"Wilderness," by both popular and political definition, is a large physical space devoid of the artifacts of human interference-no occupied permanent structures, no motors, no roads. The vast, dramatic landscapes of the American West inspired our modern understanding of Wilderness, drawing hordes of pioneers westward intoxicated with the twin dreams of freedom and adventure. The opportunity and enigma these open spaces offer continue to challenge our modern understanding. To be something eligible for protection under the law, Wilderness must be a concrete thing, something that can be measured and documented. But in places such as the wide open stretches of modern-day Eastern Nevada, this much is obvious: Wilderness is quite indifferent to the feeble boundaries we place around it. It is limited only by imagination. It is a state of mind, a reality that can be entered with an odd mixture of choice, conviction, and surrender. And contrary to popular belief, you can go there on your bike.

The Kern Mountains are an awfully long way from most people's definition of "somewhere," and not what most would consider the top choice for a bike tour destination. The mountain range is tucked away in one of the most isolated corners of Nevada, a state that itself lays rightful claim to being out in the middle of nowhere. To reach the Kern Mountains from my home in the relatively populated western part of the state is no small undertaking: First, drive East from Reno for six hours to Ely. Hit Ely, turn north, drive for another hour. Keep a sharp eye out-blink, and you'll miss your last chance for gas. Keep driving. Look for a dirt road on your right. Turn right. Drive east, three hours. Yes, three more hours. Once there, peel yourself from the sweat-soaked seat, emerge slowly from the car, and plunge headlong into the all-consuming silence of complete wilderness.

I have volunteered to spend the next month in Kern Mountains surveying potential wilderness boundaries for the Nevada Wilderness Project (NWP). The Kerns are not yet protected, but they are under consideration for wilderness protection. A wilderness surveyor's work will help determine if the effort will be worthwhile. Typical survey work is conducted with a sturdy truck, a couple of gas cans, and a LOT of extra water. It's long, monotonous work, requiring countless hours and hundreds of miles of driving on often horrifyingly bad dirt roads. A typical survey day goes something like this: Get in truck. Drive down ridiculously remote dirt road for approximately one mile. Get out and take a picture. Check map and GPS. Log photograph. Copy information to map. Edit map as necessary. Get in car. Drive more. Find unexpected/unmapped dirt road. Yell "Shit! Not another one!!" into the vast, unyielding void. Turn down unexpected road. Take picture. Mess with map. Repeat ad infinitum.

Mapping wilderness boundaries is an incredibly resource-intensive endeavor, requiring more gasoline in three weeks than most people use in an entire summer. It is impossible to carry in most vehicles all of the gas and water one needs to complete a typical survey project. On average, a truck-based surveyor can stay "in the field" for about a week before returning to refuel, rehydrate, and re-beer. I signed up for this work at a time when special-interest-fueled politicians spout all variety of appalling solutions for energy independence, including petroleum extraction schemes in some of our country's most remote and wild landscapes. With this in mind, it seemed to me the height of hypocrisy to burn gallon after gallon of gasoline in a highly motorized attempt to create wilderness, one of the last bastions of silent, motorless peace. That is why I decided to complete my survey work by bike.

Using a bike for this project allows me to claim my own energy independence, but it's also a chance to hang out in the gray area that's been created in the inexplicably black-and-white debate over bikes and wilderness. Somehow, in the course of considering the place of bikes in wilderness, it was decided that you're either pro-mountain biking, or you're pro-wilderness. Those of us who have strong feelings about both are forced to take sides, something that feels unfair and, well, just plain wrong. Being on a bike and being in the wilderness are two complementary experiences that have been inappropriately pitted against each other in an argument that is becoming increasingly politicized. When I want to free myself of the politics that affect so much of our daily lives, I hop on my bike or I head to the wilderness. So now, while I still can, I’m taking the opportunity to do both.

Friends think it's a bit crazy to set out solo on a bike, covering hundreds of miles of forgotten roads in a place that's at best three days from medical attention. Seasoned veterans from Nevada Wilderness Project (aka, "The Project") react to the idea somewhat differently, as if I'd told them I was going rollerblading on the beach; which is to say they graciously overlook what they regard as a patently boneheaded idea. Idealism and inspiration aside, my bike strategy is governed by at least one sober reality-my Subaru is ancient and has a gas tank about the size of a Dixie cup. It takes just about a ½ of a tank of gas to get from the nearest gas station out to the Kern Mountains, which leaves approximately ½ of a tank of gas to either 1) perform the necessary survey work, or 2) get back out to the nearest gas station. Including all the necessary stops for food and water that need to be made when I go back to civilization, refueling is an 8-hour round-trip.

