Hello all! This is very delayed, but it’s been a whirlwind of a month, so I hope you’ll forgive me. I requested my talk with the Lewis and Clark Heritage Trail Foundation be recorded and the have posted it on their YouTube. If you are interested in watching it you can here. The comments are turned off which I have no control over, but if you have any questions or comments you can always send them to me here!
As for a general update, I’m working on diving back into writing my novel. I’m also starting to get antsy for another adventure. Last fall I attempted to write a few grants to give talks about my bike trip. Due to the concussion it wasn’t meant to be. Now that I’ve given this talk I have a groundwork to start with, so I’m hoping this will lead to more talks in the future. The big dream would be to travel and give talks along the trail, but I’d be happy getting started on a local scale.
I’m still trying very hard to pick up my life since the car accident last year. Every time I feel I’ve made a bit of progress I relapse or have another earth shaking life event that sets me back again. So send me some good vibes and hopefully I’ll start making more progress toward my goals, particularly my Lewis and Clark goals. I still have plans to continue writing about the last leg of my journey here, and hopefully in the nearish future I’ll have more Lewis and Clark adventures to come.
Please join me at 4pm Eastern as I talk about my bike trip along the Lewis and Clark Trail last summer! You can register by e-mailing Sarah Crawley at director@lewisandclark.org
If you want to join me for my talk about my journey last summer, you can register by writing to Sarah Cawley at director@lewisandclark.org
I’m very excited to give this talk. I’ll be sharing pictures, anecdotes, and slipping a few descriptions from my own journals that will be included in my novel.
So it’s official! On Saturday, October 15th at 2pm Mountain, 4pm Eastern I’m giving a zoom talk for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation about my bike trip last summer! I’ll talk about how I planned it, as well as highlights and struggles. I’ll read a few excerpts from my personal journal and descriptions I wrote while on the road. Please come and support me. You can find more information at the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
Please spread the word. I’d like to use my work on this presentation as a catalyst for grant funded talks in the future, talking about my experiences and their parallels to the actual expedition.
A year ago today I reached the Pacific Ocean after biking 4500 miles. More than half of those miles were unsupported. The first anniversary of the biggest thing I’ve done in my life. I’ve been so consumed with my day to day existence, constantly trying to grasp any semblance of normalcy I can find after such a turbulent year. I didn’t even realize the date until this evening.
I thought I’d feel happy or proud, but my heart sunk when I realized it had been a year. So much trauma has been crammed into this past year that it feels like a year ago is an immeasurable distance. So I’ve decided to reflect on what I’ve accomplished, even if a large portion of it has been due to the car accident that turned my world upside down on the way home.
After my concussion, I’ve completed months of physical, cognitive and vision therapy. I’ve gotten a glimpse of my old self, though I’ve relapsed quite a few times since finishing my various therapies. I get down on myself when I think about how capable my brain was before the accident compared to how it is now. For the most part my language skills are back, except for the occasional backslide. I still have to wear reading glasses and I find it frustrating how little stamina I have to read books these days. My eyes feel strained, glasses or no, after hardly any time at all.
I’m most grateful this year that I got a history job here in Boston that I really enjoy. I genuinely like my coworkers, I’m making ends meet, and not only do I feel like I’m good at what I do, I get plenty of positive reinforcement. No imposter syndrome in sight!
I am slowly trying to chip away at scheduling posts on Instagram, fishing through my brain for the headspace I was in as I neared the end of my bike trip. I keep on thinking I should write my next blog post and pick up where I left off, but when my mom broke her shoulder in April I was just starting to get into a writing routine again. I finally managed to start waking up early enough to go through what I’d written of my book before I left. It had been so long since I’d written anything of my novel that I couldn’t remember how far I’d gotten. Taking care of my mom set me back quite a bit. I manage to wake up early enough in the mornings to work on research or to write about once a week, but I’m working on shifting my wakeup routine so I can do so more often.
