Over the past few weeks, I have been busy preparing and humbly building excitement for the upcoming journey. With each new project, I have felt open, patient, and optimistic about the outcomes. The silver steed now has a new cassette, chain, motorcycle style center stand, front rack, panniers, dynamo hub, tires, tubes, USB charger, and phone mount. Many kudos to the folks at Sunnyside Sports in Bend, OR. The bike rides like a dream.
Training has been challenging and rewarding. I climbed the Mackenzie Pass a couple of times (thank you Nancy and Ida for being the inspiration behind each journey) and put in a fair number of 30 mile routes weighted down with paint cans and gear. Although sometimes sore, my body has felt subtle and charged up. On Friday, my physical therapist (Thank you Katy! the driving force behind putting my body back together after decades of trauma) indicated that my body is the strongest and healthiest than it has been in the 4 years or so that I’ve been working with her.
I managed to procure a copy of Daniel Buttrick’s journal from a non-amazon source for about $10, a $100 savings, and Martin Prectel’s The Smell of Rain on Dust. You’ll be hearing more from me about both of these as the journey unfolds. I easily found marshmallow for the graves and mugwort for my dreams.
With the bike dialed in, my body fit, and some spiritual assistants on hand, I felt ready.
Then things changed. And oh how quickly too
In my experience, there’s typically a point prior to any major spiritual journey where the enormity of the endeavor looms large. I loose my center and doubt takes over. I had the privilege of dancing with this energy in the last 24 hours.
It dawned on me that I’ll be headed into the heart of chigger territory in the middle of high season (See Chigger Map) and that by camping in a tent in some nice soft grass in the woods, I might have a high probability of getting attacked by these little buggers. The image below and the horror stories I’ve heard about 3 weeks of itching and scratching raised some of my worst nightmares.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chigger2.JPG)
Then I thought about ticks. I checked the Lyme disease map and felt some relief that the south is a low risk area for Lyme. That is, until I found out about lone star ticks. Check this out. If bitten, there is a chance that you can develop southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI) or worse yet an allergy to red meat (https://www.health.com/condition/allergy/lone-star-tick-causes-red-meat-allergy).
Although I managed to remember that melting down is natural and part of the process, it did successfully take me off center for at least a few stressful hours. I wanted to run, cancel my flight, and go sit in a hot tub.
Many thanks to facebook friends (Rebecca and Caroline) for the recommendations for permethrin and picadarin, modern toxins to keep the buggers away. I let out a big ahhhhhh….I swore to myself that I would go to the hospital if bitten and that it would be OK for me to give up if bitten by these small fierce demons.
Sheepishly confidence returned. And, with it came the great reminder of how small I am and how big nature really is. Johnny had some good perspective to add to all of it, “If you’re worried about ticks and chiggers, then that’s probably a sign that you’re far more ready than you think you are.”
I depart on Thursday, little more than 48 hours from now. We’ll see how ready I am at that time.
Atone The Removal 
