When we’re behind the wheel, it’s easy to fall into “Don’t look, don’t see” mode. A car enwombs driver and passenger alike, insulating them from the many of the sights, sounds, and smells of the world around them. Not long ago a driver ran down a cyclist, dragging her several hundred yards. The driver continued on without stopping, thinking, she later said, that she’d just hit a deer or a dog. Only when she got home and discovered a bicycle lodged under her SUV did it dawn on her that she’d struck a human being. (The cyclist died of her injuries, by the way, but the driver wasn’t charged. Apparently, this was a mistake any driver could make.)

Only a deer. Only a dog. Only a cyclist. Life is cheap on America’s highways, and the open road is littered with the bodies of the ones who didn’t get away. Not many cyclists are left where they fall, of course. We still have enough respect for human life to collect their remains, if not enough to prosecute their killers. (A mistake anyone could make.) But our other victims mostly remain on the asphalt where they died, food for crows and other scavengers. Which is, after all, only the natural order of things. Still, it’s hard not to be struck by the evidence of the automobile’s power to kill and main.

Unless, of course, you choose not to see. But this easy option isn’t open to cyclists. We can’t help but see what lies on the road we ride on. And if the dead have lain in the sun for very long, we can smell them, too.

Which means that many cyclists only know our rarer and more elusive species of animals because they’ve seen them lying dead on the highway—or struggling to get across a busy road before a speeding car crushes them beneath its wheels. How many riders have seen a snapping turtle anywhere except on the highway? Or a living shrew, darting in and out of the deep forest duff, in its never-ending quest for enough food to fuel a heart that beats hundreds of times a minute?

Me? I’m one of the lucky ones. I know these animals when they’re “at home.” But I still see far more of them dead on the road before me. Maybe you’ve never made the acquaintance of a shrew. OK. Here’s one that didn’t make it:

Or maybe you’ve never seen a weasel going about his business, sinuous and sleek, patrolling the rocky shore of a river or hunting under the pines? Well, if you haven’t, it’s not really a surprise. Weasels move fast, and they hunt by stealth and guile. They’re not easy to see. But this one—a least weasel—had no trouble holding still for my camera:

Then again, he didn’t have much choice, did he?

And what about birds? Cedar waxwings aren’t rare, and while they prefer wild fruit, they’re sometimes seen at feeders. But they’re shy. It’s hard to get near them. I didn’t have any trouble getting close to this one, though:

He died in my hands after being struck by a car.

Don’t get me wrong. I like riding. I really do. But each ride adds to an already overlong list of absent friends. And each small body that I scoop up and carry off the road to some grassy patch on the verge reminds me just how vulnerable we all are. A fumbled cell phone, a flirtatious tickle in the ribs, the cry of a colicky child in the back seat… Too many drinks, too many hours without sleep, too many pills,… And then it’s Did I hit something back there? Must have. Helluva bang. Still, it was probably just a dog or a deer. Too late to stop now. Couldn’t do anything, anyway. I’ll check out the damage when I get home. Have to keep the wife (or the boyfriend or the boss or the insurance) from finding out, too. Damn!

Meanwhile, a few miles back, something unseen drags itself slowly and painfully toward the refuge offered by nearest roadside ditch.

Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were it’s teeth concealed?
You seem to ask. …
        I’m glad I can’t explain
Just in what jaws your were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep quite still and wait.

      Philip Larkin, “Myxomytosis”

How many of us take the time to look beyond the beauty strip? And how many of us really want to? After all, it can be downright painful to see what lies just outside the frame of the photos in the tourist board’s brochures. But if you ride a bike along the highway, hike less-traveled trails, paddle on public waterways, or just walk the city streets to do your shopping and pick up the mail, then you really can’t avoid seeing what lies in front of your eyes, can you? And maybe that’s a good thing.

In any event, we think it’s worth the effort. To that end, Tamia Nelson’s Outside will take another look “Beyond the Beauty Strip” every month. And any number can play. So if you have an example that you’d like to share, please send it along.

