After that short vacation with my parents, I'm back in my tent. They dropped me off in Texas Hill Country in a small state park. While the area is no doubt gorgeous and has great rolling hills, there is a noticeable change in the climate. I wouldn't say I'm in the desert yet, but the humidity in the air has dropped and the trees have gotten noticeably shorter. And through the night I had the pleasure of being surrounded by nearly a dozen armadillo--as they say 'round here, armadilla--with the stars above spinning. It was a beautiful night.
This song is accurate.
This morning I took off from South Llano River State Park, looking to tread deeper into the nearly-desert. And I was granted a taste of what the desert would offer. No cloud cover, blaring sun, dry air, and in between towns there is a whole lot of nothing. And I mean nothing.
This is what I saw for the most of today.
Same stretch of road zoomed out to to an altitude of a few hundred feet.
And stretched out to satellite view. Note, Roosevelt is not a city but a general store and a barn. Those were the only things I saw between South Llano and Sonora.
Texas is big.
Very big.
It is one of three states that I plan on being in for more than a week. I already conquered one such state, Florida, and California was going to be a bit of a treat with all its parks; but, Texas is going to be different. Texas is big. Not Alaska big, but it's big. Dave--the friend who lives in Houston--informed me that he has driven twelves hours from Houston heading West, and ended up still in Texas. He then began to rattle off the different regions of Texas I'd be rolling through: "There's East Texas, Central Texas, Hill Country, Oil Country, Cliff Country, West Texas, and then the Desert. Anything past Hill Country is going to suck dude." This falls in line with a lot of what other touring cyclists have said and the languish they have for the vast emptiness that is Texas. Today, I'm getting a taste.
And I'm not liking it.
But here comes the problem. As I rolled along the soft hills and rocky cliffs parallel to the expressway, I should have been elated. It was a nice day, the hills were keeping me moving at a good clip, there was no wind, and I had passed nearly zero cars today. But my brain just didn't care. Not in a negative or positive way, it just could care less about anything really. And this becomes draining because I want nothing more than to stop biking, lay down, and let the Universe do what it will to me. An active act of giving up. But this is illogical. My brain doesn't care, but me, as a person, does. Therefore, I have to put mental exertion in so I don't fall into that mental trap. Despite doing what I love most, traveling on a bike, I was feeling nothing. And around mile thirty, as I sat on a small berm overlooking the expressway eating a lunch of random bits of food, I had to ask the question: am I currently depressed?
And once that crossed my mind the mental gears shifted. And I began looking through my brain in search of evidence that I was depressed, and evidence that I wasn't. I very well could just be bored. And I know the immediate reaction is "you're biking across the country! How could you be bored?" And the answer is that after about two weeks of cycling, this trip became familiar. It has become my new "normal." And when something becomes normal, it can become boring. On the other hand, I had no emotional desire to have fun or to quit or to bike faster or to bike farther. Everything was just the emotional equivalent of grey-scale. There was no texture, no color, no sense of reality to my surroundings. This is a symptom of depression for some, including myself. And as I got up from my lunch to finish the second half of my ride, I came to a conclusion: I don't know.
I'll have to keep an eye on myself tomorrow. How I talk to myself in my own head, how I react to seemingly mundane things, how I process challenges. All these will betray more clearly if I'm depressed or if this day was just an emotional anomaly.