Sometimes you have to get on the bike and go out with the wild things if you’re going to get there at all. Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth show us the way. Mount up. Here’s our ticket to ride. –Charles Bowden, author of Inferno, Down by the River, and Blues for Cannibals
Ride along with Sam and Scott through Utah’s spectacular landscape and you will share their vast knowledge of its many plants and creatures and the way their lives – and ours – turn with each new season. But this is not just another book about experiencing the wonders of nature from the ground up. You will also partake of humor, friendship, and even wisdom. Who knew enlightenment could be so much fun? –Chip Ward, author of Canaries on the Rim and Hope's Horizon
This is a book about two BYU professors corrupted by ball bearings and gravity up on Mt. Timpanogos. They are middle-aged men with bicycles, one a German scholar, the other a botanist, both with tenure, and they start going up in the mountains behind their school to ride the trails and commune with nature, and pretty soon they don’t want to teach at BYU anymore. Pretty soon they’re not even sure if they want to be Mormons anymore. In Wild Rides, Wild Flowers, Abbott and Rushforth describe their fall from the path of righteousness and their descent/ascent into nature. They are led astray by birds and flowers and beautiful sunsets. Tempted by flight, they crash head first into the dirt, all the while asking why, why, why and laughing like lunatics. Then they go back to their troubles in the valley, at work and at home. It’s like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Desert Solitare in Utah County. –Scott Carrier, author of Prisoner of Zion and Running After Antelope
Come fall in wonder with nature and humankind as these two scholars and mountain bike enthusiasts explore flora, fauna and the follies of life, love, friendship and aging. Abbott and Rushforth are brash and beautiful, their observations clear-eyed, precise and soulful. By the end of the ride you’ll understand more about Utah’s landscape and two men’s hearts than you ever imagined. –Brooke Adams, former editor of The Salt Lake Observer and Salt Lake Tribune journalist
Following the conversations and adventures of Scott and Sam was a delight–my only complaint is that I was stung by an absolute desire to join them. I wanted to step into the book with them and ride the trails they were riding, to explore the landscape they obviously loved and knew well. I wished to accompany them as they discussed philosophy, memory, religion, place, botany, and the ecological diversity of one of my favorite places on Earth. I longed to share directly in their wit, humor, wisdom and foolishness (of the best kind). However, that being impossible, this is a wonderful substitute. So I’m grateful and content that at least I got to share their rich world through this remarkable book. The gusto and passion they have for this land comes through on every page. –Steven L. Peck, author of The Scholar of Moab
The first paragraph of a generous review from Larry Menlove at The Provo Canyon Review:
Imagine Plato’s Phaedrus and a field guide to Utah fauna and flora left in an inside pocket of a sweaty, oft-used CamelBak to get acquainted and copulate. The wise progeny, scratched and scented, philosophizing its way out, would be the new book coming in March 2014 from Torrey House Press titled, Wild Rides and Wildflowers, coauthored by Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth. . . .the rest of the review HERE
Booklist
Issue: February 15, 2014
Wild Rides and Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes
Abbott, Scott (Author) and Rushforth, Sam (Author)Mar 2014. 360 p. Torrey House, paperback, $15.95. (9781937226237). Torrey House, e-book, $15.95.
Although Utah Valley University professors Abbott and Rushforth hail from very different academicbackgrounds—Abbott teaches humanities and philosophy, while Rushforth is currently the school’s dean of science and health—for years they have shared a passion for tooling their mountain bikes down Utah’s slice of the Great Western Trail. When they set out to write a book about their biking observations, theyenvisioned an inspired hybrid of tranquil philosophy and nature writing. As it turned out, their meddlesome middle-aged angst and jousting personalities entered into the mix, and what emerges here is more of a mixed record, in a stylized journal format, of their spirited verbal exchanges, insights into both biking and academia, and their ardently expressed values about preserving America’s endangered wilderness. What sounds on the surface like fodder merely for a longer magazine piece actually works admirably well across its 300-plus pages, mostly because of Abbott and Rushforth’s knack for entertaining readers with quirky philosophical quips, layman botany lessons, and wittily delivered true-life anecdotes.— Carl Hays
Another generous review (other than the libelous claim that Scott is a Dean!), this one from Utah Mountain Biking's Bruce Argyle:
. . . The book is taken from articles written by Scott and Sam in 1999 through 2003, published first in The Salt Lake Observer then Catalyst Magazine. Each of the 50 chapters consists of several sequential rides mixed with occasional dispatches from trips for business or family. A typical ride is a colorful short collection of science, philosophy, and the ride's challenges. During a ride Scott and Sam push each other physically and intellectually.