With a need for gasoline taken out of the equation, I had food, water, camping gear, and survey equipment to worry about. These things had to be with me or within easy reach at all times. The roads in these remote Nevada mountain ranges are infamous for their impossible inclines, tire-eating rocks, and general poor condition. Hiking some of these old mining thoroughfares can be an adventure for many hikers, let alone wheeled travelers. In most cases, the old roads have degraded to twin shadowy lines of heavily eroded singletrack. Towing a trailer seemed an invitation for diggers and wipeouts of epic proportions. My rig had to be able to carry me, one-week's worth of food, a minimum of two days supply of water, and all of my gear - a combined payload of about 400 lbs. over roads that were often more scary than any technical hometown singletrack, and it had to do it without any problems. There were three mountain ranges and two heartless, bone-dry basins between me and the nearest piece of pavement. At least one difficult and convoluted range "a two-day walk" would stand between me and my car. Put simply, the bike could not fail.

A Surly Instigator built up with an Xtracycle Free Radical was the logical choice for the job. Through the gracious support of some amazing guys at SRAM and Bike Mine, I would be able to outfit it with a Rock Shox Reba fork, SRAM drive train, fat Continental Vertical Protection tires, and up front, one Avid Juicy 7 with a rotor the size of a dinner plate. With the bike built and the project outlined, all that remains is to get my bike and I out to the middle of nowhere.

Bikes and wilderness share an unlikely bond that doesn't find its way into most conversations: they are a highly achievable means for the proletariat to incorporate freedom and adventure into their lives. Before wilderness is even designated; before the high-tech, ultra-light, polyester pioneers wage their weekend assaults; before most folks even know it's there, wilderness bestows upon us its quite blessings of clean air and fresh water, anointing the impoverished and imperial alike. On a personal level, true indulgence in wilderness takes little more than a pair of shoes and a willingness to go for a walk.

Like wilderness, bikes are easily accessible. Bicycles are perhaps the single most universally available means of transportation in the world today, outside of walking. And their special transport offers all who ride them a unique gift. Most anyone who has ever ridden a bike can tell you about one ride, that one time when they felt, for a moment, the closest equivalent to flying that most ground-bound beings will ever now, short of leaving the earth.

Implicit in bike and wilderness experiences alike are the twin spirits of freedom and adventure. These two spirits, more than any other, are what buoyed weary pioneers across the endless seas of waving grass and burning desert. The fevered rush of exploration and discovery spread across our country's prairie, mountain, and tablelands like spilled water, and the aching desire for freedom, and unquenchable urge to know genuine adventure did not expire when the driven masses reached the golden shores of the Pacific. When once that frontier had been closed, those same spirits forced open the doors of possibility in other frontiers at home and abroad until, it seems, the explorations had been executed, the discoveries made, and the adventures had all been plucked while still ripe with hope. Our modern understanding of wilderness, and much of what compels us to protect it today, stems from a desire to preserve the landscape that shaped such an important part of our American identity.

Morning. Day one. Light unfolds across the canyon like the slow-motion snap of a dusty blanket, alternately hiding and revealing a phalanx of gargoyle shadows cast by the infinite, fantastically shaped granite domes and towers that make up this mountain landscape. The route I will be biking disappears quickly above my camp into a shadowed archway of ancient and aromatic mountain elderberry lined with countless granite sentinels. Just below camp lies a broad sweep of velvet green meadow ringed with aspens, leaves manicured to an even height by the elk, deer, and few free-range cattle that move through these mountains each season. I'll be leaving the car here, and setting out by bike as soon as I can organize my gear.

Packing takes longer than expected, as I sort through the month's worth of rations I've loaded into my car. I pack and repack my clothes, fold a map to funnel spices into small plastic bottles, and review my first week's rations yet again to cull unnecessary weight Though at this point I'd give anything not to have to sort through all of this, I know I'll need every bit of this food before I can entertain thoughts of heading back.

I had test-ridden my loaded bike on one of my regular back-door circuits of singletrack before leaving Reno and it had felt surprisingly lithe and manageable, climbing with surprising ease and descending with confident control. Despite this, I wasn't completely prepared for the reality of my now fully loaded behemoth. I am definitely exceeding manufacturer's maximum payload recommendations. The map indicates today's mountain pass lies at approximately 9,100 feet. Bowels shiver. There's nothing to do at this point but start pedaling.

