Not to get too literary but…we aren’t opposed to identifying themes recurring within HBC textual territory, are we? By now, we could list several: (1) overcoming self-imposed and externally-wrought adversity (aka “overcoming adversity” but that seems too general and banal even for a self-help book, save a work of literary nonfiction! Plus, isn’t it a bit self-serving to choose something hard to do and then cry “overcoming adversity”? Too bad, I guess, because it’s a theme.) (2) saying “yes” despite fear, discomfort and shame; (3) the whole “Ride your own ride, Danny”/you-do-you thing and its associated implications; (4) confronting my privilege and my prejudices; (5) striving for belonging in strange lands and for connection in a divisive world (is that two? trying not to have too many); and (6) drive/ambition vs. compulsion/obsession (still marinating that one, upcoming for HBC ’21!).
And then there’s motifs galore—not to continue getting too literary and writing myself into a corner that might be hard to mow myself out of—which are meant to support larger themes. But I’m not quite sure which theme this particular motif (that I’m getting around to spitting out) is supporting. I have an idea: let’s discover it together!
Okay then, spitting out the motif right now, so we can be on the same page to embark on our voyage of discovery: It’s those unforgettable HBC masterstrokes of the universe that have occurred a handful of times that collide with and attach to my very soul.
Like if a “soul” was a real thing (I am not saying it isn’t, I’m just not presuming it is) and like if I had a soul (perhaps a literary version of one, not a religious one), those moments would reside within it, using my soul as their permanent address. They’re unforgettable because they’re indelible, not merely because I can recall them. They’re written on my brain, sure, because they are indeed memories. But they have penetrated my being in a deeper way that renders “memory” an inadequate descriptor. To that end, I am hereby cautiously going to describe these events as “bigger than me”—cautious because even though I am positioning myself as smaller than them, it still feels self-mythologizing to categorize them as such. (And despite the fact that I’m writing a memoir about riding my bike, oh, say, about 11,401.12-ish miles, I don’t wanna seem self-aggrandizing. Hmmm…Fear of self-aggrandizement…that may be its own motif as an expression of the larger theme of trying to get over oneself while radically and wholly accepting oneself. Ride your own ride, Danny. Post your own posts, @handlebarconfessional. Write your own book, Daniel Getzoff.)
This handful of incidents—the revelation of the first snow-capped mountains at the gateway to the Rockies east of Pueblo, Colorado; being sucked into vortexes of silence in the remote deserts of Utah and California; screaming with insane joy amongst the firs, spruces, and pines of the Bitterroots in Idaho; the prehistoric stillness at the interpretive marker on the Quivira Wildlife Reserve in central Kansas; mesmerized by the motion and singular sound of the Blackfoot River outside Lincoln, Montana; spying the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco from Crissy Field—were not experienced with other humans. (In San Francisco, just before Fourth of July in a giant city park, there were, of course, tons of people around but they were either wild creatures native to that particular urban landscape or among those migrating there for a holiday weekend. Centers of their own universes. Not experiencing my moment.) While comparable—or perhaps complementary—human interaction/connection versions of these phenomena abound throughout HBC, there are no other simultaneously timestamped, soul-stamped versions of these marvels except my own. I bear witness alone.
In cataloguing these episodes, grouping them together as a type of phenomenon, reviewing them, recalling them, reading what I’ve already written about them in other posts, watching a selfie video from the Utah moment, unsurprisingly I find the overwhelming throughline is awe. Awe at what I’m seeing. Awe at having the experience but also at having the awareness of having the experience. (As someone who finds it tough to be “in the moment”—like almost ever—I am really-really in the moment at these moments while also utterly aware of being in the moment but not in a way that cheapens the actual moment I am in.) Awe in the face of my own far, far less-than-pea-sized insignificance in the presence of unmistakable magnitudinous sublimity. The word cataclysmic won’t leave me alone right now. Knocking at the door and announcing itself. But in a good way.
