The Scale of Life
Today is our last day in Moab with our AFMC buddies and we will likely take one last ride through the red rock bluffs and plateaus that surround this other-worldly place that we enjoy so much. As is often the case, the landscape around us barely changes from year to year, but the people of the group most certainly do. I think we are all supposed to change somewhat with time, but we seem always to be surprised by the change nonetheless. I have spoken about the aging-out process that we are confronted with in motorcycling. Some people seem to have some combination of the self-awareness and presence of mind to conclude that they are simply too old to keep themselves up on the back of a motorcycle at speed, and they opt out of further riding. For long-timers of our motorcycle club, that often results in a year or two of dwindling attendance, combined with less riding and more trinket shopping, but with some attempt to stay connected to the group. Staying a part of the organism or community seems important to most. Rarely do members just decide to stop and then dramatically fail to reappear. But then again, that too does happen and when it does it feels too abrupt. There is an old joke I love that I title as the “Your mother’s on the roof” joke. It is about how to prepare someone for bad news, in the joke it’s about the loss of a loved one (at first a cat and then one’s mother). The idea is that we all need time to adjust to the finality of life. The human species has always had that problem and it has invented every manner of belief to help deal with it. From the reincarnation of Buddhism to the life ever-after of Christianity, heaven, however you choose to define it, seems to be an important part of our shared culture.
Coping with finality is not an easy topic. People don’t like talking about life insurance for a reason, it is sad to contemplate a time when we are no longer part of the whole. That has led to the wonderful and soothing idea that we are all a part of some larger consciousness that is the cosmic universe. Now that is a comforting thought because it involves staying connected in some way and never having to say goodbye because we are always there in one form or another. Most of us who are clear-minded and rational thinkers understand that this is perhaps less provable truth than more some form of belief and palliative for the soul, but it is comforting nonetheless because it helps us avoid the topic we all try to avoid.
As I sat here last night in my Best Western motel room in Moab (quite a spiritual way station of a place by all standards), I was reminded of all this end of life thinking because a long-time friend and fellow AFMC member interpreted by last missive about the burdens of group leadership to mean that I was using that story to cushion my voluntary fall from the top of the hill of leadership so that everyone in the group would know that my mother was heading up to the roof. That happened not to be the case because I am not yet necessarily at that point. Two years ago when we came upon our silver anniversary as a riding group, I did wonder if it was time to pack it all in, but that was less about my own fatigue and more about my worry about the collective fatigue that might be causing this group to linger on for old times sake rather than because we still enjoy the gathering.
That does not seem to be the case even though there continues to be compositional erosion to the group brought about by the natural aging-out process and the replacement theory (no, not the Replacement Theory that Tucker Carlson espouses and yet pretends not to know exists when someone tries to tag him with it). Life is about replacement. Death and birth are one on the Möbius strip of life, aren’t they. The same is true of quitting and joining when it comes to group dynamics. This should be the characteristic of life eternal that we should all celebrate and not avoid addressing at all costs, shouldn’t it?
As I pondered these imponderable thoughts (something my overtaxed and waning capacity brain wants to do to itself every day for some reason), I was sweeping out the garage of my digital inbox and happened upon a National Geographic article. As I have mentioned before, NatGeo is one of the few publishing mainstays of my life that I read even more today than I ever did during the mainstream of my adult life. I suppose that is because NatGeo discussed the world around us without political bias and without much sentimentality. It is the Dragnet of life, just the fact, ma’am. And the older I get, the more I appreciate and really want to know more about the world around me that I may have heretofore ignored for want of busying myself with work. That article is about the largest living thing on the planet.
Sometimes people turn phrases to get our attention and that is certainly more true of journalists who need to grab us and keep us reading, but in this case referring to the largest living thing on the planet is not a euphemism for something like the earth or its Ecosystem. This is about a single living being that is far larger than any whale hanging in the Museum of Natural History. It is called Pando and it is one tree here in the center of Utah. To be more precise, it is a thicket of aspen trees (apparently and unknowingly to me, the most ubiquitous tree on the planet) that are connected from one root structure and extend out some 146 acres worth of trees that spring from that same root. For those of us who have recently read books like The Hidden Life of Trees, we are not unaware that trees are known to communicate with one another, both laterally among peers, but intergenerationally among years and years of progeny. But I had never heard of Pando or for that matter, a living being of some 45,000 tree trunks that form one single entity. I have often said that I come to Utah because the canyons are my cathedral and because I find something very special about the landscape and the vortex of life I sense in this place. Now I learn that only a few miles from all of our riding lives the very life form that we would hail as an answer to our never-ending search for some form of immortality. And it comes the form of a tree, the very same tree I wrote about a few days ago in On Sacred Ground and about the only real Native Americans that commune so well with the world around them.
This is all starting to feel very spooky to me and I do not know exactly what to make of it all. Pando is now specifically on my list of places to go to. In fact, I have already booked a week for my extended family next July at our AFMC retreat par excellance, The Lodge at Red River Ranch. In the mean time I will ponder the confluence that appears to be flowing all around me. My family, my friends, my motorcycle group, my favorite place in the world, Utah. It all seems to be making sense in some weird way. For now, I must return to the present and suit up for my last day of riding the red rock hills, wherever the group says they want to go. That is the only guidance I need at this moment.