Of Mist And Lakes And Roads That Only Go Up

I woke to a strange sound, it was the sound of utter silence.  For those first few moments on waking, peace and quiet held rein and I was loathe to disturb them.  I eased myself out of my sleeping bag, unzipped the fly sheet of the tent and peeked out.  The sight that greeted me was not the one I had been hoping for, nor the one I had been expecting, this was even better.

It took a few moments for my eyes to perceive and for my sleepy brain to comprehend what it was that I was seeing.  Instead of an early morning sun shining brightly down onto the waters of the lake and the forests and hills across in the distance, I was presented with a veil of a grey misty nothing.  The mist had descended during the night and now it blanketed everything.  The air was completely still.  It was not the leaves on the trees that proved it to me, it was the surface of the lake that was a sheet of silky, smooth, glass with not a single ripple or movement to be seen.  This morning was as perfectly still as one could hope to find.

The misty morning at Lake Maraetai, Mangakino

The stillness of the morning was soon disrupted by the arrival of the first of a continuous stream of cars, people and boats, all coming down to make use of the lake on a Sunday morning.  It did not matter, I needed to be up and away and on my way to Taupo.  The owner of the Bus Stop Cafe, literally a bus at the lakeside, had informed me that the road to Taupo would be a continuous, uphill gradient, but I was sceptical.  Roads that go up, always must go down I reassured myself.  With only 50km to cycle, I was looking forward to an easy day, so I was not in a particular rush to get on the bike, choosing to stay for a coffee and watch the wake boarding action and all the comings and goings around the lake before I set off.

The road went up.  And up.  And up.  At least it felt that way.  It was not steep by any means, rather a gentle gradient that slowly and surely sapped the strength out of the legs.  But this was not to be the biggest problem of the late morning.  The wind, that was non-existent in the early morning stillness, was now gusting and worse still, it was gusting into me and across me.  It was the wind, that seemingly ever present demon of my travels, that sapped the energy out of me and drained my morale.  It was impossible to gain any kind of momentum and between wind and hills, I tired quickly.  I tried not to look at my cycle computer because I knew it made for depressing reading, just another thing to reduce my morale still further.  My easy ride?  Huh!

I stopped for lunch and a break after 25km and it was needed.  As I sat atop a gatepost, eating my way through a still warm and utterly delicious steak and mushroom pie, I planned the road ahead.  I would cycle 10km more, then stop again, then another 10km, stop, and finally I could push out the final 5km or so into Taupo.  Back on the bike, I started off once more, cursing the wind, cursing the hills, shouting to no one, yelling to everyone, but my voice was carried away to fade out and disappear, to become lost, the way that I was feeling out here on my own amongst the fields, the sparse trees and the brown hills of  dry summer.

As I reach that next 10km mark, I pushed on.  I told myself that if I can get through 2km more, it will put me 2km further down the road, and 2km closer to Taupo and my goal.  I pushed on though.  As I reached 40km for the day, everything changed.  The road began to descend through some pine forest that sheltered me from the wind and my speed picked up.  I had barely managed 18km/h all day and here I was flying along at close to 40km/h.  At one point, as I glanced down at my cycle computer to see 54km/h, I let out my own barbaric yawp, a yawp of which Whitman would have been proud.   I was fast closing in on Taupo and knew that I would not stop again this day.  There was one final kick though, a sharp, steep hill to climb up and over, so I put my head down, dropped down the gears, found a rhythm and pumped it through.  On a bike, it does not matter how slow you go uphill, all that matters is that you find the right gear, you find that rhythm, and you pass the test.  Every hill is my own personal Mont Ventoux, my own Alpe d'Huez.

At the top of that final hill, I knew I had passed all the tests that the day had given me.  Lake Taupo was ahead of me, its water choppy, dark and wholly uninviting, and there was the town nestled by the shore.  I had made it through another day and I knew that tomorrow I did not have to climb back into the saddle.  For that, both I and my backside were eternally grateful.

