I was in Arches National Park sitting underneath a huge arch watching the sun set behind rain clouds in the distance, the bright yellow rays tracing dramatic shadows on the rock formations around me. There were quite a few tourists, well, other tourists, casually snapping photos and taking selfies. 

A raven landed not far from me and cawed loudly. The sound echoed dramatically under the arch. As I tried to take it's picture, thereby stealing its soul, it took flight and swooped down far behind the arch to a cliff face where it ducked into a hole. 

I had read a sign about how these arches formed. It is some process whereby porous rock above lets water leak down to slightly less porous rock which then encounters denser rock. The middle eventually gives way during freeze thaw cycles. I was not prepared how huge they were. From photos, I had always thought the arches were much smaller. , 

I pondered how many other places there might be in the wider galaxy where similar processes might produce similar structures. Kids scrambled over rocks making noise not far from me. There were dozens of people talking loudly, their voices echoing like the raven's through the arch. 

While the cacophony of voices echoed around me, I sat and quietly pondered how geologists had come up with the model for how the arches formed.  My mind wandered back to the wonderful time I had in Michigan talking to Jay and his wife, Hayley. They are both consummate highly educated intellectuals. It was a much needed stress on the mind to keep up with them, even inadequately. There's something about those conversations that opens my mind and makes me want more. At one point, Jay talked about this work. He has a doctorate in meteorology. All this time I had thought he had a Phd in Physics. He talked about the mathematical models the fire service uses and how one has to be careful to pick the right model for a given task and context. Otherwise, one might get nonsense answers. I forget how he phrased it but at one point he talked about how sometimes people will tenaciously hold on to the belief that a model is correct even in contexts where it just doesn't apply.

"So, don't fall in love with your model.", I said quoting an ancient Murphy's Law of Physics I think it was. 

"Exactly." he replied.

Sitting there thinking about the geology, I came to realize I was feeling something. I often find it challenging to notice that I feel something and then even more trouble trying to figure out what word one uses to label the feeling.There was a sense of unease. Something felt wrong about reducing this landscape to what amounted to so many abstract models of formation. 

I looked around. No. Something more felt wrong. People scurried by. 

In recent years I have begun to model my understanding of what I perceive into "frames". I could probably come up with a different word, but I like to imagine a picture frame that borders a given set of related ideas.

There's the scientific frame where one forms hypotheses, makes predictions, and then attempts to falsify them. Most of our modern life comes from the developments that have stemmed from this frame. There are those that believe that all human experience can be reduced down to a set of processes that fall within the strictures of the scientific method. This is called the fallacy of Scientism. 

There are other frames. Some are super-frames that contain others. There's the mathematical frame that contains the scientific frame. There's a philosophical frame that contains the mathematical but then also spreads out into domains that are less rigid. 

But all of these are in the frame of ideas. 

Of course, even this simple concept of frames is just a model of understand and one should avoid falling in love with a model or applying it where it makes no sense.

There I sat as the sun began to touch the clouds in the distance still feeling an unease.

I saw the road that I had just ridden through a short downpour, cars creeping along it. It now looked to me like a wound on the land.

The arches and other structures have been given names like "Double Arch". I wondered what it was like for the first humans who had to walk over this land I presume for days if not weeks to reach this place and what they felt. What names did they give these structures? I imagine they had to have some words to refer to them. Why don't we use those names? 

It was at that moment, I felt like an intruder. I realized my unease came from a sense that I should not be allowed to be here in this place sitting as I was below this arch, people scurrying by loudly. 

"Disrespect." was the first word I came up with. 

Then, no. "Not disrespect. Sacrilege." 

A sadness overtook me, as it often does.

There's a frame I've been thinking about quite a bit of late that I call the "basic human frame". Take away our education. Take away our written word. Take away our technology. Take away mathematics. Take away all we have learned from others. The basic human frame encompasses the human being without benefit of learning from those before. Imagine a feral human raised outside of human contact, of which there are a few examples in history. 

The first humans here were much more than basic humans. They had language, culture, symbology, religion, history and all the other trappings that represent what we call modern humans. But I imagine they were less encumbered than we are by our abstract dissociated world that overvalues the frame of ideas and neglects other messier frames, namely the basic human frame.

We live in a world where we have vestiges of our primeval selves that no longer serve us when we are ensconced in our mechanistic modern world that reduces humans to cogs. But there are places where what we have learned that serves us so well, no longer does. 

Use the appropriate model.

Again, I most often can't tell what I feel. There's usually a buzzing inside me that drowns everything out. A noise. I supposed you could say a screaming, which is what Duncan used to say. "Reconnect the wires to long disconnected faulty sensors and they'll scream bloody murder for a while until they settle down." He liked to use mechanistic analogies for messy human processes. I've learned for some of us the sensors never settle down.

It isn't until I ride away far enough for long enough that the noise inside, these incessant screams, quiet and for a moment, I can feel. I have often been criticized by those that meet me after I am back home. That me is nothing like this me, nor anything like these words. 

As I looked over the land words like sacrilege, disrespect, sadness kept coming back. 

But no. That's not it. What would I call it absent an observer, absent anyone to tell me that I was silly, or weak, or pathetic for simple basic human feelings? 

The sun continued tracing dramatic shadows on the cliff faces now in deeper colors. 

