Seeking Solitude

This is a crank rant. Read at your own peril.

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Some days I hate people. Not anyone person, just all people. The thought of interacting with another human is exhausting. I don’t want to listen to anyone’s demands. I don’t want a to do list. I don’t really care to hear anymore about why I’m not the perfect or even decent human in your life. I don’t care about your complaints. I don’t want to hear about your politics, your cat, what’s in the news, why your neighbor bugs you, your trip or anything else about what’s wrong with your privileged life.

In short, my give a shit is broken.

I didn’t want to interact with anyone and the best way to avoid people is to go where there aren’t people. If you by chance see another person you must go faster than them. The Time is the perfect tool for this. With just the hum of the asphalt we covered country road past fields of fresh cut hay and through small towns out to Porcupine dam then to where the road turns to dirt past Avon on the way to Eden.

Entering Blacksmith Fork Canyon I told myself I’d ride far enough to get in 50 miles. As the turn around point drew near my legs hurt but the thought of having to deal with people hurt more. So I kept going. Wisely I paused at the power plant to refill my water bottles. Now resupplied I was free to continue roaming. Further into the canyon I ventured. Further from cell, further from email, further from all human contact. I would probably pay for my wandering later. For now the mountains and the air and the smell of trees and the sound of the creek erased the chaos of civilization and baptized me in the primal simplicity of the natural world.

Also, I totally bonked. Having only a couple of granola bars and a bottle of Skratch for breakfast meant that at mile 60 I would begin gulping water in a futile attempt to fool my body into believing I was consuming calories. It’s not like I don’t have plenty of fuel reserves in the form of fat that my metabolism could tap into.

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I did make it to the end of the asphalt on every road on this end of the valley