On second thought…this chatter about heightened awareness of the moment while still wholly being in it makes me think that perhaps I’m not bearing witness entirely on my own. No, not with “god,” keep your helmet on! But maybe, just maybe, with a higher version of…myself? A more expansive, open version of me that nudges me, whispers pssst, stop, look outward, and breeeeeeathe. A version of me, or Me, that’s more loving and accepting and capable of quiet and stillness and serenity. More humble. The version of me—okay! Me—that reminds my tattered, bonkers, solipsistic self to pay attention and to give thanks while also reminding me that I’ll be dead and gone someday. (But in a good way.) A Self that’s more…soulful? Perhaps I am hanging out with my actual Soul on Day 53…if there was such a thing…?
On Day 53, one such soul-affixing/-affirming/-hanging moment occurs, perhaps the king and queen of them all: my arrival at the Columbia River at Wallula Junction in Eastern Washington.
Yes, it is a majestic far-as-the-eye-can-see panorama boasting what any non-geologist who’s paying attention can tell is a unique geological landscape that could seriously be another planet with its towering barren cliffs (the wonderfully named Channeled Scablands), scattered rock formations and flawlessly sculpted boulders bordering a river, barely a speck of green in this riparian topography, utterly arid despite the presence of so much water making the 95° heat seem impossibly hotter.
Yes, it is at the confluence of several waterways: the grand Columbia with the tiny Walla Walla River and downriver from where the Columbia meets the similarly lengthy Snake River, one of its major tributaries.
Yes, the vista is made even more startling and spectacular by the human-made infrastructure elements: highway crossing, railway crossing, weigh station, grain elevator complex. And the wind turbines that seem like three-dimensional hieroglyphs, modern tributes to ancient wind gods, undying sentinels lined up on the horizon, harnessing and expressing power, witnessing, protecting.
Yes, it is an intense section of the ride where Route 12 gives way to Route 730 with slight shoulders, trucks and cars barreling by at what seems like hundreds of miles per hour—and me also hitting high speeds on the downhills when on the bike in 2018 and driving it again in 2022. (It was scary driving it, an almost out-of-control feeling like I could crash!… but I don’t remember being scared on the bike…for sure one of those times where it makes sense that drivers think it’s insane to bike on roads like this.)
Yes, reaching the Columbia was a significant achievement for Lewis and Clark and marked the beginning of the final leg of their expedition.
Yes, there were scores of generations of Indians who were there first. This place was a permanent village to the Wallulapum (Walla Walla Tribe) and was a late-summer gathering locale for the Cayuse and Nez Perce as well for political dialogue, trading, coupling up, horse racing, and gambling.
Yes, it is extra eerie as there must be wildfires burning somewhere nearby because I think I can smell smoke, but more significant is what the smoke is doing to the light: sheathing the airscape in an opaque dreamscape.
Yes, it feels primal, celestial.
And yes, speaking of dreams, this event reminds me of the very relevant, very first dream I ever had that I can still recall five decades later, a dream in which I approached the very edge of the planet, at the very place where you could step off solid ground into nothingness. I dreamed this when I was three or four years old, an age where a kid’s development is barely beyond total limbic brain, before I really could even conceive of a big world and that I occupied my own tiniest place within it rather than its very center. In real life, my parents had visited my Aunt Paula and Uncle Marc in Africa—they were in Kenya in the Peace Corps—and I knew that was farther away than I could imagine. I mean, that’s what I must have been told and clearly it made some sort of impression. In my dream, I had traveled even farther than Africa. I had come to the rim of it all. The setting was a beach. I’m with my father and sister. There are dunes composed of piled-high seashells reminiscent of the real-world mini-mountains of clear, green, and brown glass at the local dump where Dad would bring Natalie and me so we could chuck our empty bottles onto each corresponding heap. (Engaging in this activity—throwing glass and smashing it—was expressly against our mother’s wishes which is likely why, I’m realizing right this very second, Ma does not appear in the dream). Somehow I know that around the corner from the last dune where the shells meet the charcoal sand which meet the silver waves of the sea—only maybe 100 feet from where I am standing with my family members behind me—was the edge of the world, beyond even Africa! Under the swirling cosmos of a sky, I knew it was dangerous to venture further, I could fall off. I was scared, sure, but I was curious, no, more than curious, I was being pulled toward it, as if a magnet made of sirens was summoning me to peek beyond the verge and…
It just felt cataclysmic. Both this dreamworld and Wallula Gap.
I confess that I’ve had the thought that maybe my dream was a premonition of this moment.
