming back ever since, but now it was my passage into Clemson, where I sought shelter and a way to fix my bicycle (this is why the road was my burden and not my wings). I didn't enjoy it, I merely tramped through it wearily. Waiting for my friend to pick me up and take me into Clemson, I spent maybe an hour and a half in a town store talking with the only person inside (where I was, I do not know) while I was charging my phone. As I remember first opening my mouth, I am estranged to know that I still remembered how. Having gotten in the car, I noted the surreal speed with which we headed towards Clemson.

Four seasons ago (to this date), I awoke from my sleeping bag to the cool coastal air of Charleston, Carolina. The first thing I did was hop in that blue car and drove to the beach. I passed through the island of my childhood in the noon-day sun. I realize now what was different: It was my eyes. My affinity for light. The brightest of rooms was too dark for my taste now. I also realize, as I type this, the symbolism of that album of my choosing for my drive to Folly Beach that brilliant morning. Short Trip Home was what I listened to. I think more and more of how, in actuality, my journey was quite brief. As beautiful and ingrained in my mind as it was (and eternally will be), it was but a blink of an eye.

From the hills to the sea, I'll become a memory

Excerpts From A Work Of Fiction Never Written

. . . My parents have all achieved such great things in the eyes of the world. My father has been head of multiple business and organizations (which I greatly admire, do not misunderstand), graduating in the top of his class with a Doctorate in two very arduous degrees. My mother likewise has been a mover and shaker in her community, and has, amongst all this, raised a fabulous family, which I will forever be grateful for. The greatest success of both my mother and father was in the home, regardless of all the other said accomplishments, contrary to what others only naturally feel, since so many people benefited from their contribution to society. . .

. . . What have I to offer? I "merely" (as both friend and stranger alike disparagingly state) want to "roam around the country like a poor person." I feel a painful chasm between my measures of success and that of those around me. My father wants me to be like him, and I sadly cannot give him that. I can only give him me -- who I am. . .

. . .It matters not. I am accustomed to being true to myself, only this time the stakes are considerably higher. I now make my (rite of) passage into the American West. . .

Past Adventure #4: Mist and Fog

I have patched in a few stories because for about a three month period, I did not write in my previous blog and they are, as Kerouac wrote in 1951, "too great not to tell." After I finish this last tale, I will chase many more new stories.
The Gulf of Mexico began pumping heat and thrusting it northward. It was sultry and warm in Charleston for about four days. Instead of high 50s at night it was 70s. As I awoke to this balmy weather last  Monday morning, I thought to myself, "what perfect weather for the beach!" And so I did something last week that I have never done before: I bicycled all the way from my house to Folly Beach. This was about twenty-five miles. The ride to downtown wasn't anything special. I've done it so many times before. Riding my bicycle through downtown was really neat. Downtown and James Island -- the island of my childhood -- I will never tire of. Next came the James Island Connector. It was marvelous. The sun was all on the water. Even the smallest altitude is thrilling. The Connector drops down low and you ride through a forest in the sky. What I remember the most was the sunlight. The sunlight illuminated all of what seemed to be a rapid memory-journey through my childhood, seeing all the scenes of James Island from the sky, on a bridge that didn't exist when I was born.
The traffic on James Island was terrible as always, but soon, I began to smell beach and knew I was close. There are three bridges on the way to Folly Beach. The concrete seas were rough and bumpy, because they were such old roads. I sailed on it regardless, though smooth sailing it was not. After the second bridge, I dropped anchor and surveyed the landscape. A crew building a deck saw me pull out my keen sea-telescope, placing my left leg on the bridge rail for stability. To the west I saw palmettos in the great distance, tidal islands in the marsh, and a great fog thrown up by the humid air rolling in from the south. My favorite part of the beach was always the marshlands that extend beyond the horizon in both directions, and now I am seeing it in the best way possible: fifteen mph and no windows. My mind keeps coming back to those veiling vapors, vapors that will always lend an intrepid mystery to a land. Where mists in the mountains shroud great summits, fog in the inlet marshes hide pirate treasure. The only way to see the next few hundred feet of the marsh is to get up close. I think another muse of mine will soon be the canoe. But now, my ship sails the pavement. It has taken me many places, and will continue to do so.

Past Adventure #3: Swamp Short

I usually take a thirty-mile loop to get my fill of swamp-grass, perpetually-earth-toned trees, water, and waving grains in the lateday sun. I discovered the beginning and end of it contain the majority of these (begining from US 52 onto State Road S-8-43 and ending on US 52 coming out of Goose Creek), and one day, I decided to do only these parts. It was short, the water was deep blue, and it gave me those chills that the song Walls Of Time brings to me upon seeing swamp trees in early or lateday sunlight. I one day will take a canoe out to these waters, they are haunting and hold some tantalizing burnt-umber mysteries.

