Words fail me
as I think about
how to express
what I feel
one early morning after
the end of Climate Ride 2012
“Not even close” —
This is how I described
my plans to do this action
in my fund-raising emails
beforehand.
“Not even close”
to anything I’ve ever done before.
I’ve taken action for the climate,
including arrests and long fasts.
As a young person
I wrestled, with serious, daily practices,
and, later in life,
played full-court basketball.
I rode my bike as a kid,
and 25 miles a week
for the 13 years
leading up to this spring.
I’ve raised money
for causes
I’ve considered important.
And I’ve drawn close
to others
as we worked together
for a noble objective
over an extended
period of time.
But with Climate Ride
it was “all of the above.”
I’ll never forget:
-the beauty of so much
of the land (the animals, the people),
we passed through
-the “line of 30”
on the last day
forming miraculously
between the water stop
and Silver Spring,
up and down and across,
together,
moving fast,
moving in rhythm,
like a fine-tuned biker team
(and maybe we were)
-the incredible thrill
as I tucked in close
and sped down hill after hill
when it was safe to do so
(relatively)
-the dead beaver
in the middle of the road
on one of the longest,
steepest hills on a day four
full of many of them
(parts of which I walked—
it was OK!)
-the young women
preparing food in the kitchen,
beautifully singing Christian hymns
from 5:30-6:30 am on Tuesday,
before a long, hard day of riding
-the drinks with biker comrades
at the end of that long day,
sitting outside,
getting to know each other
more and better
-the wonderful massages
-The Blake routine every morning
-Caeli’s energy and passion
-Geraldine in the background
-all the volunteers
-and the final act:
Unloading all the luggage
over to a dry place
out of the yellow rented trucks
via long lines of riders
(“like a sandbag line,” someone said)
riders getting soaked
as the sky
finally opened in earnest
after five days
without hard rain,
As if to say:
You are baptized,
climate riders.
You’ve done well.
You stayed strong.
You stayed the course.
Now –
wash up,
clean up,
rest up,
and keep moving forward.
Our wounded world
and its wounded peoples
need you,
need us.
