I was headed back down the trail of switchbacks when three guys, probably late thirties, rounded the bend in front of me, peddling vigorously and talking. As they came by, I could overhear their conversation. It was about the financial markets and all about their wisdom on investing and money. They were busy. Busy with their conversation and important.
The guys were focused on each other, and it irritated me because they were riding abreast and expected me to jump off the trail and over the side of the mountain. At the last minute, they gave up their battle for position with each other and fell in single file.
And I can’t lie, the expensive bikes, all the latest gear, and sunglasses, along with pushing me off the trail did help me judge them. I mean, they could have had all that and shared the trail. Then I wouldn’t have noticed anything.
I hiked around the bend, and a few moments later, a young twelve-year-old boy was frantically pedaling his mountain bike up the hill. At first, I thought he was biking by himself, which seemed strange given his age and the fact that this trail is far from civilization. Then I noticed he was searching the trail ahead of him. I realized he was looking for his Dad and the pack of “men.” He was trying to keep up with his father and be part of the “pack.”
I spend a lot of time paying attention to how moments register in the body, so I’ve learned not to ignore the small reactions that surface before language does. And boy, did I recognize his look. I gave him a high five and “good job!” But I could tell that wasn’t good enough. In fact, it was almost the opposite of what I was trying to do, as it seemed to further validate that he wasn’t good enough to ride with the guys and could only get recognition from a woman.
It was weird that a father would abandon his child, right? So, even though it felt like the boy was riding with the pack, I felt that I must be imagining things. No one would just abandon their child.
I continued my stroll (because going downhill is more of a stroll than a hike). Another mountain bike, the same kind of mountain bike as the boy was riding. Not a top-of-the-line bike, but an o.k. bike with 29-inch rims. This bike was being ridden by a girl about the same age. Those 29-inch rims made the bike so tall it almost swallowed her.
As I looked at her, it felt like she was resigned to something. It felt as if she hoped her brother would slow down and ride with her, but he wouldn’t. Two kids, riding by themselves on similar bikes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that these kids were part of the pack. Now their ride felt disturbing because they were abandoned on a difficult trail where they could easily get hurt.
A memory of when I was a kid, probably about 10 or 12 years old, popped into my head. I don’t really like it when my mind makes these associations, because it does this when the situation I’m seeing has similar energy.
My dad bought a 10-speed road bike. I had a banana seat bike. Do you remember those little banana-seat bikes with tassels tied to the handlebars? It was a pink bike. My mom had a beach cruiser with three speeds. My brother had my dad’s old street bike from my dad’s childhood. It was black and heavy, and I can’t remember if it had gears. But it was difficult to pedal. My brother wanted to ride that bike because it looked like my dad’s new bike.
My dad took us for a bike ride on a hot, humid, Midwest summer day. And then he got us lost. In the Midwest, we have “horse flies.” If anyone has been around elk, it is the same flies that like elk. They are big, fast, and bite hard. We were so lost that my dad decided the easiest way back was to follow the train tracks.
If you know anything about train tracks and bikes, you can’t ride your bike on a train track. I was in the middle of nowhere, attacked by these monstrous horse flies, pushing this stupid banana bike with my skinny arms.
But that’s what I remember: my dad had gotten a new 10-speed bike. He didn’t want to ride by himself. So, he rounded up the kids and took us on a ride that was appropriate for his bike until he got lost. Then it was appropriate for nobody.
And I know my dad thought about us and loved us. Yet, there were many times when he was just thinking about himself, and I felt resigned to participate. Afterwards, angry, we would attack each other instead of addressing the problem.
It is amazing that it is decades later, and that is all I remember about riding bikes with my dad. I remember how incredibly thoughtless these rides were and how dangerous they turned out to be. It would start to color many of my reactions to group and family events because no one wants to have the worst day of their life and have to figure out how to survive at 10 or 12 years old. It turned me into an insane planner and organizer.
And then I was back on the trail, hiking down the back side of the San Tan Mountains. I was feeling grateful that I wasn’t a kid. The sun was starting its descent towards sunset. Some days, that last couple of hours of the desert day will trigger a change in temperature where a dry coolness starts to wrap itself around you. You know it will be a jacket evening, and that is what happened this night. i was thinking that I didn’t have a jacket with me, but I could probably get back to the car before it got too cold. I could hear the chirping of the small Verdin as they flew from bush to bush, catching insects.
And then two more bikers rounded the switchback in front of me: a 30-something woman and a five-year-old girl. Like all five-year-olds, this little rider hadn’t developed goal-oriented behavior and was riding aimlessly around her mother, looking confused. As the mother rode past me, she smiled and said, “That’s all of us!”
And then I realized my feelings were right. These riders were all part of the original trio of guys, and the guy leading the pack was the father and husband.
I think it was her look that caught me more than anything else. This wasn’t a fun ride for her. It was a ride where she was trying to manage everything and keep everyone safe. And she was doing it by herself because her husband was up at the front of the pack, leading the charge as he got his exercise and relaxation/self-admiration. And suddenly I was back on the train tracks on a hot, humid summer day, pushing a stupid, pink banana-seat bike.
I continued walking down the mountain, lost in thought.
Life rolls by so fast. The kids we have today grow up into the adults we’ll be tomorrow. My thoughts went back to the boy and his quiet desperation to be seen, to participate with his father, and to be part of the club. It hurt because I could feel just how powerful the message was that he wasn’t part of the club. He wasn’t a man. He wasn’t important enough for his father to wait for him, and ride at an appropriate speed for him and the family.
And then I started to understand the daughter’s emotions as she hoped her brother would ride with her. It seemed that she already knew her brother would be angry and feel alienated after the ride. I know her brother couldn’t assign blame to his father because, as children, we don’t do that. I wondered if he would take out his humiliation and alienation on his sister and mother, as my family did.
Over time, those emotions and actions would sink into his body’s tissue and psyche. The messaging would become so ingrained that he would stop hearing the voice in his head and just react, preserving his self-worth.
My memories wandered back to when I worked in corporate America. I had always thought the United States was the easiest country for women to work in until I worked abroad. For women, it can be uniquely difficult. I wondered if that difficulty starts here, on trails like this, with boys learning that the pack excludes, that importance is a game of position, and that women are either placators (like the mother) or irrelevant (like the girl hoping her brother would wait). I wondered if this boy would grow up to be one of those adults.
But the hike did more than just show me generational inheritance. It showed me my internal messaging that had become so ingrained, I had stopped hearing the voice. Over the last two years, I’ve been focusing on nurturing and growing my creativity. In Taoist literature, personality traits are assigned to five core elements. I’m a fire element, and fire elements are creative. I had lost my creativity somewhere along the way. I have been using my work in Classical Taoist Medicinal Arts to restore it.
I am aware that I’m a good planner and organizer. Yet, I could never understand why I was such a planner and organizer. These are very wood-element kind of things. Strange, this one small memory of a pink banana seat bicycle on a really hot day helped me recall, accept, and integrate these behaviors without the judgment I had been carrying.
As I walked the rest of the way down the mountain, I realized how these messages are created through daily life and how quietly these messages live inside us long after we’ve stopped noticing them.
If something in this story stirred recognition in you, that’s worth paying attention to. Sometimes the next step isn’t fixing or changing anything. It’s just being witnessed as you reconnect with yourself.