I decided to mountain bike the Continental Divide Trail, north of  Silver City, NM. As I expected it was more rugged than the dirt roads that I usually ride. It frequently dipped down into ravines and creek crossings.

These crossings eventually took their toll. It wasn’t long before I regretted not bringing food. Why was I resting so much? Something was wrong. I was starting to feel light-headed. It was actually a little scary. Should I turn tail and head back to the van, or plod on?

Hunger favored plodding onward, since there was a small town and restaurant in just a few miles. Eventually we got close to a Benedictine monastery, partially obscured by the trees, that rested on a hilltop on the opposite side of deep ravine--almost a canyon. If only I could drag the bike across this ravine to the monastery--there was a shortcut back to the trailer.

The bell tower was so close that it taunted me. I was half delusional by now--hungrier than at anytime in my life. Getting to that monastery was my best hope.

But the ravine was uncrossable, and so there would be hours of hunger and toil before making it home, via the long route.

At that moment the monastery’s bell tower rang out. It was a kindly and nostalgic sound, evocative of the Middle Ages when cathedral bells measured the day. It was such a clear sound and yet so penetrating!

It soared over the quiet, background sounds of birds and a gentle breeze through the ponderosas. To my back was the vastness of the Gila wilderness. And this bell was the last man-made sound.

“To the world when it was half a thousand years younger, the outlines of all things seemed more clearly marked than to us. The contrast between suffering and joy, between adversity and happiness, appeared more striking. All experience had yet to the minds of men the directness and absoluteness of the pleasure and pain of child-life."

“Illness and health presented a more striking contrast; the cold and darkness of winter were more real evils. We, at the present day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine, were formerly enjoyed.”

"For at all times the vision of a sublime life has haunted the souls of men, and the gloomier the present is, the more strong this aspiration will make itself felt."

"Thus religious emotion always tended to be transmuted into images. Mystery seemed to become graspable by the mind when invested with a perceptible form."

Johan Huizenga would surely have been delighted with this experience, in a most unlikely place, and that his book was an integral part of the experience.