Spring/Summer 2006: Land

Shoulders

By Mark Blaine

Late one spring afternoon, I drove a tractor from a rental shop eight miles down a country road at maybe ten miles an hour. The funny, and confusing, thing to me about driving that tractor was that people waved. I had tucked myself into the shoulder as close as I could go, but I took up about half a lane of traffic. Every few minutes, the white noise of tires on the road intensified until I felt a familiar electricity, like biting foil. But then the sound of the tires changed pitch; the drivers slowed. They smiled or nodded. I waved back, clumsy with adrenaline. I wondered if these were some of the same people who honked and swerved at me when I commuted to work on my bike. Were they the ones who drove so close that I could feel the cushion of air pushing out from their front fenders? I'm the same guy; this is the same road.

In the United States, there are four million miles of road with an average lane width of about twelve feet. Most people who want to use roads do so freely. The road is civilization. It's our oldest shared place. It's older than church. Older than armies. It's a fiercely public space, shared land where we express ourselves. The judgments we make about other users of this public space tell us a lot about ourselves. We are insular, for one. And we don't tolerate movement within this public space that seems counter to where we're headed. If a vehicle is slower than we are, we're hostile to it and vote with our gas pedal.

People are nice to a guy on a tractor but consider the dude in Lycra a nuisance. It may not make sense objectively. The bike is faster and smaller than the tractor. The one I ride is better marked with a special flashing red taillight that's visible a mile away. The bike has a right of way; so does the tractor.

Maybe on a tractor, I appear to be working. Even if I'm only beating back blackberries and poison oak on my property, this work counts in our valley, so drivers wave and give me room. On the bike, I seem to be working hard toward no end. I sweat through expensive fabrics screened with foreign corporate logos. That sweat carries a sanctimonious reek: the bike is the most efficient transportation machine out there, I'm not polluting, I'm exercising, and I'm getting to work on time.

Do I belong on my bike in our valley? I'm working on it. I get up, I wear the same clothes, I try to be in the same places at roughly the same times. The driver of a logging truck brakes, slowing his engine when he sees me. It's a glottal roar that scares the birds from the trees, but the sound is a relief--he's slowing, he knows I'm here. I carry on the conversation this way: by showing up, I claim a piece of the road, even if it's only the shoulder.

Published in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2006 Oregon Council for the Humanities