Dispatches from the road

 Dispatches from the road by Bill Poindexter

Northern lights, meteor showers, polar vortex, bicycling with mountain lions and grizzly bear transcending space and time…

Northern lights and friends:

You may not know this about this area, but we can see the northern lights. When I first came up here two months ago, I only thought the northern lights could be seen in the winter time, but I was wrong. Some experts explained to me that the phenomenon can happen anytime of the year it’s all based on the amount of darkness in the sky and solar storms and obviously -weather . So camping from my mountain the other night with a good view of the north I saw a little flicker in the sky -now some people call it a polar vortex and I’m not really sure what that means although I think that we are in some kind of vortex here. I’ve talked about it before I think, the vortex of energy, dealing with phenomenon, like gravity, the moon, the sun, weather patterns, and just some kind of universal universal energy that is emitted from everything from bugs to trees to humans as well from just about everything. So what was interesting on that night is There was also a meteor shower and you were able to see least a couple hundred an hour of those shooting stars, it just seem like they were falling from the sky out of the blanket of our Milky Way galaxy. And I noticed various lights in the woods that surrounded me. Also, at first, I thought they were lightning bugs but it’s too cold and well there’s just no lightning bugs here so I’m not sure what they are or what they were …fairies? pixies? Ghost? But I will tell you this -about 2 o’clock in the morning I decided to go for a bike ride I know I know not very smart and grizzly bear and mountain lion country but I was all wound up and truth be told I did have to have 3 cups of coffee in my belly and excess energy I needed to expend. So I decided to go ahead and get on my bike and head down the forest service roads I was on I was in the backcountry on gated roads, so there were no cars or possibility of cars plus it being 2o’clock in the morning and me being in the very remote, national forest miles away from any paved roads I figured I just be OK not even having my light on as I could see the northern lights off to the north flickering and getting brighter out of my peripheral vision and I could see the meteor showers and I could still see little lights in the woods and occasionally from the lights of the Milky Way gallery plus I could see eyes in the woods as well And I knew that was my friend the mountain lion -they were curious of who this human was on a two wheeled vehicle riding in the forest at 2 o’clock in the morning disturbing their nocturnal adventures. Well, I kept going -and as I rode up and down, I started to feel my body lift a little bit as though it were becoming weightless. I can’t explain it -I just had to go with all my senses, and I close my eyes and I just Rode, and when I opened up my eyes, it felt like I was floating, but I was still on the ground because I could feel the bumps in the road. And I rode on and on and oh my gosh it was so beautiful… And then I felt a presence, and I could hear the thumping beside me on my right side And I looked over and it was a young mountain lion running beside me and I had no fear and it had no fear with me. She just looked up at me, 

said “hey”

And then looked forward as we moved together and then I heard something on my left side and I looked down and it was a young grizzly bear running a full gallop…

“Hey” he said and nodding with a wink from kind brown eyes 

and we weren’t going that fast -maybe 10 miles an hour, and I could hear the heavy breathing of the grizzly bear -And the smoothness gait and breathing of the mountain lion as we moved together on the forest service road heading towards the northern lights… Well now at this point, you might be thinking that I was inebriated? And you would be wrong. I was fully conscious and fully aware of what was happening and by the way this is a true story this actually happened last night. So I rode and rode my companions to the right of me, and to the left of me, there was no objective in mind. It was just a ride in the woods that night under the lights of the Milky Way galaxy and the flickers of the northern lights. We moved together  for what seem like hours and then finally -I want to say probably around 4 o’clock I could see the first light of the sun rising in the east and northern lights fading down like somebody turning off a gas flame and then there were no more meteor showers that I could see and the Milky Way started to turn off as well -as the glow from the east, got brighter, and all the sudden I realized I didn’t hear my companions anymore. They were no longer there, perhaps they got tired and I made my way back to my camp and got in my little sleeping bag laid down on my little patch dirt went to sleep. I didn’t sleep very long. I got up with the sun shining on my body warming me up as it was a cold night, wondering if it was real or a dream, and as I rode home on my bicycle, I rode the same roads that I rode I in the middle of the night in the pitch darkness, and sure enough I saw my bicycle tracks and not too far from my camp, and there were mountain lion tracks to the right of it, and to the left of it grizzly tracks…

Authors note: 

Thanks for reading this a little short story, I’ll let you decide if it’s fiction or not. If you like my writing, let me know there’s a lot more coming. I’m feeling my days are numbered here. 

So if you’d like to support this journalistic endeavor and my travels let me know. I’m on Venmo. You should be able to see some of my Venmo information and past post but it’s Bill Poindexter and there’s a picture of me with a beard And the last four digits of my phone number 1213.

Peace and love from the road Bill Poindexter

Authors

What people are saying about the last post:

Deb

“Love the description of your sleep shack. The photo of it and the one of your bike against the post with your writing tablet in the foreground are my favorites.  The cast of characters grows…. I feel like I know them or maybe knew them, specters of my younger years in N Idaho. That part of the country is rugged and rough by design; its terrain has shaped its people. 

I always think of you as a westerner. I know you’re from KC and have even talked about being a city kid, but your outlook on life, to me, has always been as a westerner, and that’s a compliment. Tough and a salt of the earth kinda person, one who can be depended on, hard worker no matter the job, and love in your heart for many things big and small.  To me, a westerner has embraced the big wide open and it shows in his expansive personality and attitude toward life. I am happy to see you really being able to spend some time here, rather than cruise through, and chronicle it with your introspective writing. 

Thank you for sharing this with me 🙏 “