Perhaps the theme supported by this experiential motif is about getting forced out of my own head, my own internal journey, my self-obsessiveness and self-reflection, by an External Force (hush now, not God, I said keep yer helmet on!…but wait did I just capitalize “External Force”? And “God,” too?) that thrusts my view outward, away from trying to make meaning of everything as it’s happening so I can write about it during my next opportunity, or worrying about the weather, about food, about where and when to piss and poo, fretting about getting sunburned or sick or stung or bitten or flipped off or run off or run over. It’s about being stunned. I don’t mean wow that’s stunning, I mean like actually knocked into an alternate state where I’m connected to…stuff. (Or Stuff!) Is it Nature? History? If so, then it would be more expansive than human history! Epochs! Geological, geographic, topographic history, like words that end in “–zoic” or “–cene.” I’m connected to my breath, thanks to Soul Me. I’m connected to my tininess, my insignificance, my wee mini- mili- micro- nano- pico- zepto- yocto-(yes, these are real measurement prefixes)life, my makeup of boring elements like oxygen and carbon and less boring ones like phosphorus and magnesium, my hyper-vulnerable ephemeralness, my reduction to a collection of atoms. (It’s like contemplating space, black holes, dark matter, neutrinos, the fact that the light we see from stars is so far away that the twinkling we’re seeing right now was generated when Earth was barely a planet…or something. I can’t even with space and astronomy! Hearing about the most basic shit about astronomy and probably quantum physics—based on the simple definition I just googled of that—dizzies me, overwhelms me. The randomness of the universe is staggering. The coincidences imbricated within theories of evolution. The sheer amount of time it all took. Like thinking about it makes me want to grab and hold on because we are flying through space and it could end any second with a Big-Ass Bang. I already have enough problems being in the moment without contemplating the cataclysmotopia of it all. I’M FALLLLLLLINNNNNNNGGGGGGGG!)
I guess I just pushed past any residual hesitation with expressing the idea that something is “bigger” than me.
You may be thinking: yeah that’s what happens you’re in nature scenery is pretty amazing happens to everyone you’re not special. But no! This is not some pastoral I’m writing here. Or some treatise on Finally I Get Why God Makes Sense. It’s more than witnessing an impressive view. I’m often flipping through HBC photos for one reason or another, such as writing these pieces, and find myself going ‘wow, that’s so beautiful’ upon seeing a lovely vista all over again. Random example: Nina’s elderly cat Harley died the other day. I had a few pics of him as a kitten in my phone that I wanted to send to her. Donny and I were out for dinner (for my birthday, mind you, it’s my day, so don’t get all you’re so rude put your phone away) and we were scrolling through my photos trying to find Harley’s baby pics. At one point during that familiar seemingly endless scrolling that happens to millions of people every day, we came upon my HBC ’09 photos, and we both re-oohed-and-ahhed at the landscapes, some of which I didn’t specifically remember. Which proves my point! Yes, the passage of time blurs memories (yikes, this is reminding me that remembering/writing about memories is anotherseparate theme or perhaps motif), and most photos didn’t end up in the culled pile for posting so it’s possible that I haven’t actually looked at those in many years. Gorgeous vistas, sure. But not indelible moments etched upon my very being.
I would never describe myself as deep, really. (But does anyone ever? Boast I’m soooo deep or even suggest it matter-of-factly as such: Me, I happen to lean deep?) Sure, I think deeply but hmm maybe it’s less depth than, say, latitude or, rather, overall volume. What I mean is that I don’t think of myself as being deeply and profoundly connected to Stuff…like the Earth or The Spirits or Some Sorta Inexplicable Je Ne Sais Quoi. But what if I’m wrong? What if—not by virtue of my own praying-hands-and-bowing-slightly reverent virtuousness or any sort of unique innate ability or precious capacity for awareness—I am connected to Stuff? What if I am having a Spiritual Experience whether I am seeking that or not? What if I’m experiencing part of the human condition that I don’t normally experience because of my personality, because of the culture I live in, because I don’t put myself in situations or a mindset where it might likely happen on the regular, or because I’m afraid to make some meaning of it that I will find problematic and will want to back away from? Damn. Maybe all this is just being amazed by beauty and awesomeness and I am trying to make it something more Impactful. And Thematic. Or Motif-y. Maybe I’m trying to make Cataclysm happen.
