Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America by Brian Benson Page A

our bikes, and gawked at big water. From this vantage point, it looked bigger than ever. The lake now seemed to extend forever, a shimmering sheet of blue uninterrupted by ships or seagulls, by islands or driftwood or even a lonely whitecap. And to the north, chiseled cliffs rose high above the blue, proudly bearing their age-old scabs and scars. Here we were, at last, at the beginning of the
real
North Shore. Now we could look forward to miles of peaceful riding on the Gitchi-Gami, a dip in the cool waters below Gooseberry Falls, the jagged splendor of Split Rock Lighthouse, and, of course, twilight cliff dives at Illgen Falls.
    As if reading my thoughts, Rachel nodded at the shoreline before us and said, “This is going to be amazing.”
    “Yes,” I replied. “Yes, it is.”
     • • • 
    I t wasn’t.
    Just north of the dome, the Gitchi-Gami State Trail disappeared. Bewildered, we backtracked, asked a guy in a wayside parking lot if we’d missed a turn or something. He grinned, said this was a teaser of sorts, that the continuous, fourteen-mile section began at Gooseberry Falls, nine miles to the north. We’d have to hop back on (new) 61, with its flying rocks and farting tailpipes.
    These were not my favorite miles of the trip. Still, I
wanted to love them—had been daydreaming about them for days—and so I mustered up a midwestern dose of excessive enthusiasm. As I rode, taking pains to go neither too fast nor too slow, I kept yelling over my shoulder about the boat I could barely see through the trees, or the roadkill on the shoulder, or the fact that it was only four—wait, sorry, five!—miles to Gooseberry Falls. Rachel, maybe because she couldn’t hear me over the traffic, maybe because she was tired and needed to focus on moving forward, didn’t respond. At best, she offered a tight-lipped grin and kept riding.
    At three o’clock, after riding nine miles in just under an hour, we arrived at Gooseberry Falls. As I locked the bikes to a dented guardrail, I peered into the canyon. River water the color of iced tea was spinning in upstream pools, dribbling through tiny grooves and channels, free-falling from cliffs. This
was
it
, the North Shore I’d been waiting for, and I wanted to tell Rachel how happy I was to be here with her. But she was frowning, glassy-eyed. It was like she was barely even seeing the falls.
    “What a spot,” I said. I kept my eyes on Rachel, looking for signs of life. “Wanna head down to the water? Maybe have a snack and take a swim?”
    She looked at me and shrugged. “I guess so.”
    We’d been waiting for this all day, and that’s all she could muster?
I guess so?
I dropped my head, trying to find the right words. Then I opened my mouth, and this came out: “Could you be a little more boring?”
    These were not the right words.
    Rachel’s eyes froze over. Silently, she got off the bike, pulled out some snacks and her journal, and started walking down to the water. I waited a few seconds, then followed. She settled on a ledge overlooking the falls, and I sat beside her, apologized, and said what I had meant to say: that I just wanted to find a way to share these moments with her.
    “It’s okay,” she replied. “And I’m sorry for being so . . . I don’t know.” She looked to the opposite bank of the river, where a giggling toddler was dipping his toes into the water. “It’s just hard. You’re stronger and . . . It’s just hard sometimes.”
    I nodded, unsure of how to respond. Usually, I was the one being all pissy and vulnerable.
    “Well,” I started, “regardless of speed, I think it’s awesome that you’re . . . that we’re doing this.” I hesitated, then added, “It’s hard for me too.” This was true. In a sense.
    Rachel accepted these words, or at least pretended to, and we made the first of many promises to be open and communicative and such from here on out.
    We wandered downstream, stripped off shoes and shirts, and waded into