Richard Treks: BALM: Week 2 Day 7

One of my earliest memories is this: summer morning, waking up, maybe the afternoon, a nap; blue sky, everything fresh, the air, the sheets; in bed, a slate board and chalk. The window is open. How old am I? Just a boy who maybe lost a tooth and my mother gave me this wonderful slate board and chalk. I don't remember my mother being there to say, "Look at what the tooth fairy left you!" I don't know whether I believed in the tooth fairy, in the Easter bunny, in Santa Claus. I do remember loving the slate board and chalk; it's one of the first memories I have of an open window. I don't remember what I drew or what I wrote.

Here is what I would write now: forgive me, Mother, for being your son, a son who never knew how to love his mother, for not giving back the love you gave me, for moving in my mind a universe tour away.

There are two long lasting associations with that summer memory. One is my need to have a window open. It can be a scorching summer day, and I'll have the window of my car open. It can be a freezing winter day, and I'll have the window of my car open. I once owned a rust-eaten jeep, with rag top and doors, in Buffalo, New York. In blizzards and lake effects, snow would blow in through the rusty holes and through the seams of the doors. A shovel was always on the floorboard to shovel snow out. The jeep, to me, was an open window of crisp air.

I ride my bike with the window open. I am always climbing over the handlebars and through an oncoming open window of air into a space of wonder and strange. A curve in the road. The crest of a hill. A dogwood blooming in the Hiawatha National Forest. The Black River making its last bend before wasting away in Lake Michigan. Roadkill rising from the shoulder: deer skeleton, porcupine, sandhill crane. They would like to ride on my racks or handlebars like how-many-kids-can-get-on-a-bike. Or like: Ornaments.

I have always slept better with the window open. No matter the season, the surface of hot and cold has always felt alive. I keep the flaps of my tent open so the world is always there: the spring leafing oaks, the calm lake waters, the lighthouse on the distant point, the bright stars. It is a window that I climb--escape--through.

My mother must have known my love of learning. She had a terrible argument with my father when she bought the World Book Encyclopedia, which I read from A to Z, and the Year Books that followed. To read was to look through a window. Books were windows. My mother opened them for me.

A great joy of riding long distance is that you learn something new almost every day. Last summer, while riding from Mission, South Dakota, to St. Louis, Missouri, I learned that Valentine County Nebraska has more beef cattle than any other county in the country, that the Sand Hills of Nebraska are the largest sand dunes in the country, and that Nebraska crops more hay than any other state. On this tour I have learned the geography of Lake Michigan.

Today was of those days when it seemed that the window had closed to learning or seeing anything new. Gary and I had been riding miles through national forests that looked the same mile after mile. We'd crest a hill or round a curve, and nothing was new. Then: a porcupine starts to cross the highway. We see it. We stop. The porcupine turns back toward the woods, it waddles through underbrush, its white spines shining, it climbs a tree.

Today I learned that porcupines climb trees.

Thank you, mother, for the chalk and slate of this iPad. For opening the window so I could escape, move away, and open windows and bike through them over and over. Thank you for removing the training wheels, for the true wheels, for the gears of smooth riding. The miles have always been windows that open to the world of your love.

Follow the BALM