Mountain Biking with Rushdie

This is sort of a mixed post, writing/riding – two of my favorite activities. Some of my best writing has come after an hour of riding, and some of my best riding has come after not being able to write. It’s not that one motivates the other, at all; it’s just that riding allows my mind to focus and follow a single train of thought (rather than the usual two trains), since most of the rest of my brain is screaming “AHHH IT’S A TREE!!”

So, this is big-mountain riding (much like big-mountain skiing.)

And this is Salman Rushdie, author of one of the best books I’ve read called Midnight’s Children.

Neither of which I want to become a peer. At all.

Big-mountain riding is not something to start at 27, for one thing; for another, the price of failure or misstep is incredibly steep; and finally I gain nothing by doing big drops or tricks if no one is there to watch -- because no one would believe I jumped a 30-foot cliff without proof.

And yet watching these guys ride makes want to get on my bike so badly – especially now, in the throes of winter. To be on two wheels, weaving among the trees, and hurtling down the trail over roots and rocks, muscling up long climbs and flowing along contours – and even dropping down steep descents: the less fun a trail looks to walk, the more fun it is to be able to ride a machine on. And those images and feelings can’t help but course through my mind when I watch a style of riding I have no desire to touch.

The novels that Rushdie write can be – difficult. Even with a professor guiding my reading of Midnight’s Children there was a lot left to miss. I do strive for a certain literary quality to my writing: despite fantasy being a genre much misused by bandwagon riders looking to make a quick buck off flashy trends and non-demanding readers, I think Tolkien and Lewis, at least – and definitely Charles Williams – show us the genre is capable of much, much more.

And yet there is an inescapable accessibility to fantasy: Tolkien’s language is largely difficult because much of it is now archaic, not because his lexicon is so much greater than us little people. A young child, if they can keep at it, can understand the story of Lord of the Rings; Midnight’s Children just seems like a well-written piece of prose without someone opening the lid on what’s going on behind the story.

But Rushdie is still a master of language; and much like watching big-mountain riders, I can’t read quality prose without images of that perfect sentence or description of theme running through my mind, without desiring to tickle out that character or add personality to that setting.

So I continue to watch Darren Berrecloth and Matt Hunter, and continue to read Rushdie and Martel, and I’ll ride my bike with both wheels on the ground (if I can help it) and write in a genre at which scholars chuckle and sneer. And I'll be quite happy.