1x1xMark: Towpath

This towpath is a narrow, gravel, uneven but steady path once walked by horses and mules hauling barges along the river — water on one side, winter darkness on the other. I was pedaling through the freezing emptiness when, in a moment, a white deer brighter than my fading headlamp crossed it.

Some places stay with us because they carried a meaning we couldn’t see at the time. Only today, writing this, did I understand the quiet metaphor of the C&O towpath — a path made for bearing weight beside a river that keeps moving forward.

In the winter of 1997, just before Thanksgiving, a biking friend and I set out from Cumberland, Maryland, biking the towpath in reverse — starting at the sign that reads End. I wanted the physical challenge: a barren winter trail with snow, wind, ice, and long stretches of darkness. Out there, in the saddle, every unsteady turn of the wheel sharpens the mind. Focus becomes something deeper than attention — it becomes intent.

The sound I remember most is the ice cracking beneath my tires in the solitude of the dark. On nights like that, you hear every sound — sometimes not knowing where the outside ends and the inside begins. A steady reminder that the world was holding me up, even when the surface felt fragile.

On the second day, in Hancock, where the towpath meets a small road crossing, we stopped for coffee. My shoes were soaked, the spare layers in my panniers were damp, and I sat on the curb in bright sunlight, still shivering. As I tried to warm my feet, something muted stirred to the surface — a tightening in my throat, the kind that comes when truth stirs. A recognition that change, in some form, was approaching — the kind that touches every life connected to your own.

My bike partner checked his watch, pointed toward the 2 p.m. train back to D.C., and said, “We can make it.”
A kind offer — a way out.

But something steady lifted in me instead.

“Let’s keep going,” I said. “Let’s finish.”

And we did.
Two days later, I was biking into Georgetown on a chain held together with duct tape, arriving at the sign that reads, Beginning.
For the first time, the word felt personal.

Twenty-eight years later, Thanksgiving time still brings a pause. I remember that moment on the curb — not for the difficulty, but for the honesty that surfaced there. The kind that doesn’t arrive all at once, but grows clearer over time. A reminder that moving forward often asks for openness, honesty, understanding, and respect — for ourselves and for everyone whose path intersects ours.

A towpath carries the heavy loads beside the river, steady even when the current and weather are anything but. For me, that’s the lesson: focus is found on uneven ground, not on the rushing water beside it.

Maybe that’s what a towpath teaches:
we all carry weight,
we all follow our own river,
and somewhere along the way,
we arrive at a beginning we didn’t know we were biking toward.