August 24, 2007

By Rich Steck

The Underground Railroad was a train without tracks, but with a purpose as strong as today's mighty locomotives rushing on steel rails across America.

While real trains carried the commerce that made a nation great, the Underground Railroad carried a cargo of hope leading to freedom and a new life at the end of the line. It was a multitude of secret routes and safe houses used by runaway slaves escaping from bondage in the south to free states in the north and ultimately to Canada.

The Adventure Cycling Association spent three years developing a route symbolic of the direction and difficulty faced by freedom seekers in the 1800s. Working with the Center for Minority Health at the University of Pittsburgh, the National Park Service's Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program, historians and descendents of escaped slaves, ACA established a 48-day, 2,100 mile cycling journey from Alabama's Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico to Ontario's Owen Sound on Lake Huron.

A modern interpretation of 'Follow the Drinking Gourd' - Canaan straight ahead.

Our week-long ride was the final 285-miles of the route, from Buffalo, NY, across the Peace Bridge into Canada, then past mist-shrouded Niagara Falls, skirting along Lake Ontario's shores inland to Lake Huron's Georgian Bay and Owen Sound, a town settled by freedom seekers in the 1830s when the U.S. Constitution still protected the rights of individuals to own and enslave other people.

↓ Continued from front page of Where To GO Next!

It was a week steeped in history and historic sites, cultural awakening, imagined drama and an emotional sense of what it must have been like to risk one's life in the pursuit of freedom.

In Buffalo, we gathered inside one of the Underground Railroad's most famous "stations," the 1845 Michigan Street Baptist Church, just a short dash away from the shores of the roiling Niagara River, where freedom seekers could "cross over into Canaan land," the code for Canada.

It was here we learned the secret language and codes used by slaves. Kevin Cottrell, twice named "Citizen of the Year" in Buffalo for his work as author, historian and impassioned promoter of the Underground Railroad's heritage, revealed how songs were used as code: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (a conductor is nearby, be ready/; Wade in the Water (stick to the rivers and streams so the dogs can't get your scent); Follow the Drinking Gourd (follow the Big Dipper whose side always points to the North Star).

Standing on the river bank with Canada less than a quarter mile across the water, it was a revelation imagining the feelings of joy and terror felt by slaves who had endured months of hardship traveling mostly at night, hiding from masters and bounty hunters, especially at this final "grabbing" spot before escape, looking at turbulent water flowing a dozen miles an hour, finally clinging to anything that would float because they never learned to swim - then jumping in faith for freedom.

With new appreciation, we walked our bikes across the Peace Bridge spanning the Niagara, through passport control and into "Canaan," feeling "free at last."

Sixty miles and several Underground Railroad-related sites later, including the mist-shrouded wonder of Niagara Falls, we were at our first overnight campsite and a chance to share our reactions and initial impressions with some of the 90 black and white riders on the tour.

Some of the Sisters Cycling team take a break from the heat: from left, Dawn Keene, Cassandra Spratling, Deborah Johnson and MIgnon Smith.

"My people did this barefoot in the dark with massa and the dogs hunting them," said Mario Brown, Project Director of Center for Minority Health at University of Pittsburgh. "That thought kept me pedaling up the long steep hills when I did the whole 2,000 miles earlier this year." He's convinced that the exercise of cycling could help overcome the disproportion of preventable diseases in minority communities. "It makes exercise fun," he said. Coupled with riding the Underground Railroad, you get fun plus education and a cultural experience, too.

Each day's ride, averaging about 50 miles in an unseasonably hot summer for Ontario, brought us to important safe houses and churches, historical museums, homes of key abolitionists (the "conductors" of the Underground Railroad), interpretive and cultural centers, parks, plaques and markers honoring the heroes, heroines and martyrs in the march toward freedom in Canada.

Each evening in camp after the tents were pitched and dinner served, we'd be treated to talks by historians and performances by re-enactors. Tony Cohen, executive director of Menare, a national non-profit foundation working to restore Underground Railroad sites and safe houses nationwide, told us of his walking a 1,200-mile route from Maryland to Ontario, another from Alabama to Canada along waterways and rail lines, including being smuggled through New Jersey in a box like slaves sometimes had to do. A third walk was mostly at night following the drinking gourd along the route of his great-great granduncle's escape from Savannah to Canada 153 earlier. Tony also worked with Oprah Winfrey in preparation for her role in the movie "Beloved" by immersing her in simulated realities of actual slavehood, a program now being offered by Menare (www.menare.org).

One day we rode through one of Canada's large windmill farms - giant three-bladed 250 foot tall behemoths standing sentinel as far as one could see. I stopped counting at 100 and wondered how many more where whirling in the mists that obscured the horizon. Their slow, inexorably turning blades seemed ominous, threatening, like evil giants unconcerned about anything but the direction of the wind that gave them life. They became a frightening metaphor for the bounty hunters whose relentless pursuit ceaselessly threatened freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad.

Brother Steve back from a near visit to Cleveland.

The ride itself became a contemporary metaphor: escaping to a new sense of freedom from everyday stress despite the tribulations of pedaling through heat and heavy traffic, mediocre meals to fuel the muscles and becoming lost because of missing road signs. At one point my brother Steve admitted he and I "came perilously close to Cleveland!"

A quiet African-American rider, whose thoughtful reflections gave impact to his conversation with other riders during the week, told the group at the end of the ride: "I hope the black people on this tour were escaping to a new freedom and the white people were part of the acceptance that made it possible."

African American riders on the tour gather at the Black History Cairn memorial to Owen Sound's original freedom seekers.

He could have reversed the colors and his hope would have been just as significant.

For more information about Adventure Cycling's Underground Railroad and other national routes and rides, see www.adventurecycling.org.