The authors could be described as environmentalists and humanists with an intense intellectual curiosity. Smothering under the religious conformism at BYU, both eventually flee to the intellectual freedom of Utah Valley State College. (Each is currently a Dean over their department at what is now Utah Valley University.) During these four years a marriage ends and the role of a father changes. A knee is operated on. Children go to college and on missions. You witness the growth of two adult men in the snippets between the Aqueduct road and Baldy saddle, between scarlet gilia and Steller's jay.
The writing is clever and intelligent. Science facts are tossed into the ride narratives, so you can't help but learn something. (You may find it helpful to refer to my "Poser's guide to Utah's Trailside Flowers" on this website -- many of the species they discuss are pictured there.) The changing seasons are noted through the botany descriptions, and the changing world is represented by favorite trailside haunts falling to the bulldozers of development. I enjoyed this book.
The whole review HERE
Elizabeth Currey writes, for the Deseret News:
In "Wild Rides and Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes," the authors describe their mountain bike rides and observations on nature as they navigate the changes in their own lives, resulting in a thought-provoking, fresh and funny read.
. . .
"Abbott is a professor of philosophy and is a German literature scholar, and Rushforth is an ecology professor and botanist. The authors manage to weave together two such disparate subjects as philosophy and botany with skill, ease and a dose of humor.
Though it’s tempting to gloss over the detailed, often technical descriptions of flora and fauna, that would be a mistake. These passages and their subjects often become metaphors and life lessons, and some of the most poignant observations come mixed in with these sections on wildflowers.
Likewise, the book becomes about more than riding bikes and admiring nature throughout the four seasons. It also provides an intimate glimpse into the minds and hearts of two men, and the outcome is both surprising and refreshing."
. . . and finally, like all review in the LDS newspaper, this warning: "The book contains moderate swearing throughout and has occasional mild references to sex."
Read the rest HERE
Remember Tom Waits' "I'm Big in Japan"? Well, we're big in Henepin County, Minnesota
What a wonderful response from a fellow biker and writer:
I'm reading a book about mountain biking.well, mountain biking people.mountain biking people who share their thoughts and discoveries as they ride--and sometimes don't ride--and explore the world around and within them.
Wild Rides and Wildflowers, a book penned by two men who formerly taught at BYU and formerly believed in the mormon religion, shares their botanical and philosophical observations, often humorously and never without that fascinating perspective that comes from being marinated in testosterone.
I love this book.perhaps the most fun of all is that they keep falling off their bikes, endos and sideslips and full on tumbles, feet still clipped to pedals.but it also makes me think even more deeply about all that surrounds me when I'm out on my bicycle.
. . .
it made me think of Wild Rides and Wildflowers, this book full of flowers and grasses, fox and deer, snakes and rocks and roots. with a little philosophy thrown in, a bit of angst, the tiniest smidgen of humility and a bit of humus. a few male jokes, a few tributes to women. all written with a light but wisdom-soaked heart.I don't think I'll ever really be a mountain biker. it's seeming further and further from my path, as I like bumps less and less. but to read about it and experience it vicariously is a gift. and to read about it, with a little botany lesson here and there, a few ah-ha's, and a dose of well-weathered testosterone, is a deeply satisfying way to spend a chilly evening indoors wrapped in a blanket on a soft couch.
. . . the rest HERE
"All things counter, original, spare, strange"—a review from a brilliant blogger about books who lives in England (not brilliant just because she likes the book):
. . . it's not just a book to read, it's also a book to live by. a book that reminds that the conversation is important, the journey too and all the dappled things that can be encountered there, in a way the whole thing reads like a long pubconversation with your mate: an increasingly profound conversation that would certainly solve most of the problems of the universe if we had thought to record it. p87 but then, some things can be recorded and quite early on the insight that meaning arises out of thoughtful repetition. p27 such as those repeated bikerides, how do flowers look like during the seasons, next year and the year thereafter. it's about seeing the same thing again with different eyes and seeing something new in it, and to have contempt for familiarity is your own loss. theoretical problems are being acknowledged, there are pragmatic uses for the classification of for instance mushrooms, but there is the question whether naming inhibits our ability to see of course, seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.. and what to do with this knowledge besides appreciating it...
the old rilke word is mentioned here:
And we: spectators, always everywhere,
Turned to the universe and never escaping!
