Through the Impossible: Rites of Passage and a Dirtbike Ride 2026-08-27 "Let's go rip around." I saw Marco's text almost at the same time as I sent the same words to him. As I drove up the driveway I saw his dirtbike first under the porch. Marco was sitting next to it, full gear, backpack filled with tools, water, and snacks. Two weeks earlier he'd sent me an unassuming Facebook Marketplace listing of a beat-up 2009 Husqvarna TE 310. I drove 2 hours into Connecticut, pestered the 18-year-old selling it until he dragged himself out of bed, and lowballed him until I drove away with the bike strapped in the back of my truck and $800 cash left over in my backpack for the repairs I'd need to make before riding. Seemingly everything he'd touched on the bike had worn out, fallen apart, stripped, broken, or rattled loose. But these things are built to be tough and easy to work on, even in the middle of the woods with basic tools. A brake rotor, some new bolts, and a repaired fuel line later this lanky red-and-white bike was idling away. Though the tires were worn almost smooth from road riding, here I was, wheeling it out of my basement to lean beside Marco's slightly newer, slightly larger, but largely identical bike while I geared up. Sitting on the rock wall waiting for me, he didn't know it but he was about to guide me through a rite of passage. In the next two hours we would do the impossible and live and I would have changed in a way there is no going back from. Portals to new worlds; guides are those who have been through before We rode for a few minutes, South out of town and down increasingly smaller roads. Knobby tires on the pavement felt bumpy and strange, out of place, bristling against the uniformity of the asphalt, yearning for some softer loam to sink into, begging for chaos. We passed some dog walkers and Marco slowed down ahead of me and started inspecting the thick forest by the side of the road. Suddenly, his barely-functional brake light flashed and he came almost to a standstill on the road, balancing for a moment before turning to plunge through a tiny opening in the bushes I hadn't even noticed. I followed him and the branches hanging in front of this secret portal thwapped against my helmet and I closed my eyes even though with safety glasses on I didn't need to and when I opened them again we were in the forest. On an old rail bed, raised up over the forest floor. Shaded. Cool. Carpeted with coarse which shifted beneath my tires. A parallel world. The faith needed to change to a new being We dove off the rail bed and left its loose rocky surface for the soft leafy forest floor. These new trails were winding and filled with roots and logs to avoid or bounce over. We came to a creek by the parkway which had wallowed out a gorge in one section. The water was blue like one of those sea caves, and sand had collected in the bottom of the carved out rock pool. I leaned my bike up against a tree and swatted mosquitos while stripping off my clothes, sopping with the sweat of nerves and my amateur efforts to maneuver the bike through the woods to arrive here. I jumped from a rock and hung in the air for eight feet until the water smashed my overheating state 180 degrees around into a refreshing cold shock. My mind clear, shivering and dripping, I climbed out, donned my soaking socks, wet boots, sweat-heavy shirt and, mud-covered pants, and we kept riding. Getting back on the bike there's a moment of disbelief. I don't know if I can do this. I don't remember how to do this? The actual motions are complex: all four limbs have controls to operate, some have multiple, then there's balance and weight distribution and steering. I know I can walk, I've done that for years. Mastered it. Once both feet are constrained to the pegs of this machine, am I going to be able to get from where I am now to over there? But the engine bangs to life and I ease the clutch off and the bike starts rolling and all that snaps away. I'm a new person. I no longer remember how to walk. Or if I do it's not relevant. Riding is the option now, and I think I can do it, by some unconscious combination of all the available inputs to the bike and movements of my weight and balance. And I do, gliding and bumping over the forest path. Each moment forgotten as the next approaches, each looming micro-decision overriding the last one’s decided action. These two states of mind are so distinct that the moment before switching from one to the other has an almost physical discomfort and identity-destroying fear associated with it. Getting on the bike feels impossible, daunting. Abandoning my practiced and perfected pedestrian role and becoming a new being, a being who can speed 25 mph down a trail, but can't take a half-step sideways, or turn on a dime, or stop to ponder a mushroom. Getting off the bike often entails crashing—complete loss of control and forceful, sometimes painful, always scary eviction from one state to the other. There's a bravery and a faith that are required to ever elect to perform this transformation. Bravery to endure the discomfort, and faith that the other identity exists somewhere latent in me, and that it will emerge when it's needed. A thing that is impossible on foot Out of the forest, we rode down a back road for a while, then turned into a pull-off and set out away from the road. For the first time that day we rode under an expanse of blue sky rather than a close