Am I connected to the human history at Wallula Gap in some profound or even superficial dorky way? Was part of my overwhelm on Day 53 a shared experience with the spirits of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery? Nah. Even though I’ve been following the Lewis and Clark expedition route since South Dakota and reading Undaunted Courage, I don’t feel a particular kinship with their journey or that history in any sort of synergistic way. As I’ve mentioned before, having cycled through the middle of the US in 2009, I wanted to do a more northern route in 2018 to include Cleveland and Missoula so I could visit family and friends, and the established Adventure Cycling Lewis and Clark Trail route suited my needs once I got through Iowa. Since connecting to the L & C route at Sioux City, I’ve had a few moments here and there where I’ve become aware of the particular history and the expedition’s trials and escapades on the route, and it’s not uninteresting. However, I don’t identify with the patriotic notion of our fledgling republic manifesting its destiny. That’s not purely because I ideologically reject patriotism (it’s irrational) and its chauvinistic shadow, nationalism; I just don’t identify, like in my soul (…if I had a soul blah blah etc.). Should I be connected more to the Lewis and Clark voyage just by virtue of my being white and an American (and a public school student in a supermajority white district) than to the—what, exactly?— “energy” or, rather, Energy (after researching and considering options I realize there isn’t an appropriate word/concept that encompasses the belonging then displacement) of the countless Indians who lived here for tens of thousands of years before the “discovery” of the area? Yes, I’m white and American, but while Lewis and Clark were doing their exploration thing, my ancestors were busy trying to survive the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe. So it can’t be some proudful or woo-woo connection to the Corps of Discovery. No way.
And even though I’ve learned enough about American history to understand the revisionist reframe that I was fed as a kid in the 1970s and 80s: that Indians were either new neighbors ripe for Christian conversion who were glad we moved into their hood (e.g., the “first Thanksgiving”) and voluntary helpful guides (e.g., Sacagawea [kidnapped at 12 years old and sold into marriage to a French-Canadian fur trader] for Lewis and Clark), or they were bloodthirsty warriors trying to stop American progress (e.g., movies and TV, outdoor games white suburban children play), rather than victims of white hegemony and supremacy whose lands were stolen and around 80% of their population exterminated largely by infectious diseases that the colonialists brought with them from Europe and the rest by the tools of war—forced displacement, family separation, fomenting divisions among Tribes, removing access to growing, hunting and gathering food thereby effectively starving them, and slaughter. And I wouldn’t dream of coopting the genocidal trauma and misery incurred upon many peoples for centuries, the impact of which continues today by saying ooh I can feel the bloodshed and suffering upon this land, because A) it would be super-lame and plain wrong for me to essentially plagiarize Indigenous historical trauma by osmotically absorbing it into Me, and B) I would be feeling like this all the fucking time because the territory I’m riding on is essentially a mass grave; I’m continuously pedaling on land, day after day, where Indians lived for generations upon generations, wayyyyy before my great-grandparents disembarked at Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century trying to escape their own erasure from history (that has bloodily complicated itself even more as of late). So it’s definitely not that either.
Back to the Cataclysm theory in earnest: Fast-forward to 2022 and I’m back in Missoula about to embark upon my Driving Reanimation of HBC 2018 to the Oregon Coast a few days hence. Kay and I are on a sweet Sunday hike up the L on Mount Jumbo that overlooks the city. (There is a gigantic “L” cemented onto the face of the hill standing for Loyola Sacred Heart Catholic School. Not sure what they did to deserve the commemoration. Ask Kay. As HBC Chief Montanerd Correspondent, she knows all Missoula shit and Montana in general. On another trail, there’s an “M” for U of Montana. Go Whatevers! Probably Bears… I just looked it up and I was right: it’s Grizzlies. Go Grizzlies! Montanans love their bears.) As we gaze down into the valley that is the city of Missoula, Kay starts waxing geological. Now I’m not going to get all the science-y language airtight but I’ll try. She tells me that what is now Missoula was once part of a giant glacial lake 2,000 feet deep and 200 miles wide that scientists estimate held as much water as Lake Michigan. (Well, the ACA map says half of Lake Michigan and the US National Park website said it was as much as Lake Erie and Michigan combined, so who knows. It was HUGE, how about that.) So, Glacial Lake Missoula was formed by an ice dam 2,000 feet thick (part of the Cordilleran ice sheet) that once blocked the Clark Fork River in the Idaho Panhandle. After millennia, the volume of the lake increased to the point that the ice dam RUPTURED causing a glacial lake outburst flood (aka GLOF, a real thing) that EMPTIED Lake Missoula in as few as 48 hours. The flood waters, about 20 times the combined volume of water every river on earth, spewed out at a rate of estimated at 10 times the combined flow of every river on earth with the force equivalent to 4,500 megatons of TNT scouring 50 cubic miles of earth that left piles of gravel 30 stories tall. Over time, the Cordilleran ice sheet kept moving south and the same cataclysmic deal (ice dam forms lake, ice dam ruptures, insane flooding) happened, the consensus among geologists is, as many as 20-40 times. (I think I prefer the version of some geologists who hypothesized that it was one single catastrophic incident instead of many cataclysms, but I guess I have to cede to decades of research and debate rather than singularity for thematic purposes.)
