Richard Treks: BALM: Week 3 Day 5

Several summers ago I was biking across southern Kansas, and the barns from Louisburg to Dodge City were cooking. The entire ride was through a steam of baking urine and dung. You might think the ride was unpleasant, but all that decay was money for someone; it was a smell to me, nothing unpleasant, though at times it burned, like the acidic concentration of skunk juice, but ripe, full of its essence, all of what, at that moment, the mixture of urine, dung, and hay was: Kansas.

For the last several days, here in northern Michigan, where spring is in full blossom along the shores of the Grand Traverse Bay and Lake Michigan, I have been similarly overwhelmed by the sweet smell of lilac. Lilac as tall as dogwood trees. Lilac as thick as unkempt azalea bushes. Lilac as purple as a raspberry pie, lilac as white as sugar. You ride into the air of lilac and it seems that you too are lilac. Your hair, your skin, your nails, your teeth and bones: all of you, your complete self: your breath: lilac.

It's not like riding past the smell of something dead, bloated roadkill, bags of gas, a deer, a possum, a cow; or past a pizza joint venting its ovens or past a grill of ribs; or past a field of strawberries, a stream of crystal water, a yard of cut spring grass. Those smells start from a distance, at first micro, something different, at first vague, nameless. Then they swell, become macro--stench, hunger, blossom. You ride into it, and you yourself are stench, hunger, and blossom. Then you ride out of the field of scent into the memory of it.

How can anyone take such smells for very long? I haven't had a good shower in three days. Two nights ago in Traverse City I just chose not to, I was too tired. The camp last night was primitive, all I could do was a poor imitation of a sponge bath with cold water from Lake Michigan. Certainly I smell of sweat, dirt, freeze dried dinners, chain oil, trail mix, wet tent, sweaty sleeping bag, little wounds, jelly beans, and sticky hair. If you sat at a table next to me, aid say, Oh, excuse me, I'll move to the table over there under the fan.

It did in fact rain this morning, and for the first eight miles from camp to Northport, I could feel the rain rinsing from me the grime and stench that comes with long distance biking, not just from a day, but from the days of nearly a thousand miles. And there, in Northport, feeling clean, feeling fresh, like rain, I parked my bike in front of a bakery, walked in; my being filled with jelly, custard, cream filling, lemon. I was. Cinnamon.

Follow the BALM.