GUESS WHAT?!
It’s my 4 year end-of-first-bike-trip-aversary!
Zooming on the Natchez Trace Parkway, Mississippi.
That journey by the numbers:
1 month
(August 2013)
800 miles from Memphis, Tennessee to Venice, Louisiana
I started just south of the star and pedaled to the southernmost end of blue
2 nights camping inside a fire station
night 1 in Arkansas
night 2 in Louisiana
There weren’t any fires so I got to try on the gear at Plaquemine’s.
26 nights people took me in
My favorite sleeping spot was possibly the Floating Bed at Quapaw Canoe Company, designed by Chris Staudinger. Not pictured: copious amounts of driftwood that decorate the space.
I thought it was a southern hospitality thing, but people have been taking me in all over the world in the years since –– I don’t know how to possibly repay this gift, but once I have a place of my own there will always be a futon for travelers.
1 cardboard sign
Recording audio stories at the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival
1 time I held a mastodon tooth
Thanks, Howard Brent! Howard took me out on a Sunday river boat ride with his friend Hank, too. He showed me how the river washes up a whole treasure box of things, like the skeleton of this boat.
Despite the best attempts of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Mississippi’s banks are always moving and jumping.
1 night dancing at Reds in Clarksdale
This saxophone player’s jacket is the inspiration for the neon vest that I wear while cycling…
made in New Zealand, March 2015
I embroidered myself a pair of poet pants in New Zealand, too.
I did a fist pump every time I saw one of these signs. MRT!!!
That August 2013 I recorded 50 hours of stories.
I didn’t know what I was doing, but it felt right.
I love everything about this quote except for the gendered pronoun.
Nightfall in NOLA
piles from Hurricane Isaac (2 years previous) at the side of the road, somewhere south of New Orleans on the way to Venice
Cotton, growing
Combine
Music comes out of the water, I think.
Stop what you’re doing and go listen to the Shotgun Jazz Band. No, really. The night I spent listening to them in New Orleans was simply sublime.
I chased after a car to get this picture taken at the End of the World, the place where Louisiana Highway 23 meets the Gulf of Mexico.
If you’re wondering where the One Bike One Year logo came from, now you know: The End of the World / Venice, Louisiana.
There were places in Venice where water laps over the road at high tide.
I’ll have to check when I’m back stateside to see if I can find the hard-drive with those audio stories on it. It would be interesting to listen.
I’m immensely grateful to all the storytellers who have propelled me around this planet a few times since… I couldn’t keep going without the 700+ people who have taken the time to share a piece of their lives with me.
Here’s to water stories, climate change stories, and everything in between.
Stay tuned for more updates about 1,001 Stories in the months to come. I have 700+ audio stories from the last three years to share… still working on format, but a podcast might be bubbling on the back-burner.
xo from Stockholm,
“The Power of Slow”
Hey, world! I have an essay in the September 2016 print edition of Bicycling magazine about the power of slow cycling.
You can read the essay online here: http://www.bicycling.com/rides/adventure/the-power-of-slow
…
…
In listening, I give the whole of myself—my ears, my heart—to a storyteller. In cycling, I give the whole of myself—my body, my spirit—to a place. I move through the landscape and the landscape moves through me. Slowness has become part of my daily practice.
Check it out!
http://www.bicycling.com/rides/adventure/the-power-of-slow
Arohanui,
Devi
Interview with Musician Sarah Quintana
Sarah Quintana and I narrowly missed meeting each other when I was in New Orleans in September, but I have so much enjoyed the excuse to get to know her work. Sarah’s voice is stunning, her instrumentals are always on point, and she is, perhaps most importantly, an artist with a story (heck, many stories) to share about water and climate change.
Sarah’s newest work, The Delta Demitasse, is a series of songs that use water, guitar, voice, bathtubs, drainpipes, coffee cups, and bowls in an effort to connect to the greater story of water in Louisiana. Each song has an accompanying video filmed by Kat Sotelo––a DVD of the video installation raises funds for the Gulf Restoration Network.
Listen to Sarah Quintana’s recent work here. You can also support her music on iTunes and cdbaby.
What draws you to water?
Growing up in New Orleans, surrounded by the lake on the north, and the river and gulf on all other sides, I feel very home on the water. It brings me a feeling of peace, as I imagine it does for so many. A pilgrimage to the public pool or the trek to pensacola is a remedy for the delirium of hot, oh so hot days in August and July. I am water. The earth is water. Cool, clear water.
Why do you sing?
I sing because it makes me feel home: connected to my body, my roots, my breath… and to everyone around me. It is home.
How can song tell a story?
In the folk tradition, songs and stories are inseparable. In the same way a sound or an image can tell a story, popular music is an elaboration on primordial theme.
In Mama Mississippi you accompany yourself on a coffee cup. How did that come about?
The cup. Ok. The cup is a demi-tasse: a french coffee cup–––made for small tastes of european style coffee with chickory. I have little insofar as family relics, except for a demitasse my grandmother gave me, which belonged to her mother who was french. Family legend has it that my Great-Grandmother Annie traveled around with this demitasse and took it everywhere she went. They spent the warm season out in Bayou Goula in Plaquimines parish on the west bank of the Mississippi River, and winter times in New Orleans. As a child I was obsessed with this cup and drank cafe au lait with my grandmother while we watched “OKRA” winfrey in her mid city home. As an adult, this is the one item that I salvaged from our rotten home, flooded and soggy with mud and mold as darker than your family secrets. The cup, to me, held an archive of conversations on the porch, a symbol of the simplest ritual, and all I needed to feel home after the storm. New Orleans is shaped like a bowl. The bayous surrounding us are the daughters of the Mississippi River. In Mama Mississippi, she is la llarona, weeping for release into the gulf and reunion with bodies of water that have been cut off. The cup, the songs … New Orleans, the river . . . this is home. Come to the ocean with your cup empty, my cup overfloweth.
What do you think the role of art will be in pushing for meaningful measures to address climate change?
I think it is everything. We are bringing the messages in whatever container we can carry: a coffee cup, a conversation, song, play or dance. These are all very important. Even taking the time to ask me these questions is huge. Just as the river waits with “epic patience” to return to the gulf and flow into the sea so we long to be reunited with each other. By taking care of others– plants, animals, the river, each other, we find true joy and quench our thirst.
What questions currently motivate your work?
Questions? The most important question is: Where is the work? The work is like water. It moves and fills whatever space it occupies. The temperature changes and we go from bikinis to toboggans. Just by thinking, having thoughts, we create waves. The important thing is not to be afraid: of water, nor of our minds or each other. To be methodical, consistent and kind. Confucius says, “build strong dykes,” or levees. Setting boundaries allows for more freedom. Once you find the work you are there.
What is your favorite word?
barnacle
What are you reading/listening to right now?
Star Wars Episode 2
What is your favorite place on earth?
the sunrise
Sarah Quintana is a singer-songwriter from New Orleans with a background rich in jazz, folk, and popular music. She attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, NOCCA and graduated from Loyola University with a degree in English and French. Quintana splits her time between the US and France, working with saxophonist Raphael Imbert and touring on her own repertoire with French and American jazz musicians. She is a member of the Pantheatre (Linda Wise and Enrique Pardo) and is hugely inspired by Kaya Anderson of the Roy Hart vocal approach. In her latest creative effort, The Delta Demitasse, Quintana pays homage to the strength and fragility of Louisiana’s traditions— and environment, the wetlands.
One Bike, One Year 