How six pounds of CO2 hit me like a brick
By Lise Waring

I’M NOT A NUMBERS PERSON. It doesn’t matter if it’s my bank account or the population count, a date or a recipe. Digits don’t stick. I struggle to even remember my age. There’s an exception to my number aversion, though, one time when a statistic magically stuck.

A few summers ago, I heard a radio news story about the average carbon dioxide a small car emits on a three-and-a-half-mile drive. The distance struck me because it is exactly the mileage from my house in Telluride to my office in Lawson Hill. The answer—three pounds— made an impact because, well, it seems like a lot. It’s tangible. Consider this: The human brain weighs three pounds. A good-size bunch of bananas weighs three pounds. My one-way drive is equivalent to 12 sticks of butter or a bulky Sunday New York Times. Or how about the old joke?

A: I just found a henway today.
B: What’s a henway?
A: About three pounds.

Even with my feeble arithmetic, I’m able to calculate that my seven-mile round-trip commute produces six pounds of carbon dioxide, approximately the weight of a standard clay brick.

I know what a brick feels like in my hand. I can imagine its heft, and this, somehow, made a bigger impression on me than Al Gore on a hydraulic lift or photos of polar bears teetering on tiny melting icebergs. It seemed that every time I drove to work, I was essentially hurtling a brick through the fragile ozone.

The next day, I rode my bike. Seated comfortably upon my aluminum-frame cruiser, with my iPod cranking, I discovered that the ride took only five minutes longer than driving. Friends waved from the highway, my lunch bounced along in the front basket, and pedal power proved a pleasant way to get from point A to point B.

Pleasant, that is, until winter came. I tossed nearly 100 bricks from the tailpipe of my Subaru during the snowy months. And so the jagged cadence of my commute went for a few years— pushing pedals in the summer and spewing bricks of remorse in the winter. But things changed last winter, when the Nordic trails on the Valley Floor were groomed all the way to Society Turn. My carbon-free commute was back on: Bike to the Shandoka parking lot, skate-ski to Society Turn, change shoes and walk up the hill to work.

On the best winter days, the morning sun reflected off the mist that rose from the San Miguel River, and a freshly groomed track lay before me. I’d fall into a rhythm, exhaling with every pole plant and admiring the thick frost on the willows. On the worst days, the track was rough and frozen, and the headwind so fierce that I worried I’d blow backward and end up at the base of Bridal Veil Falls.

I seldom saw other people in the morning, but I skied past herds of elk and scared the pellets out of scampering bunnies. The coyotes were my favorite. In Navajo lore, they’re called “tricksters” or “pranksters,” but I never caught them at any capers. Granted, there were tufts of elk fur and pieces of rabbit occasionally strewn upon the snow—something I would term more “dinner” than “trick”—but by the time I glided on the scene, they just looked guilty. We’d both stop in our relative tracks and eye each other, until the coyote would tire of me and slink off into the bushes.

I must preface this next bit with a short discussion about repetitive motion: As most athletes know, once the body is engaged, the mind is free—and likely—to wander. While skiing, I daydreamed, resolved conflicts (if only in my own head) and even wrote this essay. It doesn’t take much, while in this state, for my brain to carry on a convoluted conversation with itself. For example—and this wasn’t as gross as it might sound—I one day saw a hair-filled coyote turd on the Nordic track in the shape of a perfect question mark. I’m reluctant to admit how much this excrement entertained me. As an editor who is weirdly fond of punctuation, I delighted in the quality of the penmanship. I found “Why?” an anthropomorphically good question. I debated whether or not coyotes are concerned with the meaning of life and noted a possible allusion to Monty Python. I wondered if the Navajo were perhaps comic book fans, because the mark reminded me of another trickster, Batman’s sinister archenemy The Joker. As I said, the mind is easily amused when the body is engaged, and that question mark had me smiling for a good 10 minutes or so while I slid home from work.

Now that it’s summer again, I’m back on my bike. I seldom think about the brick anymore, perhaps because I rarely drive. In fact, when I do get behind the wheel, I see surprise on the faces of my friends, some of whom don’t realize I own a car. I also chuckle to think that there are probably a few folks who believe I’ve lost my license to a night of binge drinking and are too polite to ask.

Ultimately, I’ve lost my taste for it—not drinking, driving. These days, getting in my car means I’m going on an adventure, a road trip of at least a few hours, and anything shorter makes me grumpy. I’ve come to relish my self-propelled time in transit. It’s a break, a mind space and physical place where I neither need to be here nor there. What started out as respect for the environment has turned into an indulgence. The carbon-free commute is now all about me.