_________________________

Barbaric Yawps And Why They Are Absolutely Necessary

The sun beats down upon me, it's relentless heat seeps into my skin, causing droplets of perspiration to form on my brow, on my neck, on my chest.  I'm breathing hard now, sucking great gulps of air into my lungs, fighting for my breath, in desperate need of oxygen.  I'm standing up on my pedals, my legs continue to push hard, one, two, one, two, over and over, as I sway the bike from side to side, in the rhythmic dance of man and machine versus gravity.  I look up the road ahead and finally I am able to see the crest of the hill approaching, tanterlisingly close now, I can sense that this hill is conquered, and the feeling spurs me on.  I push harder, dance a little more and I'm there!  The hill is mine at last but there is no time for celebration because now begins the wild exhilaration of racing down the other side.  As I hurtle down, bent low over the frame and handlebars, I sweep around a bend at great speed, and as I do, I let out a great yell, an untamed roar, an expression of freedom and of deviance.  I feel a deeply intense moment of joy and well-being, as my soul soars and my heart flies free. 

In this moment, when I yelled out, I was experiencing a moment of absolute love.  Love of life, love of my path, love of the possibilities, love of myself.  As this wave of love washing over me, I could not help myself.  I felt a strong impulse to shout out, to let the world around me know that I was in a moment of pure and unadulterated happiness.  I was reminded of a couple of lines that Walt Whitman wrote, in his poem entitled, Song of Myself and that feature in the movie, Dead Poets Society:-

"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

I understand you truly Walt.  These are the moments when heart and soul are completely free and unshackled from the physical body.  These are the moments when a primeval sense of pure joy and freedom engulf you, sweep through you.  You transcend the physical and become your true spiritual self.  These feelings do not come from without, they come from within.  They surge through you, an unstoppable force that no one can control.  These feelings are your true soul, you true self, your true power and beauty.  In these moments, you truly become a god.  For in these moments you are the mountain, the river, the lake, the forest, the valley, the ocean, the bird, the fish, the beast, the clouds, the wind, the sun, the moon, and the stars.  In these moments, your spirit returns to the centre of all things, and all things become one thing only.  And that one thing is love.

I had experienced another moment before this, a moment that was the complete opposite.  A moment of incredible deep serenity, peace and calm.  I had spied a rope tied to the bough of a tree, with a large knot on the lower end, just perfect for swinging on.  Grasping the rope in my hands, I stepped backwards, one, two, three paces, then ran and launched myself skywards, pulling my legs up and locking them around the rope in a tight grip.  Whoosh! Back and forth I swung, slowly twisting around one way and then the other.  I lent back, taking the weight of my body against my arms, pushing my legs forward, and I gazed up at the tree top above.  It was mesmerising.  Through the small gaps in the foliage of the leaves, the sun broke through with a shimmering light of radiant brilliance, glittering and sparkling like a million diamonds.  As I swung, so the angle changed and the light appeared to dance, reflecting off the deep green of the leaves.  Here was a beauty that was hard to surpass, here was a miracle of nature playing out above me, here, in this moment, I felt blessed, and I knew I was witnessing a special moment.  An upwelling of joy came to me and I felt such pleasure, lost in that moment, a moment of sun, leaves, bough, rope and me.  I wonder now, as I think back and picture it once more in my mind, whether the sun looked down upon me, and felt the same joy that I felt in that moment, to see a heart that was so full of love.

During this one morning, I beheld two very different experiences, and one thing linked them both.  Through letting go of our conscious thought, we can find moments of intense emotional pleasure.  Moments when we are able to connect to everything that surrounds us.  In these moments, we transcend the physical and we enter the place where our true spiritual self resides.  These are moments when we feel an undeniable connection to everything that surrounds us, a connection with life itself.  When we experience these moments, our hearts journey to the centre of the universe, to the place where time and creation itself began.  And in that place, in the great heart of all things, is found the one thing that connects every other thing and makes all of life possible.  That one thing is love.

The next time that you find yourself in such a situation, in a place where you feel an intense connection to all that surrounds you, when you know that your heart and soul are flying free, do not be afraid, give voice to your own barbaric yawp, share the moment, and shout it out across the roofs of the world.

_________________________