Moving this bike up a mountain pass is like pedaling a half-full tanker truck over a 2X4 suspended above a seething pit of boiling hot lava. I feel completely unsteady with this load, but it's not long before I realize it's me, and not the bike. It can handle it. Aside from the purely mechanical serenade of chain, pedals, and tires, I cannot hear anything over the sound of my internal dialog, "What the hell were you thinking!?!" it screams. Over and over. I fight the sounds of doubt by settling into a slow, but maintainable cadence. And then I hit the first washout in the road. This isn't just any washout, either. It's a cataclysmic rend in the earth's fabric, a gaping void where once, not terribly long ago, lived a perfectly passable road. This is nothing a vehicle could navigate, and nothing I can approach from the other side without at least two day's worth of travel; there is no "going around."

Navigation of the washout is far from easy, the only reasonable choice is to completely unload the bike and ferry it and my gear down the embankment, across the stream, and up the steep and sandy far side. The entire process takes 40 minutes. I cover about 20 yards. The road on the far side of the creek steepens sharply on the other side, and I can't get started on the bike. Head down, straining, I dig in and push upward. This isn't the time to hurt myself so I pay careful attention to each and every step, doing everything I can to make sure the bike does not end up on top of me. After a deep grind up to more level terrain, I get back on the bike and start pedaling. Again, I find momentum just as I reach another creek crossing - and another complete washout of the road. The maps do not say anything about washouts. This is why I'm here, to find things like this and document them. So despite the most immediate need to get up and over the pass before dark, this is where I've got to stop, take stock, and properly document the facts of this place. My argument, when I return to town with completed maps and photos will be something like: "Is it really worth the time, expense, and trouble to maintain roadways in a place where nature asserts itself so aggressively? Does this road serve a greater good that justifies its existence, or are we better off leaving this landscape to its own devices?"

Pictures taken and coordinates plotted, I've got to get down to the real business of crossing this creek. Steep embankments and deep sand be damned, the last thing I want to do is spend the next 40 minutes to cover a measly 20 - 30 yards. Against better judgment, I point the bike over the edge and let gravity do its work. I make it approximately three feet up the other side before I'm reminded that 400 lbs on two wheels does not float over sand. I manage to stop and hold the bike in place before I lose any ground, but it takes everything I have to keep it there. With a mighty shove, I bear into the bike and gain a precious couple of inches, clamp down on the front brake, and pause. The last thing I need right now is to end up on my back in a frigid creek with this thing on top of me.

And so it goes - push, brake, rest - ratcheting up the bank inch by difficult inch, until somehow, miraculously, the front tire finds its way up and "yes!" over the lip of the embankment on the far side. A couple more deep digs and the rest of the bike follows. I slump down next to it, wasted, and take a break. According to the map, I've gone less than ½ mile. It's an uncomfortable time to remember that I chose to be here, and I chose to do things this way. I make a choice not to think about the 200 miles of roads I have ahead of me.

As night creeps down upon the range, I'm nearing the top of the pass and thinking about the miles to come. Before this trip is over I'll have crossed 4 more passes and survived just as many barreling freight-train descents. I'll scare the living bejesus out of countless elk, a bobcat, a mountain lion, and the ever-present coyotes, and witnessed a hawk and eagle locked in a mid-air duel. I'll become hopelessly lost and then found again, cover over 200 miles of utterly remote and often unmapped roads, and stumble across a thriving polygamist colony. I will unknowingly evade a three-day sheriff's manhunt (of which I'm the quarry) and eventually return to find my car broken into and the 12-pack of Tecate I left behind, untouched and ice-cold in the nearby creek.

For now, head down, I keep pedaling upward and thinking about why I'm here. Is it just to be alone? To prove a point? To find some trace of freedom and adventure? I love riding my bike, but I need to know that wild places exist. Freedom still comes easy on a bike. But in these days when outdoor lifestyles have become more image than everyday reality, we live far-removed from the land that stills sustains us. And precisely because we're so suburbanly sprawled, genuine adventure is becoming as endangered as the creatures who call our dwindling wilderness their home.

The heave of my breath and the creak and strain of the bike startle a pair of golden eagles resting in tall meadow grass near the top of the pass. They lift from the grass and swoop toward me, dwarfing me in the sunset shadows of their enormous wings. They're so close I could almost touch them. Remembering an old Zen proverb, my desire for the relentless climb to end evaporates in their presence: "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." We must do what sustains us. But what to do if there is no wood to chop, nor no drop of water left to carry?

The eagles slowly rise, becoming black stars above the ridgeline, and I return to my work. I'll keep biking this mountain, hoping that in its own small way my choice, my action, will make wilderness.

Mike Colpo - 2005