I’m finally biking again. I was allowed to get back on my bike in late March, told that I should avoid biking in the city for 6 months after my concussion, lest I get another brain injury and suffer permanent damage. I have nowhere near as much stamina as last year, but over the summer I’d been biking to the subway, and as of a few weeks ago I started biking to and from work. That puts me at about 11 miles a day. I definitely feel stronger, and I still have energy at the end of the day when I get home from work. It killed me to go from biking mountains to nothing, and when I got back onto my bike initially I was depressed by how weak I had become, but I’m starting to feel optimistic again that I can go on longer rides soon.
I also have an announcement to make soon on something rather exciting, but I’m going to keep quiet about it until I feel it’s more official. Keep an eye out for another post soon!
I’ve passed the six month mark since my concussion, finished all of my various therapies. I got the museum job I mentioned in my last post. I’m not back to normal but I’m starting to remember what normal feels like. Heck, I even rode a bike on a road for the first time since the accident last week! I’m still feeling bitter that I’ve lost so much of the strength and stamina I spent so much time developing. I climbed mountains. Now I can’t even commute to work without being wiped out and winded.
If you are curious about any of my adventures from after my last post here, I am much further along on my Instagram with briefer vignettes from my adventures. You can find me at @thestarsonthehorizon there.
At any rate, it seems like considering everything (especially the progress I’ve made) it’s time for me to at least attempt to start up where I left off, back in Idaho on the far side of my last Rocky Mountain pass.
I noticed a distinct difference between the Montana side of the Lolo Pass and the Idaho side. It felt like I’d crossed a divide into a completely different climate, though the temperature was just as chilled as before. My mom and I had invested in long underwear in Missoula and I’m pretty sure my mother will never look back. We went from shivering to quite cozy in our tent, though the temperature was still frosty. Idaho was lush and green. The woods were so dense if I had wandered past the tree line I would have been in complete darkness. The daylight did not penetrate the canopy. Whereas the Montana side was as rocky as it was wooded, I had seen so much evidence of wildfire, everything looked dry and brittle. The forest was broken up by patches with hardly any plant life, or just the smallest sign of undergrowth. Some of these areas were more deliberate, patches of cleared woodland from the presence of logging companies.
In Idaho the land felt more untouched. The rockfaces were just as abundant but covered in moss inches thick! I could see water trickling down from the mountain peaks in rivulets. Rockfaces had been worn down by the constant trickle of water for millennia until they formed crags and caves like deep claw marks in the mountainside. They were so deep and dark that as I traveled along the road, the Lochsa river to my left, the mountains rising up above me to my right, I couldn’t see anything in their darkness. In the distance on the river I saw what looked like a grizzly bear hunched over to catch fish–or perhaps it was a shaggy golden-brown rock? I didn’t slow down to find out what it was. Not long after that I passed one of these deep dark crevices in the mountainside. I could hear the constant drip and trickle of water and a deep and menacing growl. Back at travelers rest (only a day or two before, at the very beginning of the Lolo pass), I was warned that there were cougars in these mountains. Once again I didn’t stop to find out what it was that I heard. I only knew that there was no mistaking that sound for anything else. All of my experiences biking in Kentucky and West Virginia being chased by dogs with predatory instincts came flooding back to me. I didn’t think confronting whatever it was was the right call. I decided to act unfazed by it–to continue on at the same pace I’d been going at. Nothing followed me, so I suppose it was the right call.
As my path flattened out and I followed the Lochsa River westward as it merged with the Clearwater, I was struck by how much farther the mountains went on. With each bend in the river I thought I’d see the end, I’d come around a curve and it would be flat. It didn’t happen so suddenly, though I did notice the abrupt shift from woods to windswept desert, though I had yet to learn that term. I called the formations I saw step pyramids. They were as tall as mountains, or at least they still felt that way. We stopped that night in Kamiah, just the First Indian Presbyterian Church. We explored the graveyard for a long while. Some graves had headstones, some were no more than a mound of dirt and perhaps a weathered wooden cross, but most were covered with tokens or mementos meant for their loved ones who had passed. My heart ached for them. The church seemed to still be in use, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the missionaries who must have come here–of how many people were Christian by force rather than by choice. I thought of the small school across the street, its stated affiliation with the church. I wondered if it was a residential school, and how much heartache this place had experienced.
