The mountains hang like a dream — one that is unseen but sensed, like Kafka’s castle, haunted by places unknown and untouched, yet somehow familiar. This collection of memories, like the Midwest roads that bridge them, begins last July.
On that humid afternoon, I packed and strapped the back of the Bonneville with a three-week haul of supplies: sleeping bag, tent, clothes, a few wrenches and sockets, books, computer, film and camera, chain lube and cleaner. I headed out as many have done before — to the west.
I mounted the Triumph with a fresh and yet weary energy, leaving my fiancé and dog at our house in Waynesville, North Carolina, and headed toward Tennessee. The beginnings possessed all the haunts of Appalachia, made total by a shaded hanging gray, a mystical fog, and a breezy sheet of rain. With 40 miles to go on Interstate 40 until I reached Knoxville, the rain began to fall steadily. Within the first hour, I was soaked.
The mountains lost their identity, and in their place were laughing ancient giants. Yet I was eager to go further, past the rain wall. I did not truly escape it while I was in the forested hills. I was on a deadline, at least a loose one. I pinned my map on Burkesville, Kentucky, the county seat of Cumberland County.
I successfully navigated those little towns northwest of Knoxville, and was lucky enough to dry off as the evening cooled. I called on the clouds to hold off, as the forests hung ornamentally wet along rural route 62. The leaves draped warily toward earth, orating an unread chapter in lonesome America.
Most of the towns seeded along Routes 62 and 27 are easy to miss and, although swallowed all around by dense forests and mountainous beauty, are stark in their contrasted imagery. The green besieged by the lonesome trailer. Hand painted political signs nailed to the trees. (Will anybody see us here?) The lonely red-roofed church pressed against the wooded hill, edged across the sprawl of the field. The sun, hidden by gray, grew ever distant to its own light as the gaslight burned bright on the gauge, stark to the muted green of the leaves. I was reminded of the further quiet of the rural American night.
In a church parking lot roughly three hours in to the ride, a Baptist crowd filed in for evening service. I stretched my legs and exchanged friendly nods, occasionally receiving blessings. I caught the eye of an old man who spent some time chatting with me about the Bonneville. He told me he once had a 650 Tiger and has fond memories of a long-past trip into and through the state of Maine. He couldn’t believe Triumph was a resurrected motorcycle company still producing new bikes.
“What year did you say?”
I reiterated a 2020 T120. He grinned and was able to locate a memory, one that occasionally tickled his mind, but that needed the right spark to ignite a re-telling. He wished me well. I carried on into dusk.
Routes 52 to 127 to 90. This was the rural-routed combination that unlocked my first night’s sleep at the Alpine motel in Burkesville, Kentucky. When I arrived, I stood atop the ridge, the old-timey sign standing stark to the night like the setting for a Stephen King novel. I was trapped in Americana, looking out toward the valley, past the town and the tracks that ran through it. Off the ridge, I occasionally caught the smell of neighborly cigarette smoke.
The town below glowed not unlike the image of empires promised to a young Christ. Our sprawling land of trees, the slow press of the river, the Appalachian story told in the wilted humidity. I wanted to watch the lights glow gold until a pink sun rose, but I was too tired to ponder, to write, to lament, to praise. It was the last time I would see that view or one like it for several weeks. The imminent future marked by corn fields in the Midwest.
I spent the next day in pursuit of Big Springs in Southern Missouri, centered in the Ozark Mountains. Exhaustion railed against the bones, and pressed on the sweat-stretched skin. The mountains were densely forested, and told a similar story to our Appalachians. They lacked the grandeur and withheld the mystique that I’ve come to appreciate in Kentucky and North Carolina.
On route 60, I bought a headlamp at the travel center near Ellsinore and the lady working the counter appreciated our conversation enough to direct me toward the campground. I hadn’t too far to go. At Big Springs, I rode around looking for a place to set up my tent, but gave up and located the campground host, Mike, who came out of his trailer to greet me.
