Book review: Croesi Cyfandir ar Ddwy Olwyn by Grug Muse

Jon Gower

As cycling trips go this one is most certainly down the testing end of the spectrum as the young poet Grug Muse journeys coast to coast in the United States, from Cape Cod to Portland, Oregon. Covering 4,000 miles, it’s an often gruelling bike ride, facing all sorts of weather and negotiating terrain that ranges from heat-baked to the precipitously mountainous. She gets lost in woodlands as the day darkens and discovers that sleeping in a tent is an object lesson about the fear of the unknown.

Guns

On her black Surly Long Haul Trucker bike and equipped with an inadequate Michelin driving map she sets off for her first days’ cycling through Massachusetts and 200 miles through the state of New York. Then on via Michigan, Wyoming, Minnesota and all points west. Seeing Amish families and Mennonite farmers. Meeting lots of people who carry guns. Along the way she encounters the enormous variety of America and of Americans too. She visits a town called Denmark which celebrates its Viking connections as well as the town of Pulaski with its Polish roots.

Raccoons

There are encounters with all sorts of wildlife too: there’s a bear that careers down a slope in front of her; inquisitive raccoons that tear into her pannier bags as she sleeps and a close encounter with a red deer, standing immobile in front of her, such that Muse imagines she can feel the heat of its breath.

One of the many delights of the book is discovering the Welsh names for racoons (brochlwynogod), chipmunks (gwiwerod rhesog), and that we have bual for buffalo, corfleiddiaid for coyotes, bolgi for wolverine and, marvellously, twrlla bolfelyn, being the Welsh name for marmot. 

Ferocious heat

There are good days, full of the kindness of strangers and plentiful sights to see, from geysers spouting from the ground to displays of fork lightning, from great lakes to the wide Erie canal, where the going is easy. And then there’s North Dakota, a forlorn state which Muse crosses as if cursed.

An unforgiving wind slows her right down. She decides to cover a hundred miles in a single day of ferocious heat, reaching 100 Fahrenheit or over 37 degrees Celsius. She loses her bank card. Then comes off the bike with a crash. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the spines of a tough roadside plant cause a series of punctures, one after another, sapping the biker’s spirit as she undertakes repair after repair on the hard shoulder.

Waterfalls

Taking the road less travelled is often the most rewarding choice and this is certainly the case when Muse detours into Canada. Having joined the selfie-snapping hordes at Niagara Falls – a sort of modern day Sodom and Gomorrah full of casinos and tourist tat – she then crosses the US border to visit the Canadian waterfalls at Cohoes, which are just as impressive and which she gets to enjoy all by herself. She’s in the country at the right time to enjoy Canada Day and enjoy it she does, including her first taste of Poutine, a gloopy mix of French fries, gravy and cheese curds.

Parts of the journey are haunted by the history of the native peoples, such as the Canarsee and Odawa, the Piikani and Apsáalooke, who were hunted down or dispossessed, cheated of their tribal lands or killed by the deliberate introduction of disease. 

Iron horse

The final leg or legs of the journey are some of the most testing as she has to cross mountain ranges where Muse faces a climb to the Teton Pass at 8,431 feet above sea level. By the time she finally reaches the Pacific and dismantles the iron horse that has served her so faithfully, Muse has seen a lot and learned a great deal about her resolve, stamina and ability to push on through. Like the indomitable Irish cyclist and travel writer Dervla Murphy Grug Muse accompanies the armchair traveller to visit a great many unfamiliar places and writes about them with insight and clarity. 

Tarmac ahead

You feel exhausted just reading about some of the harder days of travel but are uplifted, then, when the weather clears and the tarmac line ahead cuts through views such as the Bruneau Dunes, the tallest in America or the basin of the Great Salt Lake. There are small towns such as Murphy, with its population of 96 people and the administrative centre of Owynhee county, which explains the airstrip, the county museum and the courthouse, not forgetting the red clapperboard General Store which teeters on the edge of a dusty road. 

Croesi Cyfandir is a proper country-crossing adventure and this able poet’s first foray into prose. Hopefully it will not be her last as she is certainly part of a gifted generation of writers who are proving that Welsh writing is in safe hands. Even if hers are a bit blistered after gripping the handlebars for many hundreds of miles.

Croesi Cyfandir ar Ddwy Olwyn by Grug Muse is published by Y Lolfa and is available from all good bookshops.