And it doesn’t matter anyway. A cataclysm is a cataclysm is a cataclysm. Whether one or many, these floods are the greatest ones in history that we know of, and those waters thundered hundreds of miles away along the route I’ve been riding for the past five days since I left Missoula. The floodwaters plowed through Wallula Gap into the Columbia River ultimately creating the landscape of consequence and otherworldliness that my very soul is in thrall to on Day 53.
Is this event the king and queen of them all? Or is knowing the history now impacting my experience of it and now my recounting it? Honestly, I don’t think so. When Kay was describing the Missoula Flood, I wasn’t connecting it to Wallula Gap and my dizzying experience there. Three days later I was driving toward that site. At the time I made the decision to make the drive so I could jog my memory of the final leg of my 2018 journey, I thought immediately of that place, excited to revisit it, jonesing for that edge-of-the-world experience again, wondering if I was essentially correct about its significance to me.
Driving the Toyota through that area and recreating that moment did not disappoint. Wallula Gap may indeed be King/Queen of Them All. Even in a car I felt the overwhelm that had adhered to my soul/being. I experienced a sort of vertigo, a magnetic force compelling me to drive off the road and contribute to the cataclysmic nature of the place with my own BAM, almost as if I’d be zapped by Douglas Adams’s Total Perspective Vortex machine (but in a good way). It was only a couple weeks after that when I was reading up on the Missoula Flood and taking notes for what eventually, another year later, would morph into this piece that I followed the flow of the ancient cataclysmic flood(s) to my own experience of cosmic impermanence and insignificance at Wallula Junction “on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” as per Carl Sagan.
Another factoid that uplifts the celestiality of this place is that I read in an online article but can’t remember where, so can’t footnote (as if you expected a footnote!) and want to shoehorn in: This area also has interplanetary research implications as the Channeled Scablands are used as geologic analogs for similar scoured ground on Mars. Hold on cuz we are flying!
So, before I release you into the ether, let’s get back to our assessment of literary devices that we started with: let’s label this motif as Personal Cataclysmic Experiences that illuminate the larger theme of Getting Closer to…Stuff, in Spite of My Doubthood. I don’t know that those other far-flung locations in Utah, Idaho, Kansas, Colorado, and California were exact points where cataclysmic events took place. Yet the feelings and experiences were similarly soulfully rooted (I have obviously given in to the existence of my soul/Soul) and remain a part of me now—and I imagine, I hope, will be with me forever. I realize I’m not uniquely or exceptionally connected or profound or spiritual for experiencing unmistakable magnitudinous sublimity. I’m not especially sensitive or esoteric or even clever for parallelizing and crystalizing the connection among the cataclysmic feelings I felt at Wallula Gap on July 14, 2018 and again on October 5, 2022, my childhood dream circa 1972, and the actual cataclysm(s) 15,000 years ago. I am, however, amazed by my luck, by the synchronicity of it all, and I acknowledge its value and meaningfulness. Hopefully you/You are resonating with it too.
…Hey now! Wait one yoctosecond…did I just write a treatise on Finally I Get Why God Makes Sense?! Maybe I did. But in a good way.
(Pics don’t do the moment/place justice but ya gotta.)