I’m making progress on my recovery, so I thought I’d update you all! I’ve seen improvement from my various therapies. I only have one more physical therapy appointment. I start training for a new job next week, which means a pretty big change in lifestyle, so as long as those changes don’t severely effect me, I’m getting close to physical therapy graduation.
I’ve been going to vision therapy which has helped a lot. Vision therapy has helped me with what’s called binaural focus, which basically means my eyes weren’t working together the way they’re meant to. I’ve seen a ton of improvement on this front in the past few weeks. My vision therapist also mentioned that changes in vision are sometimes a thing with head injuries and encouraged me to get my eyes checked out. I’ve spent the last two weeks frustrated but optimistic. The road to recovery means I need to do exercises (the amount of “homework” can be absolutely overwhelming) to strengthen those skills. I’d found that whenever I tried to read for my cognitive therapy exercises I wound up getting impatient because there were halos around the words and it took a lot more concentration and mental energy to get through it than it did before the accident. I was practically reading a book a week on my bike ride (all on the kindle app on my phone) and now I could barely read a paragraph. Not to mention the amount of time it took to get through that paragraph.
My future reading glasses
So my will power to do my various therapy homeworks disappeared. I felt absolutely sure that if I went to an eye doctor I’d see huge strides in my ability to read again. I went to an optometrist yesterday and walked away with a prescription for reading glasses. I could read text clearly for the first time since September, before the accident. So, I ordered glasses online. They should be here in a few weeks! I’m pretty sure that once I have them I’ll feel much more up to writing and reading again–so hopefully in 2-3 weeks I’ll start writing actual blog posts again.
I’m toying with the idea of scheduling my next livestream q&a, which I also think will come once I have glasses.
I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head for more than a month!
It’s been over a month since my last update, so I thought it was time to tell you where things stand. I’m a few weeks into physical therapy which has helped with a lot of my physical symptoms like chronic headaches and back pain. Just before New Years I started cognitive therapy, and last week I started vision therapy, so I can finally see progress on my recovery. It’s been particularly difficult because the first few appointments for both cognitive and vision therapy are testing the limits of my brain’s ability to function to find a starting place for treatment. That usually means I’m mentally and physically exhausted after my appointments. But! I should be done with testing within the next week and then start with a treatment plan.
I’ve slowly started posting on Instagram again, though by no means as regularly as I’d like, I’m trying to rebuild my habit and trying not to overtax my brain by doing too much at once. I’ve started writing again. I felt inspired to write some backstory recently about when Lewis and Clark first met. I haven’t felt inspired since I got in the car accident so this is big news. My stamina is pretty wimpy, but I can at least see myself posting here again soon, instead of vaguely hoping that eventually I’ll be ready. My cognitive therapist has given me some tricks to help me read, so I’m feeling overall pretty optimistic that I might find a new normal. She told me to read articles, highlight the key points as I go and take notes to help with retention. She also advised I use an index card as I read to help keep track of which line I’m on. My difficulty is primarily in getting my eyes to adjust their focus as I go.
All of this has taken a toll on me mentally, so that’s been the hardest struggle lately. I get excited that I see progress, push myself too hard because I think I can handle it, and then take a few steps backwards and feel useless again. But my doctors keep on reminding me that any progress is good progress. Even writing here again is good progress.
