Spiritual Insights From A Memorial Day Motorcycle Ride In The Pacific Northwest

By Author: Dr Peter Lind
Total Articles: 2
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I went on a group ride made up of four chiropractors and a geologist. No matter how hard we tried we couldn't come up with the punch line for a joke we were trying to make: Four chiropractors and a geologist walked into a bar and here's what really happened.

The first day started as we rode up through Washington State, and mistakenly crossed the bridge and rode into Idaho. The third and the last day began from Joseph, Oregon and rode down through small towns like Long Creek, Mitchell, and Prineville. The last day we rode 450 miles; 12 hours on the road, which is 9 longer than, I prefer. But I had three insights that I pondered on this 1,200 mile ride.

Let's go back and retrace the ride. The first leg went up into Walla Walla, Washington, where most of those famous onions come from.I tried watching the road but the scenery was just breathtaking. To start off I was stopped by and had a nice, friendly conversation with a Washington State trooper about the road conditions and the suggested speed. He gave me some good, helpful advice while riding in Washington, but he didn't write anything on paper! In the Eastern ...
... part of the state where we were heading he said the Methamphetamine problem is out of control. Twenty-something-year-olds go to campgrounds and have parties and it wasn't unusual to bust almost any group the troopers come across.

The first lesson I have for you was about food. When you are on the road you often do not have choices you usually have so for the first time in about three years I had a cheeseburger and fries, for breakfast! Unbelievable! It was in Spray, Oregon and burgers were the only food on their menu. How many people have these things every week, so what's one every three years? I assumed that the beef was local because there were many ranches in the area. The hamburger that you get in fast food places is usually from South America and is mixed with meat from several different farms. So my first lesson was; sometimes you just have to eat what's on the menu. Most of the time you will eat well so when the unsuspecting times come when you have no choice, you will be okay. You'll live.

The second was also a food lesson; no a confession. I didn't take my nutritional supplements on the last day. I know, I know. But look at my side of the story: I woke up at 5 am wide awake.So I had to wake everyone else up with this great idea to ride all day through the small towns and get back before all the other Memorial Day travelers. So I didn't take my nutritional supplements one day. Do you feel as bad, like you're missing a piece of clothing when you don't take yours? So I didn't take my supplements. It will be okay. When you take your supplements most of the time you will have built up reserves that you can tap into when you need to. If you never take nutritional supplements to vitalistically support your organs and body processes you don't have the reserves. This is a strong reason why people get ill; they run out of reserves. With sickness and disease all you have to do is look back over time to see what went wrong.One more thing about nutritionplease reduce and then stop your soda intake! Sodas are killers! Also, avoid any and all fructose and corn sweeteners.

The next lesson was a reverence that came over me as we rode into Eastern Oregon on highway 3 going south. We were riding the Nez Perce Trail. The road snaked along high ridges that overlooked the vast country. As I was taking some corners I was thinking about what happened on this very road. Mistakenly, I thought it was the Trail of Tears but I was not far off. Here's the history:

The 1877 flight of the Nez Perce from their homelands while pursued by U.S. Army Generals Howard, Sturgis, and Miles, is one of the most fascinating and sorrowful events in Western U.S. history. Chief Joseph, Chief Looking Glass, Chief White Bird, Chief Ollokot, Chief Lean Elk, and others led nearly 750 Nez Perce men, women, and children and twice that many horses over 1,170 miles through the mountains, on a trip that lasted from June to October of 1877.

Forced to abandon hopes for a peaceful move to the Lapwai reservation, the Nez Perce chiefs saw flight to Canada as their last promise for peace. The flight of the Nez Perce began on June 15, 1877. Pursued by the Army, they intended initially to seek safety with their Crow allies on the plains to the east. Their desperate and circuitous route as they tried to escape the pursuing white forces is what we now call the Nez Perce National Historic Trail.

This trail was used in its entirety only once; however, component trails and roads that made up the route bore generations of use prior to and after the 1877 flight of the nontreaty Nez Perce.

The journey out of the mountains the native Americans took was difficult physically. It was high and narrow and I can't imagine packing everything you owned, including children and making this journey on foot, knowing you weren't coming back home.

Have you had one of those spiritual connections? You can draw your own conclusions.

The town of Joseph, Oregon was awe-inspiring. Tall snow-covered mountains. Evergreen trees. Lush meadows. A river. And of course, there were no hotel rooms availableit was a holiday weekend and we didn't have reservations. But a few calls later and we ended up at the Wallawa Lake Lodge. After a dinner of salmon, I'm sure it was fresh, we found a campfire and brought it to life and had one of those spiritual conversations. The kind you never talk about: God, religion, space-time, quantum physics, the universe until the fire went out and we couldn't see and had to stumble back to the lodge.

The book, THE SHACK, took place right near here. The lodge, campground, and up the mountain was the trail that lead to the shack. I had read the book several months ago and the images became very vivid and the signs of life and spirit were everywhere.

You can see representations of spirit in the world around you. You can feel the spirit of someone or you can feel it of yourself if you tune into it. Many times we don't talk about spirit but most of us know its there. What do we do to nourish our spirit? What do we do to degrade our spirit? Does what we think, eat, or move help or hinder the spirit? Does it matter?

I've heard it said that we are spiritual beings walking around in physical bodies. But most of the time our minds are on the physical plane. We rarely grasp things on the spiritual plane.

Now the final lesson from the ride was physical. It happened long into the last day. After a few hundred miles of being hunched forward my elbows and wrists began to ache. I had to stop for rest and it became routine every 45 minutes but you can't go far if you stop all the time. What was I going to do?

Every once in awhile I come up with an idea and this idea was to throw some duct tape in my bag for that just in case event. Now as the miles added up I began thinking about it and on a stop in Sisters, Oregon, I taped a band right below both elbows. The band of tape took all the stress off my joints and I could ride longer, and at least get home.

The lesson I learned was this and it came as a question: What do we do to take the stress off ourselves? The duct tape is like the things we can do in life to divert the stress. We all have it — the stress. What can we do to minimize the effects of it? The nominal lesson: Another use for duct tape?

Here's a summary of the ride and really a new thought that might not summarize anything in this story.

You've heard survival of the fittest. But be warned: Charles Darwin and the proponents of population control use this idea to control nature and people. The chemical/genetic/pharmaceutical companies have written their own notion based on this faulty philosophy: better living through chemistry. These are reductionistic people and they want to break things down into parts to control the whole. This is without regard to the interconnections of the whole — they miss the big picture.

Hitler studied Darwin and applied the idea of survival of the fittest with genocide. It's not the first time this happens. But in the world it is survival of those who adapt It's all about adaptability. Everything in life has brought you to where you are by your ability to adapt or not. Your quality and quantity of life is your ability to adapt to the three major stressors that we all have to deal with: physical, chemical, and emotional. Dealing with these stresses is the solution to overcoming most health problems. You can't exercise all week and slug down sodas and hamburgers, just as you can't take nutritional supplements and be angry every day. You have to support all three of your body networks.

After you philosophize awhile go out and take a motorcycle ride.

We made it home 12 hours on that long day and home never felt so good. This was motorcycling at its finest.
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