 
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A steady stream of cars passed me, each one driven by someone who was in a terrible hurry to go… Where? Work? The HyperMart in town? Or the post office just half a mile ahead? In any event, they gave me plenty of room as they sped by me, and the bumper stickers on most of the SUVs, extend-cab pickups, and vans proclaimed their owners’ abiding love of the environment and deep personal commitment to the green lifestyle. Perhaps the drivers were communicating the depth of this devotion to friends or coworkers as they hurtled along. At least that’s one explanation for the many hands that I saw cupped tight against ears. The drivers sat in splendid isolation in air-conditioned comfort, watching the landscape unfold at 50 mph, as their lips moved soundlessly, imparting (or receiving) some message too urgent to be postponed, even for the 30 seconds or so it would take to reach the post office parking lot. I could usually pick out the urgent communicators while they were still some distance behind me, a characteristic swerve invariably signaling the moment when they realized something was in their path.

I was that something, cycling along at a little less than racing speed—OK, make that a lot less—on a shoulderless town road that borders a checkerboard of fen and forest land. Ten years ago, this was still a wild place, a back road that linked two other, equally neglected roads, where the few motorists who traveled it regularly all drove slowly, often stopping to chat if they saw that I’d pulled off onto the shoulder to snap a photo or make a note. And I was frequently doing one or the other, because the place was home to wildlife of every description.

Then several canny contractors bought up parcels of undeveloped land adjoining the county forest and started surveying home sites, selling them on to folks who longed to have a place in the country to call their own, even if that meant they had to clearcut an acre or two of white pines or red maples in the process. Of course, most of these latter-day pioneers worked somewhere else, often somewhere far from their new place in the country, requiring that they spend anywhere from a half hour to a couple of hours each and every day in their cars. So it isn’t exactly surprising that traffic picked up along the narrow town road.

Meanwhile, I slogged on. Then, up ahead, I saw a small form in the middle of the road. Could it be a turtle? I rose out of the saddle and sprinted, trying desperately to reach it before an oncoming car did. But a bright red SUV won the race with seconds to spare. Whatever I’d seen on the road disappeared from view beneath its bumper. The driver gave a cheery wave as she passed me.

With no time to lose and little hope left, I veered off the road, leaping from my bike while it was still in motion. The inert form on the highway wasn’t a turtle, as I’d first feared. It was a young cedar waxwing. By some miracle he’d escaped being crushed; the tires of the red SUV had missed him completely. Best of all, I could see he was breathing. He lay on his back, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Taking advantage of a brief lull in the traffic, I walked into the middle of the road and scooped the stricken bird into my hands, cradling him in my palm as I returned to the tree-shaded berm where I’d ditched my bike.

I could find no obvious injury, but I guessed that the waxwing had been struck a glancing blow by a car’s windshield. There was little I could do beyond holding him close to my body, hoping against hope that he might extract some comfort from the warmth. I turned my back to the road and its traffic. A thicket of alders pressed close against the berm here. The waxwing flexed his wings and kicked his feet. Perhaps he’d been reared in a nest somewhere in the alders. I began to think he might recover from the blow. I’d seen it happen before, when a chickadee fell victim to a window-strike only to come back to life in my hands—and then return regularly to “visit” with me for several weeks afterward.

But almost as soon as I’d allowed myself to feel the first few stirrings of optimism, the tiny form in my hands arched his back in a single convulsive shudder and died. The cars droned ceaseless on.

I tucked his now lifeless body among a cluster of wildflowers at the foot of an alder, covered him with some of the last year’s fallen leaves, and returned to my bike. As I resumed my plodding journey, yet another SUV passed me, the driver deep in earnest conversation with some invisible communicant. The sticker on her car’s rear bumper said, “Green Warrior.”