Like a repeat of my conversation in Tennessee, Mike put eyes on my motorcycle and began to tell me about a 650 Triumph he once owned, and the impact author Robert Pirsig had on his life and outlook, especially as a young man.
I laughed, and told him I owned two copies of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” but that I had still never read them. Something in those aged eyes told me the machine was more than rattling nuts and bolts to him. It was something we understood on even ground, a relationship made to our country and our land, one naked to our eyes under blazing suns and besieged by beating winds.
I wished him good night and he wished to me a good life. I found a site to sleep and the mosquitos ushered me into the tent while the air draped a wet blanket over my skin with no escape from its weight. The next morning, I rode to the spring and snapped some photos of the sapphire waters pooled at the foot of the falls.
I then left, knowing it was the last of the mountains until Wyoming.
In the Midwest — that great land-bridge of vacancy — I think less of the landscapes and more of the Americans living in the towns. There are no mountains, no oceans, no great forests to lull in the passerby dreamers. There are few rivers, and the lakes sit more like dirt-floor pools, pinned out of necessity, a relief from grass, corn, soy and combines. But here is something there that completes the picture, a spirit, and an acknowledgment that between the mountains and the sea there is a seemingly endless stretch of land that sits like a once blank canvas.
The journey through Kansas, primarily without the interstate, is tedious in July. It exists without the grandeur, but barks and begs to not be forgotten. Its Main Streets live in the shadows of water tanks, laid out with antique shops, diners, brick sidewalks, aged courthouses and a steep sense of pride. I stopped when the sun ran me dry on the gridded route to walk the streets of the drive-through towns and to shoot film. A memory of the loneliest sunset, I parked the bike to the side of a gravel and dirt road and looked out over stretching fields. Another reminder that I had crossed into distant lands, and that Appalachia’s echoes were rippling further east than mind and matter could reach.
As memory and journals indicate, I entered Kansas from Missouri and kicked up dust on gravel roads headed toward Elwood. I stayed outside of Wichita in an AirBnB cabin on a 10-acre stretch of land, aggravating the dogs and free-range birds the homeowner kept.
It was there I realized I had lost my film back in Missouri. I was ultimately reunited with that bag by the miracle of good luck and a friendly citizen, and was able to shoot the rest of the trip. Up until that reunion, I captured, among other things, an infamous sculpture in Lucas, Kansas known as The Garden of Eden after a run-in with a rider named Dan Evans, who I met right outside Main Street in his hometown of Lyon, Kansas, and who told me about the sculpture.
Evans was an upbeat man, younger in spirit than his years. He loved his wife; he loved his state, and his country, too. He retired from the salt factory in Lyons, and lived on his parcel of land just a few miles into Geneseo where 14 meets 4.
We chatted from our seats, my Triumph and his BMW. We rode a few miles further north together. I left him off at the stop sign where he turned toward his house, which he pointed out to me from the roadside. By the way he viewed the world, he was a man who admitted to “having it all.” We lamented that I did not have more time to spend in his company, going through his garage and talking motorcycles. Unfortunately, the slimming sun called me north. His excitement for his home state pushed me on, and a schedule required keeping.
Much of the journey into the heartland of America, as much as our collective history is concerned, is riddled with stories like these, the voices of its people texturing the endless pasture of gold and green that locks a grid across a million acres. It’s been told by our great authors, from Steinbeck with his dog to Least Heat-Moon and Twain roughing it on his foot march west. Sometimes we are lucky enough to let the motorcycle muse the journey with the sky of endless summer blue hanging like a universal roof, somehow safe, baring us naked to the stars as we advance.
I rode for two weeks to and around Wyoming, where I spent the nights with Casper Mountain as my backdrop, sleeping on the inside of a covered wagon. The heat and wind left me restless and exhausted. Each day in Casper, I had a class schedule to keep, where I learned a new trade in bootmaking under the direction and patience of Sam Schmidt, owner of Schmidt boot company. I still have not fully unpacked the new old trade.
The ride itself, in its empty roads, is sufficient enough for a man to romanticize as he leaves his youth behind.