Right now I’m on the job hunt. I’m looking at museum jobs and I’m really excited about one in particular, but I’m really ready to get back to work. It’s been tough going the past few months and I need a steady paycheck. I’m looking to the future, to what I want my life to be in the coming year. I’m hoping to go back to school when my brain is ready. I also have some ideas about where to take this blog and my Lewis and Clark research now that my bike trip is over. I’ll tell you more about that soon!
I realize I’m long overdue for an update here, and as I look back I didn’t even mention what was going on in my last post. I hope to continue posting about my trip soon. I guess I’ve been posting updates on my GoFundMe and leaving y’all in the lurch. I felt weird about telling you about making it to the Pacific in any manner besides a victorious end to my bike adventure.
So, first off, I finished the bike trip safely on September 9th. I spent some time in California visiting family, even went mountain biking with my cousin because I wasn’t done biking. My mom and I planned to take a week or two on the way home to be tourists, but that plan was cut short on September 24th when we were rear ended by a distracted driver on the highway. I did not come out of it unscathed. My mom did a little better than I did, aside from throwing a her back out being a more regular occurrence, she seems to be back to normal. I on the other hand injured my back and wound up with a concussion from hitting my head on the headrest. My back pain is nothing compared to what it was, but the concussion has set me back considerably. I suffer from dizziness, chronic headaches, focus issues resulting in blurred vision that makes reading and typing a difficult task for me, and language difficulties where I get caught in the middle of a sentence and can’t find a way out of it.
I’m on the slow road to recovery. It’s been 80 days, and while I’ve seen improvements, I still have a long way to go. I start physical therapy this week to deal with the dizziness and headaches and will be going to vision and occupational therapy as well to deal with my language difficulties.
I haven’t forgotten you though! And I still plan to pick up on the blog and the Instagram posts as soon as my brain feels up to it.
On the brighter side of things, I’m happy to share this interview James Maroney of MHTV did with me about my bike trip. If you want something to hold you over until I start posting again, here’s a great refresher. James managed to put together something great, especially considering how much difficulty I was having at the time. I remember pausing a lot, staring off into space, and talking in circles until my brain registered the question and find an answer. You can’t even tell!
Meghan the amateur botanist started seeing a lot of new flowers up and down this mountain, many this same vibrant pink color.
We started at the Lolo Pass Visitor Center and went on a brief hike to try to find the site Lewis and Clark had camped at when they passed through these mountains. My mom didn’t want to go on a particularly long hike and the paths were kind of convoluted, so we couldn’t find the location. In back of the center though, there was a monument dedicated to Stephen Ambrose, who wrote Undaunted Courage about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He evidently helped save parts of this forest from logging companies and destruction. We made friends with two Oregon locals and their mini schnauzer before we hit the road.
There was a little grove behind the Lolo Pass Visitor Center filled with yellow wildflowers. I caught sight of one or two Columbia Ground Squirrels and asked a ranger what type of animal it was. I’m a sucker for a fluffy rodent.
It was so cold on this mountain, so different from the others I experienced, that as I rolled quickly downhill I started shivering, teeth chattering. I pulled over and waited to wave down my mom. I needed more layers. For the first time I kept the layers on most of the day. The Montana side of the mountains to the Idaho side I felt like I was in a completely different country. The golden grass, pine trees and corroded rock gave way to a varied forest of dark, thick, green woods, every surface covered by a moss three inches deep. I had my mom meet me at the turn off to go down the windy gravel road toward the Nez Perce Trail at the top of the mountain ridge, the exact trail Lewis and Clark used to get across the mountains to the Pacific and back home. This route was nearly 200 miles and most of it required four-wheel drive. My mom was driving a Toyota Corolla. We took the Lolo Pass ranger’s advice. She directed us to roads our car probably wouldn’t have trouble on. Because it didn’t make sense for me to bike down roads my support vehicle couldn’t get to for a week straight, I convinced myself to let me drive these safe-ish ranger approved roads so I could get a feel for the location before I continued down the mountain. I popped my bike on the back and got in the driver’s seat. My mom’s afraid of heights, and I am much better with driving treacherous roads than she is. At first it was just a narrow gravel road through the same mossy woods we’d seen all day, but as we crept upwards the slope dropped suddenly alongside us. We climbed upwards and that drop grew deeper and deeper until we were winding up the side of a mountain, straddling the delicate balance between staying away from the edge and avoiding rocks and potholes that might break us down. How would a tow truck even get up here to rescue us if we broke down.