What is the basic human inside experiencing if I could somehow allow myself to reach it,  to feel it? 

"Awe."

If I paid attention to those barely perceptible messages coming from deep inside, they would lead me to believe, no feel, a significance.

A meaning. 

Mana. 

I imagine that those first humans felt the same but only much more so, being much more connected as it were to the basic human. 

"Sacred", not in a stupid cliche fashion, but with a deep feeling that this place is "more" than just any place. 

I would hate to look into the eyes of one of those first humans when they saw what this place has been reduced to.

There were some around me who seemed to be in the same inner place that I was. Quiet. Introspective. Respectful. Reverent. In awe.

I asked myself whether there are any other animals that experience the feeling of "awe". Do the ravens feel awe as they fly over this landscape? 

Why did humans evolve a sense of "awe"? 

I thought back to a time when I was keenly aware of the feeling of "awe". It was camping under the Big Trees with Rachel back in 1992. Despite our lives diverging so many years ago, there is still a deep connection that I feel from having experienced those places with her.

I suspect awe brings humans closer together and binds them in cooperation, which is a survival advantage. 

I have often wondered why I get so sad sometimes, sometimes crushingly so which I have been harshly criticized for at times. "What are you, gay?"

Watch a sunset over an open ocean alone and to feel it without anyone else there has always felt wrong. Lonely. 

Maybe it's that the basic human evolved the sense of awe to be /shared/. Maybe that's why it feels so wrong for a place such as this to be reduced to a tourist attraction. 

No awe. No reverence. No connection. 

On this trip, now 3000 miles in, I've traveled through such incredible landscapes. At times, they've struck me so hard I cursed, "Holy Fuck!" which I did as I entered Big Thompson Canyon outside Fort Collins.

What was the first thing I did when I could? I tried to share it. I took Ann, of Duncan and Ann, and Audrey (no, not that Audrey. Other Audrey. a.k.a. Bruce's Cousin Audrey) on a drive through the same canyon on to Estes Park and then Rocky Mountain National Park. I've known Ann for decades now. She, Duncan, and I have gone on a number of adventures together. 

I've only seen Audrey once in the last few decades, which frighteningly I have no memory of but that is another story. I got to spend quite a bit of time with her before the wedding and came to realize to my surprise that I was aware of really enjoying her company. Wonderful human being. I hope to cross paths with her again. 

There was the time riding with Robert. I still cannot wrap my head around why he would come up all the way from Texas and spend a couple long days riding with me. I hadn't ridden with him since we met in 2014 and he invited me to join the Cannonball Centennial Ride. I told him I didn't feel worthy. He didn't understand. 

We rode over Independence Pass but it was not clear that we were not going to run into ice. It is such a dramatic place. 

We rode through Black Canyon of the Gunnison, one of the roads Samantha had included on the route she curated for me. He showed me one overlook that I unprepared for which fully evoked my terror of heights. 

"Awe inspiring." I said. We spent quite a bit of time there. He took some drone footage.

There have been so many people, impressions, ideas, and feelings on this trip. Too many stories to tell. I met Jenn in person for the first time in Fort Collins for brunch. I met Kevin who I hadn't seen since last New Years, the same time as Audrey, but who I also had no memory of meeting. I know Kevin from highschool days. He's getting his private pilots license and we talked at length about that over dinner. "I will never jump out of a perfectly good airplane." I declared to him. 

Conversations with Robert and their implications would take hours. Every time I talk to him I learn something new. His mind works in ways so different from my own but there is still a sense of connection I have never understood. He's a good man and I would ride with him any chance I get. 

There was Ann who flew out for the wedding. Duncan's loss was ever present and still is. I'm glad she and I have a connection that remains. 

And there's now the time I have been spending in Moab, which I have extended with help, by two days. 

I've been chatting with Samantha over Facebook messenger for many years now semi-regularly. We'll sometimes go months without communicating but then pick up where we left off as if no time had passed. She used to run a motorcycle touring outfit and laid out a self-guided tour for me through the wider area. It has been /fantastic/. 

I still don't understand. I arrived here and she and her husband, Ron, set things up and insisted I take her car, a Nissan 370z, which I have been driving around for days now. My bike is safely stored with most of my gear in their garage. 

The implications and insights that have come about through my now long in person conversations with Samantha could easily take a novel. I have never before met another human being remotely like her and I am altered from the meeting. There's always a nervousness I feel when meeting someone in person who only knows me through my writing. "You're not the man I thought you were." is such a common disappointment I get, that I almost have PTSD about it. But meeting Ron and Samantha was like meeting very old friends i have never met. 

And I got to meet what was once a feral dog, but the feral is still very much present. One can feel it. 

I had had a dream about the dog long before I met her in person, and weirdly the dog behaved almost exactly as I had seen in my dream. 

Fucking weird and powerful at the same time.

My time in Moab is coming to an end. I will collect my bike tomorrow and head Southeast towards Los Alamos. 

But for now, I am going to take Samantha's car out for a drive into the canyons again and then hopefully stop by their place for another afternoon in person conversation. 

I have gotten her car a little dirty which I feel terrible about but she is not letting me clean it. That is so not my way. But I am doing as I am told regardless of how uncomfortable it is. My temptation is to find a detail shop and have it detailed tomorrow, but I promised I wouldn't clean it. If someone else details it, then I'm not cleaning it right? Someone else is?