I gave myself a week to get home from Casper to ensure I would make it to my own wedding. In South Dakota, in my first stop east, I made my first coincidental visit to Sturgis during the rally. My father’s longtime friend, Mark, greeted me in Custer and ensured I had a place to stay up in the city. During the days, I looked with envy and memory up at the Black Hills around me as I rode from Custer to Rapid City and up to Sturgis. The pine hills were quiet along Vanocker Canyon, and the campgrounds were loud.
The rally was boisterous with Harley engines roaring. In many ways, with so many bikes, it’s easy to grow lonesome. I merely thought on my father, as Sturgis was tradition for him when he was a younger man. I called him from the side of the road, and told him it was as he recounted to me.
Hundreds of miles down the road, I chose to make a final stop in Indiana on a visit with a fellow writer, Kai, who lives with his wife in the town of Thorntown about 45 minutes north of Indianapolis. I was exhausted on the day that I saw him, having tackled Illinois entirely on the interstate (as well as South Dakota and Iowa prior to that), but we spent the night and early morning hours talking books, about the world, war and politics, and the narrow lanes of life. There were the good things, too, like being married, raising a family, and putting words to paper.
I left for Western North Carolina, reapplying sunblock. There was pizza at Spinelli’s in Louisville. A conversation with a motorcycle rider named Dean at a gas station, where I learned his theories on Satan, light, and the morning star, about his recently deceased wife and horse, and about the man who stole his motorcycle but was forcefully convinced to return it. Sometimes, it is our duty to let the people who pass us by share a story. It’s about survival — and respect. If not for people, where would our stories lead?
It was nightfall when I reached London, Kentucky, after a full-throttled return to the state’s eastern mountain region. Some of the best parts of Appalachia are in Kentucky. The mountains are less built-upon. The heavy mystique is palpable. I booked a campsite 8 miles out of London’s stretch of luxurious stately homes and toward the woods. I passed truck after truck, each with boat in tow. The sun glazing the road in the final hail of light.
I arrived at my host’s home after dark. Gavin and Bethany, the landowners, were drinking beers on the porch when I arrived. Without overstating the truth of the matter, Gavin was one of the friendliest gentlemen I had met in the entirety of my three weeks out on the road. He learned that I didn’t drink alcohol and offered me a cold root beer, which was welcome to me at the end of a day spent burning up in the August heat.
For nearly an hour, we talked about his time in the forest service, his dispatches to the Asheville region, and the land he called home. A Kentucky man, he lived outside of the law with the sweetest of dogs, but always on the right side of the moral code in his rugged libertarianism. I was reminded how strongly decency lives in the Appalachian man. And was made grateful by the affirmation.
My last night was spent isolated in the lower woods of that Kentucky forest. The neighbor’s hound dogs bayed until morning. Somehow, there was peace in it. With four hours to go, I left early the next morning. Gavin was riding his tractor, wearing that same smile on his face. He wished me well and hoped I would come again. I believe he meant it.
On Sunday, the day of my return to western North Carolina, I rode a final four hours down U.S. 25E through Pineville to the Cumberland Gap. I got the stamp for my journal in the park office, and rode the winding hill to the pinnacle overlook at the top of the mountain. The valleys below. Again, the view fit for a king.
The wheels rolled through Newport, Tennessee, and past the slow-crawling black waters of the French Broad River. The occasional pedestrian strolled downtown Newport. Almost everything was closed. A slowed down life whispered of an America in the quiet.
I made my way to familiar territory in the town of Hot Springs, North Carolina. I had an iced coffee from Artisun Café and watched as the Harley crowds filled the lots, parking for their Sunday ride, with my bike isolated among them.
I normally would have had a conversation or two, but I had run out of effort. That Bonneville sat strapped with all my gear, covered in mud and dust, tires balding, bags clinging on, and myself feeling much the same. Tired, but happy, to be there. I was grateful that the last stretch of road to Waynesville was the loveliest of them all, with 35 miles of farmland and forest to tell it.
I snapped a few final photographs to put the cherry on top and remember the story, the exits and returns we grow eager to blur. y