It fills us. We order it. It falls apart,
We order it again and fall apart ourselves. p262 (Rilke)
ordering and falling apart, a never ending process, meanwhile emanating generosity, gratitude and humility, like this book which is actually quite moderate and mild which is nothing to be sneered at, just like the common bird is nothing to be sneered at, as - what else is there to do with the magnitude called life with all its various forces and unexplained mysteries, problems... how to respond to that...except by conversation, thoughtful repetition and just plainly writing it down, in a peaceful manner:
How do we stave off sadness and a bleak existence? How do we escape the perils of mundanity? Better to ask them in print than to reach for a gun. p292
Or go out and have a bikeride....
Or read this book.
Or... just enjoy life.
The whole review HERE (and check out the rest of the fine and bookish blog)
Les Roka just published a thoughtful and flattering review in The Utah Review. Here an excerpt:
Their book, published by Torrey House Press, is a new entry for a growing and worthy canon of the Utah Enlightenment, a period that is bringing forth some of the most compelling and powerful literary voices that direct readers to reconceptualizing and reimagining what it means to live in the American West and to challenge and remake the institutions that are failing to sustain their relevance. . . .
Their literary counterpoint and harmonizing are as humorously engaging as they are elucidating. At the outset, Abbott might appear to be the more natural of the two in writing the column perhaps because of his own scholarly bailiwick. However, Rushforth learns one of their early columns appears in the same issue as a piece by Terry Tempest Williams (‘A Letter to Edward Abbey on the Tenth Anniversary of His Death’) – in which she makes the reference to a new species called Biker lycra siticus. Rushforth says, “And I’m taking over half the column. This is too important to leave to your misperceptions and sorry lack of talent.”
Williams was referring to the encroachment of mountain bikers and the potential threat to the natural surroundings, but the authors recall a letter by Ken Sanders (Salt Lake City bookseller and rare books specialist) who reminds that Abbey had a mountain bike: “After observing mountain bikes and their damage, near Arches, Wendell Berry remarked that riding mountain bikes is a ‘hell of a lot of work to go to, just to give your ass a ride.’” Rushforth adds that Abbey’s own ‘shit-eating grin’ is motivation enough to take on the enterprise, as rider and writer.
There was one other lesson from the mention of death camas. Abbott had misspelled the plant’s name as “camus.” As Abbott recalls, “Sam asks why it got changed after he had it corrected. ‘How the hell did it get back to the French existentialist?’” Abbott responds: “Must have been a subconscious indication of how I view your intelligence, or maybe the ‘death’ part of the name triggered the existential part of my brain.”
Rushforth warns Abbott: “You’ll have to promise not to amend botany with philosophy in the future.”
Yet, the prominent intertwining of their well-developed instincts appear to make many of the book’s frequent high marks and their individual capacity to turn wonderful phrases as well as to reveal most intimate parts of their characters and souls. Curious about the silver lupine plant with blue upturned flowers and ‘stalks heavy with hairy green pea-like seed pods,’ Abbott looks up the plant in a scientific guide, momentarily disappointing to see the scientist’s predisposition for unmistakable language. He writes, “It’s the off-putting language of a heartless classifier, I think defensively. Not a mention of how deeply moving that blue is as it rises from the silver-green fans of leaves. Then I correct myself. It’s our job to gush and quiver. It’s Welsh’s job [Stan Welsh, A Utah Flora] to see the lupine through the language of precision.”
Abbott later wonders if our compulsion to classify is a biological adaptation. Rushforth agrees but also notes how troublesome it can become. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder-my major day-by-day nemesis- may stem from something like an exaggerated need to classify.”
The book follows the rhythm of life – the moments of joy and laughter along with the poignant occurrences of sadness and absences – just as they track changes of season the two bikers chronicle during their rides on the trail.
. . . more of the review HERE