A few years
back, I spent a weekend with a group biking the Katy Trail in Missouri. The
trail is widely known among biking enthusiasts across the country – it’s the
longest (and narrowest) state park in the United States. A former rail bed, the
trail stretches from Clinton in western Missouri almost to the Mississippi
River in St. Charles County, just to the north of St. Louis. And there are now plans
to extend the trail from Sedalia to Kansas City.
The trail is
almost completely flat. It generally follows the path of the Missouri River,
and in fact the river is often just to the right of the trail. It passes
through forested areas and farmland, a tunnel or two, along the bottom of
towering bluffs, and alongside open road. Even on weekends, it’s rarely
crowded, and then only near popular tourist spots like Augusta (and its
wineries) and St. Charles. And what you find yourself doing while biking the
Katy is thinking, reflecting, and meditating.
That’s exactly
what Neil Hanson did when he biked the
Katy as part of a longer journey, described in Pilgrim
Spokes: Cycling East Across America. After completing the first half of
his ride, recounted in Pilgrim
Wheels: Reflections of a Cyclist Crossing America, he continued east to
Annapolis, Maryland. (I should point out that he was 60 when he finished, and
consider what good shape he was in to bike 100 miles or more a day.)
Hanson finds the
people of the American heartland, but he provides an unromanticized picture of
them. It’s generally a positive picture – generous people, people interested in
what he’s doing, people who tell him stories of their lives and towns. But it’s
also the occasional rude and mean people – like the pickup truck driver who
threw a bottle and hit him while he was riding in western Pennsylvania.
Hanson reflects
on his own life, but also on the areas and regions his traveling through – the old
National Road, how U.S. 40 has dramatically changed over the decades, the
beauty and history of covered bridges in Indiana, the (varying) quality of food
available in small towns and small cities (he’s biking, so he can eat a lot of
chicken fried steak), and more. In between the wo books, his marriage of 30
years had dissolved – dissolved is the right word – and he reflects on that as
well.
 |
| Neil Hanson |
Pilgrim Spokes is a wonderful biking story, but it’s
far more than a trail and travel guide. It does two things simultaneously,
telling the story of a journey across the country, and telling the story of one
man reflecting on his life, its high points and its imperfections. And his view
of his own life is just as unromanticized as his account of the people he
meets.
It’s the kind of
book that stays with you, because it’s the kind of book that tells what happens
when you balance yourself on the two-wheeled frame and take off, the air moving
around you, your legs pumping the pedals, the trees seemingly flying past like
smudged paintings.
Related:
Top photograph: cycling the Katy Trail,
via Neil Hanson web site.
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