Past Adventure #2: "Promised Land"

This was what I whispered to myself as I began bicycling down Bushy Park road, seeing the dual boat-landings and power lines aligned in the distance open up to my view. It had been a seemingly infinite period of time since I last came here and tore away the soles from my old shoes that saw me through the mountains last year. Red Bank Road has always been just something to get through. It gets promising at the boat landing and gets more golden all the way through Strawberry. The wild growth to the side of the road was strong as before, and the air was just right. The road was rough and unsmooth, but so was I. I remember not having as much stamina though. I was tired by the end of Old US Fifty-Two, where the bridge passes over the rails stretching onward to Florence. I just looked up and down the tracks from the bridge countless times, resting. I then did something unprecedented:
I got off my bicycle and walked

This tiny road ending in a loop off of the main road, partly paved, partly dirt and gravel. I remember the sunshine. It was special and all for me. Open and green, but also small and intimate. I saw a brook of a stream, and you can imagine how much this delighted me. Just like the railroad tracks, you can't exactly find the beginning of the stream.
I really ought to put some more wear in my leather than in my rubber from time to time.

Past Adventure #1: Onwards To Magic City

After the blue car was damaged from its drive in the mountains, I often found myself taking the train to Florence, Carolina. I first bicyled to Florence on _______ . In total, it was a fifty-five mile journey from Moncks Corner to Olanta. The best part was is that it wasn't an ordeal at all. It was slow, warm, and enjoyable. All I remember seeing is a field over the first bridge out of St. Stephen and the railroad tracks stretch onward. I did thirty miles from Moncks Corner to US 521/US 52 and relaxed for two hours at a fuel stop, eating fried chicken and watching 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'

The next half of the trip is what will from here on out be known as the Barren Land, where your camelbak runs out of water, and all there is to eat is cotton. The only water comes from the swamps and the spigots of church buildings. There are no towns for landmarks, only passing highways. Sumter highway, Turbeville highway, New Salem highway. Once Burnt Branch road became Park road, Olanta snuck up on me. It came about eight miles sooner than I had expected. I was amped! I just kept going, for all of four miles. I felt like an arrow that could shoot out all the way. I stopped in a field by a row of small trees lining a long driveway to a house and laid in the grass with all my sweat and bicycle helmet. I felt like victory. I imagined being approached by a law officer and saying to him "aaah, yes, you aren't used to my kind are you? I'm one of the few left" "I'm sorry, son, what are you getting at??" "The tramp or transient, you know. I know most people prefer to drive, but I like to do it my way" "Well, what you doin' laying around, this is someone's property" "When drivers need to rest from driving, don't they pull off the side of the road until they are ready to get on again? I'm doing the same thing, 'cept I don't go by car, I go by bicycle. Surely I am not trespassing any more than a tired driver is" "Don't let me see you still here in thirty minutes" "Can't promise nothin' sir, I just gotta listen to my muscles and go when they are ready and rested." But I mainly enjoyed what was left of my chicken and dinner roll, singing some songs from the movie. You always think about these things though. I got picked up as agreed and wheeled in to Magic City, happy and chattering all the way. Soon I will travel all ninety-five miles

Leather On Rubber - One Thousand Miles Out Of Arden

A leather-rubber tramp is much like any other tramp: Traveling over great distances, often for extended periods of time, abstaining from normal, long-term labor and thus remaining aloof from mainstream society. What makes this subspecies of transient peculiar is his mode of movement: bicycle. A leather tramp sees America by virtue of the sole of his shoe, often traversing shoe-tearing terrain, hence the adjective leather. Where a normal person can wear down a regular pair of shoes in about a year, a leather tramp will have gone through many more by then. A rubber tramp sees America by virtue of his gas tank, be it motorcycle, car, or even moped. Though a leather tramp may hitch-hike, he does not go through the arduous task of replacing tire after tire (of course much more frequently than the city commuter), thus the distinction between those traveling on leather shoe sole and those traveling on rubber tires. Now a leather-rubber tramp naturally calls upon on both to see his way. He needs his leather shoes to pedal, and he needs the rubber bike tires to carry him forward. He wears them both out considerably. His fuel is not gas, but water and the sunshine -- he is a creature of light. He wears a massive tan and a rugged unhandselled countenance. His vital heat is indefatigable. He may wear a bandanna. His shoes have holes in them. He knows not about studying life, he is too busy living it to heed the theory thereof.

The Legend

~ Three-Hundred and Sixty-Five days ago, I got a new bicycle. This bicycle was forged out of the memories of my time in the mountains. It is an eighteen-speed Motiv, the frame of which was taken out of a junk heap and put together, using spare parts, into a functioning bicycle by a retired man in Arden, NC: David Dunbar. This bicycle cost me nothing, but gave me everything beautiful. It brought me down from Arden, through Salem, Clemson, Ninety Six, and down to Orangeburg. Since this Frankenstein Two-Wheeler arose and went forth, it has seen hundreds of miles. The rubber thereof has seared on the asphalt of Strawberry, Carolina, rested in the grasses of the US 52/US 78 split, leading to two of the twelve corners of North America, rambled up through the Barren Land that will always stand along the way to the Magic City, pushed onward even to Edisto. I have only woven a portion of the tapestry, many patches I will weave in now, though a manly weave is always left a bit rugged.