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Outside Magazine March 2002

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A Modest Proposal (Cont.)

AT DAYBREAK WE RODE into the Medicine Bow Mountains, up along Gold Run Creek, then east along a jeep track next to Jim Creek. Beyond Fourlog Park the track dissolved into mud. Gloriously technical riding followed: deep mudholes with ice still riming the edges, stumps, roots, boulders, branches right at neck height.

On the backside we flew down French Creek to where it debouched into the shallow, rocky North Platte. We stopped for a late lunch in the willows along the bank on the wrong side of a Private Property—No Trespassing sign. Like a lot of signs in Wyoming, it was perforated with bullet holes.

We ate everything we had and drank all the water in our water bottles and thus had no choice but to ride on through the uneven plains.

That evening, we sidled into Riverside, population 85. There were two bars and a huddle of log cabins for rent. We booked ourselves into Muleskinner, a diminutive hut subsiding into a cottonwood meadow. A handwritten note on the wall read: "We do not dispose of animal carcasses."

Riverside is actually a suburb of Encampment. From local postcards we learned that Encampment is the home of the two-story outhouse. (When the snow gets too deep, you use the second floor.) In 1902 Encampment experienced a copper rush. A 16-mile aerial tramway, at the time the longest in the world, was constructed to transport ore to the smelter. Houses, hotels, and brothels were built. Then, in 1907, the copper ran out and the town went bust. The three of us pedaled up and down every empty street. As far as we could tell, about all that was left was a sawmill, a post office, and two bars.

"Not a grocery store in a thousand square miles," commented Reed when we returned to our cabin, "but four bars within stumbling distance."

Lying on my bunk that night, musing on our progress so far, I realized another salient truth about adventure: It doesn't matter where you go. It's not what you see, but how you see. To the jaded eye Paris is dull, Everest a sham, Africa stuffed with animals already seen on Discovery Channel. But if you think of your mind as a microscope and take a close look, there is not a chunk of earth on this planet—maybe even right around the corner—that isn't original, even inexplicable.

That night we rented a TV, a VCR, and a movie, all for $3, from a gas station, and drank a six-pack watching O Brother, Where Art Thou?

THE THIRD MORNING we pedaled south into Colorado over Independence Mountain. We stopped to visit some natural rock baths that Native Americans once used, and wandered around inside the roofless guts of an abandoned homestead, hope and hardship still in the walls papered with newsprint.

We spent the day surmounting a 10,000-foot pass on a mining path and broke out of the aspens just before sunset. Below us lay the sweep of North Park, a well-watered expanse of golden grassland cradled by mountains on all sides—the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area to the west, the Rawah Wilderness Area to the east, the Rabbit Ears Range to the south, and the Medicine Bow Range to the north.

After one flat tire and two hours of serene, resplendent riding, we glided into Cowdrey, Colorado. Cowdrey is so small it doesn't even have a bar. It does have the Cowdrey Trout Camp, on the bank of the Canadian River: $10 a bed and all the heat you can trick out of a leaky propane heater. You just leave the cash on the table in your bunkroom.

Famished but foodless once again, we hitched a ride in the back of a pickup ten miles south to Walden. There we found a pool hall half-converted to a pizza joint. It was a cavernous space, with the heads of giant elk shot long ago peering down from the walls. Off in the corner was a young mother, a crying two-year-old clinging to her apron and a crying three-month-old fastened to a rocker on the counter. She was making pizzas by herself. There were no other customers. She had the radio tuned to a country station and was humming along. It was a song I didn't recognize in a world I'd forgotten.

IT WAS BELOW FREEZING the next morning, so cold the mud puddles in front of our cabin were frozen solid.

"The joy of going superlight is that one is always unprepared," Reed said cheerily.

Buzz found some plastic bags and we wrapped our feet before stuffing them inside our cycling shoes. We pulled our sleeves over our hands and sank our faces into our windbreakers and set out.

After about an hour we were each wondering how many fingers and toes would eventually have to be amputated. When the sun rose and the road reared up, blood began to burn its way back into our appendages.

We were over our last 10,000-foot pass before we even knew we'd started. After only three days on our bikes, miles were nothing. Distance was merely space. Had we time, we could ride right across the continent.

That afternoon, skimming down through the forest, the trees shuttering by as if we were in a passenger train, we floated into a small clearing suspended in sunlight. In the center of the numinous glade stood three deer: two big four-point bucks and a doe. Their statuesque heads were turned toward us as we slowed to a stop.

They seemed so calm, so poised. I rummaged in my front bag for my camera but kept my eyes on the deer. I couldn't believe they hadn't spooked.

"Wait a minute!" Buzz yelled.

The three of us pedaled over to the deer, and they never twitched an ear or blinked an eye. They were decoys, placed in the meadow by the Colorado Division of Wildlife to catch poachers.

We took a close look. The taxidermist had carefully stitched hide over hollow, lifelike plastic forms.

Each was riddled with bullet holes.

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