The Freedom In My Backyard
“Utter, and pure freedom”, that’s the phrase I’d use to capture the thrill I seek. Not in grandiose international travels in five star resorts, not in LSD trips at festivals, not at an Ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, and nor at a Yoga retreat in India. It’s a thrill I chase, and luckily often find… as close as 5 km from my city apartment.
In the Netherlands, you’ve got more bikes than people: 6 million more, to be precise. As with any expat from a non-biking friendly country, I picked up cycling soon enough upon moving here to get around, after a ~12 years hiatus from this vehicle of two wheels. Who wants to pay enormous public transport fees, right? But, whenever I’d be biking to and from university, friend’s houses, bars, work, what have you — I’d frequently find myself wondering (although partially probably owing to poor geographic memory and directional sense), “I’ve got no idea what’s down that road. It’d be nice to just wander off”. There was always an impulse… an itch, telling me to dump my routine, forget my social or professional obligations that I’d be biking for, and just go, cycle off into the sunset. “Where, though?”, I would ask myself. It took a while to answer this to myself, but eventually I did.
During a vacation in a, what I can only best describe as a, “middle of nowhere” village in Poland on a visit to a friend, I had an incredibly joyful experience of biking from one village to another, through the most luscious green fields on quiet country roads, and through the sightings of old village houses and churches. Upon coming back, I found myself wondering why I’d only been looking at bicycles as a tool to get from point A to point B, while the same experience I had should be pretty easy to bring home. And so, that’s what I did…
Soon after, I was off, with an impulse purchase of a mountain bike off of Marktplaats, with soulful music on my headphones, into the outskirts of my city. No objective of direction, neither of distance, only guided by the sole purpose of discovering something new.
Over the following months of various solitudinous trips, it’s hard to encapsulate which part of the experience deserves the first glorified mention. Suffice to say, it hasn’t just been about getting my body moving, rather — more importantly it’s been about finding what I can only best describe as, “stillness in motion”: Stillness in motion through exploration, in new environments, away from the noise of it all — of a life that otherwise has an endless string of demands. It’s been a cure.. to take my jumping thoughts from the whimsical monkey mind, and just for a few hours… escape into an adventure of ending up somewhere new, and somewhere near and yet surprisingly distant, one pedal stroke at a time.
A lot of times, the ‘somewhere new’ ends up being forests, dense with trees… One ride, the highlight can be the visual beauty of tree leaves shimmering in sunlight on a windy day, another can be the quiet open green fields — flat and green as far as my eyes can see. And yet another can be sandy dunes covered in the most glistening light bronze Earth. Nothing quite puts one’s worldly problems in perspective as a silent admiration of the simplest, yet most incredibly complex beauty on Earth one can find in their backyard.
Or, it can be new places I didn’t know existed and wouldn’t have otherwise come to know of, if not for trusting the intuitive sense within drawn to the most random signs that may just capture the attention enough to make you hit the brake. One such example was a public airstrip park. Imagine that: being able to bike off on a plane runway, with your arms held up high and being able to feel like you’re ready to take off into the highest of open blue skies. Yet other times, the highlights can even be people. From the countless exchanges of smiles with by-passers across the bike lanes that offer a kind gesture to let you pass by first on the lane as they cross the street, or the most spontaneous conversation (albeit in broken Dutch) with a kind stranger from the local village, outside a cafe during a cappuccino stop.
Indeed, the gifts of exploration can be profound. To get you out of your mind from its web of endless thoughts, and into a sense of adventure with insurmountable freedom the world around us may have to offer.. If one only trusts the intuition within, allowing themselves to ask the questions of the ‘where’s and ‘what if’s, and give a real chance to the impulse: the impulse to be free.
