By STEVEN JUPITER
WEST GOSHEN—The mountains and valleys between Goshen and Rochester are criss-crossed with what we understand today to be bike paths. We understand that these paths were created by human beings for their own pleasure and recreation. But if we were to travel into the future—perhaps a future in which bicycles are the only remaining means of transport but all knowledge of their origins has been lost—what myths would we create to explain the network of trails that make up the entirety of our known world?
This is the pressing question behind the books in Angus Chaney’s “Proto-Cycology” series, the second volume of which was just published this year. Mr. Chaney and the books’ illustrator, Ethan Nelson, will be presenting the works at the Rutland Public Library on Wednesday, October 23, from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Mr. Chaney has spent the last few years collecting for publication the myths of the “mountain bike clans of Central Vermont,” an ethnographic endeavor that has required the concerted efforts of professors and graduate students at West Goshen University (WGU), arguably the most important institution of higher learning that never existed and whose academic press published these books.
Some of these tales had to be translated into American (Mr. Chaney is careful to distinguish this from English) from the original “Chiac” dialect of archaic French, an undertaking in which he was aided by his graduate students.
“I was quite pleased with the translation,” said Mr. Chaney, adjunct professor of Classical Studies, in his office at WGU, which is nestled in the now-autumnal hills of the Goshen Blueberry Management Area. He’d invited me for a conversation about his work and perched on a winged bicycle as we discussed it. Hikers walked by, unaware that they were witnessing one of the most significant literary conversations ever to occur on those russet slopes.
The first volume is entitled “Creation Myths for the Apocalypse” and captures the history of three men (Eben, Raymond, and Warner) who, as the oral histories tell us, lived among and rode the trails of Central Vermont. Their mountain bikes are their steeds, their survival in a world that could either predate our own or be the last remnants thereof.
“Think of Proto-Cycology as a double helix of sacred truths and sacred untruths,” said Chaney with a spiral flourish of his hands. “This is the sacred text of the Northern Appalachian mountain bike clans! The aboriginal songlines of Central Vermont, if you will.”
These books (there will be a third) are meant to affectionate satirize 19th-century academic treatments of ancient mythology, treating the bicycle as if it were an ancient trope like the horse and imagining an entire mythology with its own cosmology based on spokes, chains, giant pumpkins, and groundhog jerky.
Why bicycles? It’s a logical question with a simple answer: Angus Chaney likes to ride them. In fact, the idea for these books came to him while on a ride with friends in Rochester on a beautiful June day. As the group neared the crest of the Old Gents trail, Chaney was overcome with a feral urge to hoot and howl.
“I felt like it was a good time to let out some ‘monkey whoops,’” he recalled as he gazed out over the valley, seemingly stifling an impulse to recreate the moment for me. His biking buddies immediately saw the expressive value in the act and joined in.
To their surprise and delight, their vocalizations were reciprocated by an unseen band of cyclists somewhere else on the trail. The two cohorts eventually crossed paths and felt they’d already shared a primordial bond, a common tribal origin, as it were. The idea for the books was born.
“That was the day I realized we were in the golden age of single-track trails in Vermont,” he said. Their trails were the best they’d ever be, and their bicycles were at the zenith of technological advancement. “The wider world was a bit bleak that year and I wondered what people years from now might think if they discovered these fossilized trails.”
“Finding the tone was the biggest challenge,” said Chaney. The books are written in a sly, tongue-in-cheek style that draws heavily both from academic treatises and the absurdities of authors like Kurt Vonnegut.
In fact, “absurd” is an apt adjective for the books. “Couldn’t the future loop all the way back to the past like a bicycle wheel?” is an example of the pseudo-serious philosophizing that threads through both volumes. In fact, the 2nd volume, “Chasing the Falcon,” relays an academic debate between professors at WGU whose analyses of the myths are at odds with each other.
The books are illustrated by Brandon artist Ethan Nelson, who used cave paintings and petroglyphs for inspiration.
“I kept the art deliberately crude,” said Nelson, who is also a cycling enthusiast and has known Chaney for years. “Angus requested that the style evoke something ancient. Both books were done with brush and ink or paint on watercolor paper.”
“I strongly recommend reading these stories aloud,” he continued. “On the one hand they could be fairly described as gonzo. On the other hand, they end up sounding somehow very familiar to anyone with a wild sense of humor. Imagine a punk rock Tom Sawyer retold by Homer around a campfire.”
There were even instances where Nelson’s illustrations inspired Chaney to rework parts of the text to incorporate something absent from the story that the drawings had captured.
Both Chaney and Nelson acknowledge that the books will appeal to a certain sensibility. But for those who like mountain bikes and/or Monty Python, they might just be the perfect winter read.
Both volumes are available at The Bookstore in Brandon, Phoenix Books in Rutland, and at bike shops throughout the area.
