Silence is golden

PINETOP-LAKESIDE, Ariz.—Civilization is damned noisy.

A good breakfast is the most important meal
of the day before a big ride.

You don't realize that until you have the luxury of being in a really quiet place, and currently we are in a really, really quiet place. They have fabulous trails up here in Pinetop-Lakeside. About 200 miles of them to be exact. There are people up here, too, but not many of them go out on the trails I guess.

We selected a very nice 26-mile route that took us deep into the woods on some fine technical singletrack. The dirt here is foreign to us. It's reddish and strewn with volcanic cinders. Sharp, jagged igneous rocks that could easily shred the sidewall of a carelessly piloted bicycle tire jut out of the ground every few feet or so, creating a treacherous gauntlet that requires your A Game. But every few miles, we encountered long stretches of narrow, flowy singletrack that demanded to be ridden at top speed. This place really is a mountain biking paradise.

A peaceful stretch along the Los Burros trail.

In addition to the thrill of riding, we discovered out on these trails the thrill of silence. If you've never experienced it, I suggest you do so as quickly as you can. About a quarter of the way into our ride, we found ourselves winding up a fairly steep pitch that traversed the side of a mountain. We were working diligently to avoid getting bucked off of our bikes by the merciless terrain when we noticed the silence. Or maybe we didn't notice it. Whatever it was, we realized that all we could hear was the sound of our own breathing and the almost subliminal clockwork-like buzz of a well-oiled chain orbiting a binary system of clustered cogs and gears.

It's dusty riding alright.

Fighting the natural human instinct to break silence with meaningless jabber, we immersed ourselves in noiselessness. We rode for miles this way. There was no background noise of vehicles on highways, the world was free of the endless chatter of television and radio, there was no drone of mechanical devices or manufacturing plants, and, best of all, we didn't hear a single ringtone anywhere for hours. There was only sweet, clean intoxicating silence. 

This area has been free of wildfire for all too long. The woods are thick and tall. Giant Gambel Oaks have grown into trees that must be at least a 100 years old in some areas. Autumn and a long dry summer had morphed the ferns into crispy golden fans that seemed as though they would crumble into a fine dust on contact.

Thankfully, thinning operations haven't affected the trail system.

Apparently the land managers in this area have come up with an arrangement to allow companies to come in and thin vast areas while laying claim to the lumber for commercial use. While some people may condemn such practices, we were pleasantly surprised to see that the trail corridors had been maintained despite logging operations taking place in their midst. Even radically thinned, the forest still looked healthy and it was easy to see that these places would survive the inevitable catastrophic wildfires that will continue to ravage the West with increasing, alarming frequency in the coming years as our species continues to despoil its only habitat with toxins of wanton excess.

The one trail-user we met along the way—a nice woman from Colorado riding a beautiful horse with the company of her doberman—disagreed with our sentiments about thinning. That's okay. Once we rounded the corner away from the logging operations, we once again slipped into silence and back into the overgrown forest. Having come from a place that is mostly blackened sticks after having been ravaged by wildfire multiple times, a tall, complete forest was a sight to behold!

Civilization holds food, drink and dorks.

We rode for nearly three hours, and returned hungry and tired back to our temporary home. Later we feasted on grilled steak and spicy red chile enchiladas and giant mugs of delicious craft beers. Our meal made by hand was better than anything we would have gotten in the local restaurants, none of which probably served such gargantuan beers anyway.

Only a hearty belch or two broke the silence of the evening.

See you on down the road.