Some days, tarmac just doesn’t suffice when you’re an adventure rider. On a quiet Monday with nothing on the calendar, I headed into the lush wilderness of the Pisgah National Forest to escape the heat of summer and find that connection between earth, motorcycle and man that often gets lost navigating through heavy urban traffic.
I needed the tonic of the wilderness, to borrow a phrase from Thoreau’s “Walden.” The national forest extends for a-half-a-million acres around Asheville, North Carolina, with a handful of gravel roads penetrating the sylvan wonderland. A little more than a century ago, this southwestern part I find myself enjoying was part of George Vanderbilt’s massive Biltmore Estate. Wash Creek Road takes me through the forest and under the Blue Ridge Parkway. Except for a few small gulleys carved during the rainy season, the road is easy to mange on any motorcycle. My big V-Strom 1000 seems happy to climb from crick to holler with no drama.
The road offers many pull-offs, and I stop to linger among the mossy stones and ferns beneath a green canopy casting a mosaic of light on the forest floor. I can hear the wind stirring the trees on the ridgeline well above me, but in this secluded fold of the ancient mountain the leaves remain silent and still. Soon my solitary commune with nature is invaded. An SUV – the only other vehicle I’ve seen on this road today – creeps past with windows up, its caged occupants sealed away from nature. They pass oblivious to the lightning-struck tree, the weeping rockface, the woodpecker busy at work up the ridge.
I find all types of motorcycles interesting and appealing, but what I love about adventure-touring is the hassle-free ability to find such hidden forest spots – and such a sensation of freedom, rejuvenation and reinvigoration.
The best thing about adventure touring is the ability to point a motorcycle toward those blue mountains and keep going when the pavement ends. Mud, rocks, shallow streams shouldn’t be the end of fun, but the beginning. Somewhere amid the streams and gravel switchbacks, you can lose yourself as you find yourself.
Michael E. Gouge
Editor-in-Chief