emerald green canopy. A narrow trail wove back and forth inside the wide swath of ground kept clear for the powerlines traversing the county. Skeletal towers loomed above us and strung in ideal paths between them, the thin cables cut the blue. This breach in the forest running up steep hills and down gullies, these triangulated steel structures, all in service of those thin fibers and their job connecting one region's power generation to another's need. The powerlines cut an efficient path across the landscape, not minding steep terrain, and our bikes didn't mind either. My green riding skills, however, did mind. The washed-out paths bounced me around at the base of each steep climb I attempted. Following Marco’s advice, I tried to work up speed and maintain it up the climb. On easy climbs, momentum and the spinning of the wheels would keep me upright and I’d rise over the crest, back to terrain level enough for grass to grow, and see Marco straddling his bike, engine idling, looking back to see how I did. I’d grin in disbelief. We'd discuss where to put my weight, or how to sight the best line up the rocks until my breath returned and there was nothing else to do but ride on. But we cut our way steadily across the county and the climbs got steeper. "That's the last of the crazy stuff," Marco would say after each one. We'd creep down the slope to the bottom of the next hill, dodging vegetation leaning out into the path from left and right, then traverse a swamp or a deep puddle where the land flattened out. Stopping to look up at this next ascent, I saw it was even steeper than the last ones, with a turn halfway up, washed out with 8-inch deep gulleys and large loose rocks the size of small melons. Stopped next to me, Marco chuckled to himself and then gunned his engine and zipped up it. I studied his technique in the glimpses I caught of his climb between bushes and rises in the landscape. When my turn came, I bounced on a rock, caught a rut, saw a soft piece of terrain coming at me and got scared. Let off the throttle, didn't build up enough speed. Halfway up the climb my bike stalled, tipped over sideways. I leapt off to avoid being squished. Marco kickstood his bike and trekked down the hill to help me. "You ride it up for me. I'll stand here and watch." Sweat dripped out from under my helmet. Understanding and only a little sorry he'd subjected me to this, he stood my bike up and rolled it back down the hill to a flat spot where he could gain some speed. He tiptoed up onto my substantially taller bike and zipped up the climb, spitting a cloud of dust behind him. "This thing has a lot of balls," I heard from the top, followed by the engine stopping and a patient silence. And then I was alone on my feet, on the side of what was essentially a cliff. On either side of the path grew only moss and brushy heather. The path itself was bare bedrock with a scrabble of stones over it. In my stiff motocross boots with broken straps I began hiking up to the waiting bikes with small steps. No one would make a hiking path here, it's too steep for walking. Watching Marco on my bike zip effortlessly up this cliff a moment ago revealed how only my lack of confidence and experience required that I sweat step by step up the trail, leaning into the incline. The machine I rode was begging for this kind of terrain, or at least ambivalent to it. Infinitely capable. Held back only by my still-clumsy control of it. And under the touch of an experienced and confident rider, it flew. Under my weight it was more than useless. 250 pounds of bouncy rolling metal to tip up, balance, lug around, and keep from sliding down the scree. Even without the dead weight, I was not built for this path running straight up the hill. I stopped several times to catch my breath. My shadow on the stones showed me my own bobbleheaded silhouette and reminded me to feel the extra weight of my drenched helmet, useless now that my landspeed had dropped to the equivalent of a crawl. This same climb, the same path, I'd now experienced three different ways. Confidently and effortlessly flying, stuck behind the weight of a useless bike, and steadily kicking my way up on my feet. Effortless and almost invisible, completely hopeless and unable to progress, and then unsustainable effortful but steady and possible. Out of breath at the top of the hill, I looked back the way we'd come. The view could have been on a postcard showing off the county: the clear swath of the powerlines through the forest, fields and towns, the river, the mountains beyond it. Around here, this kind of view is usually fenced off and claimed by a million-dollar house on a hill. With four dollars of gas and about the same volume of sweat, we'd made it here to look out over all this. An impossible task is one you can't imagine doing A notoriously gun-toting farmer's field blocked our path under the powerlines. Veering off to the right through a small forest and around the edge of a field, we came to a stream. Summer rains had washed out many parts of the bank. "It's a lot different than I remember," Marco shouted over his idling engine. We were poised on the bank of the most viable crossing. While our bank of the river, the inside of a curve, descended slowly into the water, the other bank rose sharply out of the current. Small roots protruded from the soil carved away by last month's floods. Above that, loose sandy soil rose back up to the