I Am a Mother of 2 in Rural North Carolina—and I Found Freedom on a Mountain Bike

In western North Carolina, rising in the limits of coal – is often known as the Indian reservation – it was like growing in any small, rural mountain city. We learned to love about every season. We cut the ramp in the spring, grabbed electric insects in the summer, ate the oak bread at the annual Cherokee Indian festival every fall, and urged our parents to take us from the Blue Ridge Parkway in the winter. Most of my summer intermittent cracks from school were digging under the crack stones and slowly tubing under the river Okonalovti.

This area – an hour west of Ashwille, in the smoke -smoke mountains – is also a shelter for a mountain bike. Although I have spent my entire life here, I never considered a strap on a visited helmet for eight years ago, when I was well in my thirty -three. I had two children, and weighing 60 pounds, sadly in my job, and struggling to publish my first novel. I was also diagnosed with anemia. At the insistence of friends, I was encouraged to try a new game (I had been a basketball player for a long time, but my knees could no longer take it). So, at the same time, I started to get regular iron infusion, I rushed to the mountain bike.

On one occasion, I told a nurse not to worry if my pulse was raised – I have just turned away from my motorcycle. “Mountain bikes, which looks so terrifying,” he said. I scan the waiting room. Most patients were tilt to IV lines and oxygen tubes. In practice, every other person was fighting cancer, just as my mother took her – before she took it. I can’t help think: No, this is what is terrible.

Many people consider mountain biking as an extreme and male-majority-salat, and this can certainly happen. But I loved the one who gave me: Freedom. I came to a usual routine, Belt the glam metal songs like “put some sugar on me”. On my motorcycle there, there was no one to care if I sang the key or occasionally let the pure happiness go out.

On the trail, I no longer admire my relationship with others as a mother, teacher, daughter, or wife. Instead, I was appreciated how much I was sweaty, and how fast the wind was in my body from above. My favorite place for the ride was a 11 -mile network in Cheroki City, a fire Mountain Trails, and the rest. The mountainous mountains pass through the mountain lores and the jungle of Rudwindone that come alive with pistol colors in the spring. Equipped with handle bar lights and a head lamp, I loved night rides, which often shows the eyes of allok for hunting.

I was fortunate that many local motorcycles and gear shops, such as industry nine, cans crack, and motion makers, to help repair. In Cheroki, many shops, including bokout doors, offer rent, so visitors also succeed in targeting trails. When it is time to expire, I want to go to the Innovation Brewing, which also has a tape room, for beer and food truck burgers, or backout strings.

Two women, colleagues from school taught me to ride. Every week, we met on the trail, far away from work pressure. Finally, I made more friends and learned the value of the riding community. The facts of modern life and contradictory schedules often mean that whenever I can, I occupy solo rides. One of the beautiful things about these trails is that they are safe enough to ride lonely, and so social that you will often join friends along the way.

While I like my adventures with fellow cyclists or myself, the way I travel most of the way is with my two sons: 12 -year -old Charlie and 16 -year -old Ross. I see panic whenever they go to a rocky edge. But when they scream with joy as they catch a little wind, I remember the freedom I first felt on the mountain bike. My son screams. , “It’s great, mom!” It may be the biggest gift to present these trails.

Mountain bike is not terrible, as I thought. But it’s extremely. Extremely joyful to live. It is enough that I can throw myself down the slopes, lose a little control, dust myself, and continue.

A version of this story first appeared in the June 2025 issue Travel + leisure Under the heading “Ride like air.