THE CASEY JONES STATE TRAIL:

I learned to ride a bike on a hand-me-down boy’s Schwinn. The vinyl banana seat was torn and the front tire was out of alignment, but I rode it all around Jasper until the spring of 1975, when I laid eyes on a blue five-speed Raleigh in the window of Frackman’s Hardware. It even had a front head lamp! I had a little money saved from working at my dad’s grocery store, so I struck a deal at the store: $30 dollars down and $5 a week until it was paid off.

What a day it was when I handed them my last payment! I celebrated by riding out to see a friend, who lived on a farm eight miles away in Moody County. I don’t recommend children do that alone anymore, of course, but what I remember most about that ride was everything I didn’t notice from riding in a car. Laundry on a line blowing in the breeze, calves playing in a pasture, prairie clover and lilies in bloom. The air was rich with smells. Manure, of course, but also hay and grass and that indescribable smell of summer on the prairie. A farmer on a tractor waved and I waved back. This, I thought, is what freedom feels like.

Fast forward forty-seven years. I live in Pennsylvania, my hair is now gray, and my groovy five-speed Raleigh is no more. Although I still love biking, life often gets in the way. Like many of us, I have become what psychiatrist Jon Kabat-fore I get back on my bike, and when I do, ten miles-per-hour seems really slow. It takes my body a few miles to release its seventy-mile-per-hour tension and to remember that at a lower speed I will see, smell, and hear so much more than I can from a car.

Thankfully, country roads are no longer the only biking option in Southwest Minnesota. I get excited to return to the area and ride the completed sections of the Casey Jones State Trail; to see through a bike’s-eye view the places I’ve passed with little notice or couldn’t see at all from the road.

If you’re a “human doing,” too, and crave time away from “the screen,” give some thought to dusting off your old bike and hitting the thirteen-mile Pipestone Section, the Lake Wilson Section, or the six-mile Currie Loop between Lake Shetek and the town of Currie. You will hear birds calling one another, grass rustling, and the rise and fall of the wind, wonder about a lone, random tree in the middle of a field, and smell the wild offerings of the prairie. Take a photo of something you didn’t notice before: the beauty of an old, paint-chipped barn, a dirt road, an old creek bed. I promise that after a few hours on your bike, you will feel less like a “human doing” and more like a “human being.”

Need some inspiration? Check out the virtual tours of the trails at www.caseyjonestrail. org. If you like what you see (and, like me, watch the Currie Loop drone footage as a way to relax), there are several ways to support the Friends of the Casey Jones State Trail Association, even from as far away as Pennsylvania.