level of the rest of the trail. We waffled for a bit, halfheartedly looking for another way until Marco shrugged and rode into the stream. The sound of his bike's engine grew lower and more muffled as the water rose above the crankcase, but he stayed on the throttle. Tipping over in water that deep would flood the bike and a lengthy repair would be needed. He hit the bank and pitched up out of the water, popping a wheelie but maintaining balance up the steep, soft bank, rear tire spitting out sand behind him. His front wheel touched back down and he put his feet down on dry land, dripping, grinning, shaking his head. "Way deeper than I thought!" I cut my engine and looked down. "There's no way. I'm going to die if I try that!" He chuckled resignedly from the other side of the stream that now seemed like a formidable obstacle I'd soon be submerged in. “There's no better crossing. Just go for it. Keep your speed up." “I’m going to die!!” I kept standing there looking at the stream, but it never seemed less impossible. I never worked up the nerve. At some point I realized there was no other way to get across to my friend and continue the ride. I would just have to do it and see what happened afterwards. I walked my bike back several steps so I could work up more speed. Started the engine. Kicked off, rolled, revved—and stood at the top of the other bank with Marco, breathing heavy and giggling exhaustedly, disbelievingly, like a lover post-orgasm. Having seen how deep it was, I had forded the stream with even more speed than he did. I shifted my weight perfectly to climb the steep bank, maintaining both wheels on the ground. I had aced it. And I had no memory of it. I knew what happened, but no first-person account of it existed in my memory. An impossible task is one I can't imagine doing. As soon as I can imagine it, even if I don't currently have the capabilities, it stops being impossible. Completing an impossible task feels like a breach in consciousness—imagination and memory aren't so different, so there's a struggle to remember exactly what just happened. Integration is coming to terms with the fact that it must have been possible since I did it, and forging a new identity which can include this new belief. I know I believe now—to disbelieve at this point would be delusion—but how do I make sense of the new belief I seem to have been granted from heaven? Granted through pure experience without thought or decision? Arriving home mudspattered Back out on the main roads, the pavement felt too smooth, clashing again with soft grippy tires. Marco and I stopped by an old barn lit by a bruised sunset sky to look at Google Maps. Our routes home now diverged. I thanked him for taking me on this route but mostly all I could do was grin and shake my head. “What an odyssey. I’m gonna have to write some philosophy about this later,” I said through my helmet. “That was the easy ride!” came his response. “See you soon.” His engine hammered to life and off he went in long easy curves up the hill, North then turning West along county roads to his dinner then home. I zipped down back roads and arrived late to a house concert I had been invited to. Mud spattered across half my face, soaked shirt and pants, limping the bowlegged walk of an exhausted old man, I wandered through a kitchen filled with a bounty of dishes into the backyard to find my friends in the small crowd. I was holding a hunk of fried chicken in one hand and a clear plastic cup of white wine in the other. I spotted Raven, walked over and hugged him, then realized his hands coincidentally held the identical loadout. He looked me up and down. "You look incredibly redneck right now." Going out and facing the impossible changes me. It has to. Coming back to the real world, doffing the gear, drying off, I know I've done something unimaginable, and this must change my identity. The impossible path has squeezed my sense of self out through a small opening, curlicuing it into a new shape. I must reconcile that I am now a person who survived that. Who went through the challenge. Who traversed the unimaginable terrain. And who lived to stand in the same places, talk to the same people, as the old me. At first it makes no sense. Describing it to others falls flat. Later it sinks in. And someday it can feel normal, even executing the same maneuvers, riding the same hills, can feel normal. Telling the story might always fall a little flat. Other people might never understand the change. After all, I look the same on the outside. But the real story is written on my mind. Everything I do from now on—whether relevant or only tangentially metaphorically connected—is built on the transformation that I underwent. This new stratum of the foundation of my life can't fall flat. The strength and perspective will affect everyone I meet. While it might have been true that I looked redneck riding up to a cello concert on a filthy dirtbike, the mud and sweat that gave that impression were just symptoms of the true passage I had undergone. I had lived through the impossible. And now here I was. Music fills the yard. My plate brims with food. Lights twinkle above a small crowd, our gaze unified on the singers. I teeter in a folding camp chair with a missing leg, tip giddily into my oldest friend, hold out my piece of chicken to share a bite, smile. I look around. I love these people. Nothing's gonna stop me from living through this, too.