Slow Down, You Move Too Fast…by Tamia Nelson

Most of the miles I travel in a year are logged on my bikes’ cyclometers, not on a car odometer, but last week I covered several hundred miles in only two days, spending hours in the driver’s seat. It’s the longest car trip I’ve taken in quite a while. And while I don’t have any regrets, I found highway speeds more than a little disconcerting, particularly when measured against my “normal” traveling pace of 12-15 mph.

For one thing, at 65 mph—the speed limit on the interstate, though I think I was the only driver who observed it—the landscape is reduced to little more than a blur. I suppose regular car commuters take this as a given, but I’m accustomed to experiencing the country I pass through. I did catch tantalizing glimpses of a the wild world as I sped along—wooded hillsides sporting new spring raiment, wetlands nourished by snowmelt-swollen rivers—but these vanished from my sight almost before I became aware of their existence. And what of the spring chorus? It was lost in the thrum of rubber on asphalt. Or the smell of rich, wet earth, newly awakened from winter’s long slumber? That, too, was absent, trapped somewhere in the ductwork of the car’s climate-control system.

Of course, the sights, sounds, and smells of spring hadn’t really gone away. Red-winged blackbirds were still announcing their return in every marsh. Chipmunks were scurrying about in search of mates in every field, too. And woodpeckers were drumming out their territories in every copse. But for all I could tell, they might as well have been on Mars. So long as I was immured in my hurtling cell, my world was much smaller and infinitely more sterile than theirs.

Traveling on a bike is very different. For better or worse, I’m a part of each landscape I pass through. A horse runs alongside me as I ride, pulling up short only when he reaches the fence at the end of the field. A buzzard follows me for a mile or two, wheeling lazily over my head, then decides I’m not likely to figure on his menu for the day. He leaves me to try his luck elsewhere. The unmistakable smell of death draws my eyes to the half-rotted corpse of a deer in the ditch at the side of the highway. Perhaps the buzzard will be back. And a bend in the road reveals a bulldozed lot where a grove of maples once supported a rich wild community. (Was it only last week? It was. In a month’s time a landscaper will be planting ornamental shrubs in the barren earth; in six month’s time, a harried housewife will be guiding a riding mower over her new lawn. But it will be a long time before the maples return.)

On a bike, I can’t help but notice these things.

Later, the interstate now behind me, I began a four-mile-long climb out of a mountain valley. I passed several RVs, all of them laboring up the grade. Then I spotted a pack of roadies just ahead. They wore team kit, and they were obviously fit, but it was also obvious that the climb was taking its toll. A cluster of weaker riders were struggling to regain their place in the pack as I passed them, and a quick sideways glance revealed that even the leaders were working hard. Their faces were contorted in pain.

I felt nothing of this, of course. The only effort demanded of me was a slight pressure on the accelerator. Yet I found myself envying the roadies—even the stragglers who’d been dropped off the back of the pack. I’ve climbed enough long grades to know something of their pain. And I wished I’d been able to share it on that day. For pain is the price of true participation. Spectators have it easy by comparison, but they only get to watch a show put on by others. I don’t think this is a very good bargain. In the grammar of life, it’s far better to be the verb than the object.* We’ll all be reduced to objects soon enough. Remember the dead deer in the ditch? I certainly do. She’s feeling no pain. But I’m not in any hurry to join her.

Of course, I also haven’t forgotten that I live in what writer Jim Kunstler calls the “Republic of Happy Motoring.” And it’s manifestly clear that my fellow citizens have decided no price is too high to pay for the convenience of automobility. So I’ve little choice but to stay with the crowd and keep my foot pressed down hard on the accelerator, even as we hurtle over the cliff. But whenever and wherever I can, I’ll still ride, rather than drive. It’s my life sentence, after all. And I like being the verb.

* Echo trouble? Then maybe you’ve seen Alan Bennett’s The Madness of King George.

Send a Comment