 
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It’s summertime—in the northern hemisphere, at any rate—and the living is easy. Then again, the dying is pretty easy, too. It doesn’t make for a very catchy tune, but it’s a fact. Pick up a paper or log onto a news website, and what do you see? Motorcycle crashes. Casualties from wars in distant places. Pelicans and sea turtles and porpoises drowning in oil-fouled water. Of course, for most of us, most of the time, these tragedies happen off-stage. The don’t touch us directly. We read about them, or we watch a two-minute video clip on the local news, and we think, How sad. How terribly sad. And then we start up the gas grill.

The dying goes on while we broil the burgers, of course. But it doesn’t spoil the fun. The painful dramas unfold somewhere else, somewhere far removed from our patios. And the old saw is right: whatever is out of sight is out of mind.

Except that it isn’t. At least it isn’t if you ride a bike on the road in summer. While nine-year-long wars and record-breaking oil spills are, by definition, somewhat outside the ordinary course of affairs—even if recent history might suggest otherwise—there’s plenty of everyday killing going on all around us. And I see the evidence every day. Or I smell it. Or both.

In a car, speeding along at 60 plus, with the windows rolled up and the air conditioner set to MAX, it’s easy to ignore the silent legions of the dead sprawled prostrate along the shoulder, sacrifices on the altar of easy motoring. Maybe you’ll catch a whiff of skunk scent from time to time, but that’s about it. It’s nothing that the tree-shaped air freshener dangling from your rearview mirror can’t deal with. On a bicycle, however, there’s no escape. You can’t miss seeing what lies in front of you. The road unspools much more slowly at 15 mph than at 60, after all. And you can’t help smelling whatever’s in the air. There’s no array of conditioning filters to keep the stench of rotting flesh from assaulting your nostrils, and no little pine-shaped silhouette dangling from your mirror to mask the stink.

Some days it’s almost enough to put me off riding. But not quite. In a sense, I see each ride as an act of witness. Few road users may choose to take notice of the dead lying by the side of the road, but I do. And I think that’s important. Call it a gesture of respect, if you will. Or an acknowledgment of the common fate to which all flesh is heir. A timely memento mori, in other words. In the midst of life we are in death. It’s certainly not the most cheerful verse in the old Book of Common Prayer, but it’s a salutary reminder, one well worth the attention of any cyclist who’s tempted to let her attention wander as cars that tip the scales at two tons or more rocket past at three and four times her speed, driven by folks who are too busy texting or chatting on the phone to worry much about what lies in their path.

In any case, here’s a short wildlife gallery with a difference. If you’ve never ridden a bike down the road in summer, take a few minutes to explore this byway in the country of the dead. It begins right at the road’s edge, and while I won’t pretend that it will be a pleasant trip, it could be any eye-opening experience. And look on the bright side: at least you’re spared the smell.

A skunk relies on his powerful artillery. He’s a creature of the night. When challenged, he doesn’t flee. He simply stands his ground and stamps his feet in warning. This works in the woods—but it’s not much help on the highway.

I’ve always marveled at the skunk’s dexterity. Farwell once watched as a skunk walked into his open tent and undid the buckles on his lunch haversack—which he’d stupidly left at the foot of his sleeping bag—before picking delicately through the contents. Needless to say, Farwell was a little apprehensive. The skunk wasn’t at all perturbed, though. He had a light snack and then sauntered back out into the night, after carefully closing the flap on the haversack. (He left the buckles undone, though.)

But that was in another place and time. This wonderfully dextrous hand is now stilled forever.

By the way, lest you think that I’m on some sort of death kick here, taking pictures of road-killed animals for jollies, think again. The pictures are a byproduct of a self-imposed task. When I can—when time and traffic permit, that is—I stop and remove the night’s casualties from the highway, carrying them onto the grassy shoulder before cycling on. Like I said before, it’s a gesture of respect, though it also has a practical side. Dead animals attract scavengers, and scavengers often get struck, too. I try to break the lethal chain before it claims more victims. My photos? They’re memorials of a sort, in additon to being acts of witness. And I’d be delighted if I never took another. But I know full well my next ride will offer yet more unwished-for opportunities to explore the country of the dead.

    …we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

      Philip Larkin, “The Mower”

 
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