I was usually called an outdoor kid. Once, I was gifted a Little Mermaid tent for which to encourage many-an-adventure in the grassy terrain, I opted to pitch it right over my back lawn to cozy up in my floral comforter with a dogeared copy of Anne of Green Gables.
(Bless those parents of mine.)
Even now, in the heart of these beautiful Utah falls, I find myself sometimes making endless excuses in my mind for reasons to stay outdoors. Not too cold for me baby, I say. Don’t mind messing with the jackets, I think. Works with the schedule today, I reason.
All the while knowing full well that a few steps into the fresh air will make me come alive in a way Anne and I both dared to dream of.
—
So I’ve been taking baby steps, re-exploring the fine art of being outdoors. During Markus’s trips around the country, I grab the mountain bike and sneak out to the Bonneville Shoreline trail with a heaping dose of enthusiasm for a ride-along session of Mountain Biking 101. On the breeziest of afternoons, I put my bike into the Bolt for a tune up of the shocks at Wasatch Touring. Today, he spent the afternoon fine tuning the air in them to calibrate for my weight.
It is, every time, worth the jacket layering.
The more we adventure, the more I find myself simply unable to resist nature’s song. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of growing older, of appreciating true beauty in a world of manufacture. Maybe it’s knowing how much Martin loves it, how much it encourages us both, how important it is to choose things we wouldn’t want to miss.
Maybe it’s the bicycles.
—
Yes, it is more work to pack the contents of your bike into a hatch back, to take off the wheel and fit it in, to put the tarp from the depths of the trunk.
Yes, it is more work.
(Yes, it is more reward.)
There is something infinitely magical about mountain biking, whether going around a mountain or switchbacking on the trail. Doesn’t everything look extraordinary when you’re no longer sharing a view ten steps away from work duties? When the bustling crickets, the chattering birds replace the hum of the CT scanner at the end of the clinic?
