Has it been a year since I started biking already? So much has happened and yet I still have so far to go. Over these many days of traveling I have spent much of my time alone, pedaling up and down, down and up. All the while lost in my thoughts; wandering aimlessly through the metaphysical while traversing the physical. I have come to appreciate the small things in life: a kind wave and smile from a passing stranger, a picture with an enchanted child, or the invitation to stay with a family for a night in their spare bed.
I find myself often asking how I ended up here. Physically I biked south. But mentally, how does one mentally prepare for a journey of this scale? To be alone for most of your days slowly learning a new language making the few interactions with others lacking the depth of a conversation in your native tongue. But what one lacks in verbal speaking can be made up for with non-verbal. I find myself reading body and facial cues and being more expressive in my own delivery to make up for my lack of vocabulary. These are all things I have taken for granted for most of my life, never having to struggle to understand someone in order to buy food or find a place to stay. And most people from the US travel to places where finding someone else who speaks English is not an issue.
As I traveled though many different states in Mexico, learning their language, cultures, and histories I have come to a greater appreciation for my place in the world, which is to say I am small and for greater human history insignificant. But in our history, the one we are living currently every day of our lives; I have learned how important I am, how important you are, how important we all are. While the smile from the stranger, picture with a small child, or the invitation home for a night might not change course of human history; it will change the history for a human. It takes very little energy to be kind, and the rewards for it are gigantic. Seeing the happiness on a person’s face after being told a compliment, or given a piece of fruit, or told that they are cared for and loved is intoxicating and infectious. And it’s small deeds like this that define my time in Mexico. It’s almost daily that someone offers me water or Gatorade to help me along biking through the heat. On numerous occasions I have been invited to family dinners as their honored guest and refused all of my offers to help clean up; I tried a lot but they kept kicking me out of the kitchen.
So far each leg of my journey has had its own distinct flavor and feel: Alaska and Canada were defined by large snow and ice capped mountains and the isolation of the far north, the Pacific Coast of the US was the land of giant trees and valleys that have captured my imagination for many years, and Mexico which has been memorable not only to their beautiful and diverse landscapes and wildlife but the food, cultures, and kindness of those that I have encountered. And these definitions are purely for you, the reader, so you can have an idea of what I think about when I look back at my time in those places. But these definitions lack the depth and emotional weight that my true feelings have towards them, and that is the problem with all language is that it’s trying to be something it’s not. Trying to be more than just the medium which thoughts and emotions are conveyed to each other but failing nonetheless.
Every journey we take through life is more than the sum of its parts. There is the more visible physical journey from one location to another, the mental journey of learning more about the world around you, and the emotional journey of self discovery that may not manifest right away but it is there waiting to be discovered when you are ready. Each of these are important in their own right. So often we celebrate feats of human physical strength over the mental and emotional, but without the emotional and mental strength the physical is weak.