Heaven & The Hunter-Gatherer

Modern man is the sublimation of the hunter-gatherer. And yet, this sublimation is anything but sublime for modern man is a dis-ease that infects everything he touches because he doesn't touch anything anymore but gets machines to do the touching for him. It is this venture into the pseudo and the subliminal instead of abiding in the Real that has caused man to descend into a virtual hell.

But you needn't be in hell. You can easily get out of it and start ascending into Paradise. Paradise derives from Sanskrit 'paradesha' meaning elevated region, so all you need to do - really - is hike a hill. This means embodying yourself and renewing yourself through locomotion in natural spaces. This is 'the hunt' and 'the gathering': sourcing (originating) and re-composing your Self originally. When you return to the primal you return also to the prime and the pure, and it is this purity that reveals heaven before you.

The Bike-Putt: The Five Foot Field Gate

My bike weighs a ton.  That's the problem with having once cycled the lightest bike in the world, my once trusty Cannondale. Nevertheless, trust does not last forever and now my Cannondale, even lighter without wheels, pedals, and handlebar, is a permanent fixture in my kitchen beside my spider plants. 

The art of lifting your bike over a gate. It's a sort of weightlifting au naturel. 

My once trusty steed, Cannondale. No longer trusty having thrown me twice, Cannondale now resides with the plants as a part of my ongoing kitchen gallery.

The Wild Work-out and Work-in

My bike and hike routes are a workout like no other. Sure, I've done my time in gyms, on the hamster wheels, but nothing compares to the work out you get when you revert to your original condition: the wild. For not only do you work out the toxins of your slavery down there in the city but you work in the goodness and purity of Nature. And it is through this dialectic that one becomes One.

The Bicycle Putt: How To Get Your Bike Over A Ten Foot Deer Fence

Yesterday, just beside the West Highland Way, I encountered a ten foot deer fence with no stile anywhere. I had just trudged through a bog uphill with bike in tow and there was no way I was turning back. My feet were soaked and I was in no mood for fences. This is an important area for walkers, whether the bosky plugs or the standing stones, there are items of curiosity to be found. However, when people start erecting ten foot fences to prevent deer from accessing these areas they are also preventing people from their eternal right to roam. And so, instead of risking a hernia or a broken bike and shot-putting my bike over the fence I have now taken to carrying a pair of wire-cutters with me. It's bad enough that the land in Scotland is not Scottish and belongs to about five people without blocking it off with virtual walls. We are entering a time now where spontaneity  and response-ability (as the ability to respond in the moment unmediated) needs a resurgence. Instead of going through the courts and all the stress that this causes. Don't get mad. Don't even throw your bike over the fence. Instead, cut that fence, and make an access point. Your right to roam demands it!

Once upon a time fences were of a human height like this one. Indeed, 'fences' were once organic ever-shape-shifting dry stone walls four feet high. Nowadays, fences are ten foot tall, barb-wired and electrified. Talk about the right to roam!! (Wire cutters, like my spare tube and pump, and permanent marker pen, are now part of the wild cyclist's canon).

World on a Wire

 

Yes, the 'world' (from High Germanic wer + alt, the age of man) is just a pro-jection, a simulation, a game that has been made up by infants who are unable to articulate their spiritual or cosmic situation. When you come into the hills - when you start cycling for real - you real-ize this. Which is all the more reason for coming up here.

S.A.R.D.I.T: Space & Relative Dimension in Time

I regularly go into the hills and lose myself. Not physically but temporally, ecstatically. It is for this reason that I have coined the acronym SARDIT, which is, for those of you familiar with the Doctor (there is only one doctor who is at the same time the Dreamer), the TARDIS with the time and space properties reversed. So, time and relative dimension in space (TARDIS) becomes space and relative dimension in time (SARDIT). This means that when you go into the hills, time changes and expands to become somewhat 'larger' than it actually is. In the TARDIS it's space that changes and 'enlarges'. In the SARDIT, it's time. But it 'enlarges' to such an extent that it could be said that there is none, there is no time because it is 'complete'. 

This extemporal effect means that you do not age (like they do down there in the city) but renew and refresh through a natural communion with your Self. Space becomes embodied (as one moves through it and inhales it) at the same moment as time becomes ejected. The spirit then arises in this ecstatic momentum.

And so, I regularly come down from the hills feeling like a different person because I am, having thrown off my temporal shackles and extemporized Being, and become complete. Complete, from Latin com-, here as an intensive prefix, + plere 'to fill'.

Cardoggy

For the wild cyclist routes are roots and so they have to be clean. If they are too cardoggy then there is too much interference for your receptiveness and reception of the light. If there are too many dogs on 5m leashes on your path or too many cars on even bigger leashes on your road then it's perhaps time to rethink your route and reshape it. Cardogdom is not where you want to be, surrounded and having to navigate the gassed and the dewilded. You're not out for an obstacle course but for intimacy with the spirit of Nature. Gas chambers and leashes are not required.

Around Mount Kailash

Ok, so I am on a bicycle and not on foot but being on a bicycle is its own kind of footing is it not? And the holy Mt. Kailash here is not actually Mt. Kailash (a holy sacred place according to Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism) but the humble Dechmont Hill. There is a considerable difference in height (the former being 6,638m whilst the latter is a mere 298m). The base too is considerable smaller in the latter, and it is this base (it is forbidden to climb the mountain and disturb the energies that reside there) that the supplicant circumnavigates on foot whilst praying to the gods (like Shiva) who live there. This circumnavigation is about 32 miles which is not too far from the distance I covered today up to Dechmont from Cessnock and back again via the Clyde riverside path. The point is that whenever I am on my bike, and emphatically in my own body, everything is pilgrimage. I'm not a cyclist but a pilgrim on a bike. This pilgrimage begins with your own steam and reverence at the purity and essence of natural phenomena like hills and rivers and birds. Everytime I'm out on the bike I circumnavigate Mt. Kailash and it is this circumnavigation that leads to liberation and the revelation of who you actually are.

From the empty train between Cathcart and King's Park looking north across Hampden Park to the city

Another YBR...

Looking back down the runway road that leads up to Dechmont (and East Kilbride beyond)...

Dechmont Farm and Hill

The views from Kirkhill golf course are amazing and there is a well-marked path that walkers or cyclists can take through the course.

Yellow brick roads start popping up everywhere when you write about them... 

Entering the city via Glasgow Green and the Trongate there is a different kind of nature at work, a different kind of forest growing.... one that is non-renewable, earth-exploitative, and all-polluting. And there are no 'people' here, just lost souls.