The short hike behind the Lolo Pass Visitor Center showed a lot of signs of fire damage and downed trees. This is me taking a picture of my mom taking a picture of the type of obstacles we had to climb over.
It was at least an hour up these windy, brush and bush covered mountain sides. The view was spectacular, it looked like it could be just as uncharted as it was when Lewis and Clark came through more than two hundred years ago. It looked completely uninhabited, like nature reigned supreme. I would have biked it. I mean to do it in the future. I want to do the whole trail through the mountains when the road hopefully isn’t closed to traffic. We got to the intersection we’d been advised to turn down and head back to the main road. It was a five-way intersection. Two forks led down the Lolo Trail, that Nez Perce trading route that had existed for centuries, one lead back the way we came. We knew that path, and one lead back down, but it was new. We debated for a moment and went down the new road. I wanted a new adventure and how could it be much worse than the one we’d just come up?
The only photo I got of the road up to the Lolo Trail.
The roads were similar. They were windy and dropped off one side just as they had on the last road, but this one was the type of service road that had two tire tracks from where trucks had traveled up it with a chassis clearance high enough to leave a strip of vegetation still growing down the center of the road. Our car was so low to the ground that the whole drive we could hear grass and wildflowers scraping the bottom of the car. We avoided rocks just as before, but somehow on this side of the mountain it had rained and occasionally we reached muddy stretches and deep puddles in the road. I was proud of how well I handled the car. When I saw these hazards I stopped where the road looked stable and dry enough, examined and planned my route, and plowed through the mud like a champ. I knew I was more likely to get stuck if I tried to navigate it slowly. The logic served me well. We didn’t for a moment think we might be stuck, and got down the mountainside deftly, back to the main road in time for lunch.
The brush here was much more lush and green, ferns everywhere.
There was a campground and a town nearby, we filled up the gas tank and went to a lodge for lunch. It was raining on and off here. When we got back to the road so I could start biking again I realized my rear light had gone missing. I had left it on the bike, attached to the bike rack while we had jostled up that bumpy road. There was no use trying to look for it. I had a back-up, or thought I did. I kept a light clipped to the back of my helmet for days where I felt extra invisible. It had come off my helmet though, and after emptying the car twice searching for it to no avail, I gave up. I grabbed my camping headlamp, which has a blinking red light option, and macgyvered it onto the back of my cycling jersey.
I might be a little obsessed with wildflowers. I hope to get a book on botany found on the Lewis and Clark Trail and find out what some of these plants are called. The point for me was an exercise in noticing the subtle changes on the trail, so that every time I spotted something new it was like I’d made a discovery.
I often talk about the pay off of biking up hills and then coasting down the other side. I complained about the Lemhi Pass and missing out on that joy. I relished the Lost Trail Pass because I coasted downhill at about 30 mph, traveling about 50 miles with little effort. This mountain was different. It was the most difficult pass Lewis and Clark crossed. It was also the most difficult one I’d crossed. The incline from the day before had come suddenly and it was incredibly steep. It may have been the shortest in elevation, but the incline was the shortest in miles too, and the other side, I coasted for maybe 10 miles, and then for days I biked uphill as much as I biked downhill. I met up with the Lochsa River, and every time it bended I told myself I’d reached the other side of the mountains. Every time the mountains continued.
That evening, between rain showers I arrived at the Gateway of the Wilderness. I told myself this meant we were coming out the other side, that we were almost out of the wilderness, out of the mountains, but I out yet.
The Stars On the Horizon 