Sweat

"It must be hot riding out here," the tall guy said as he approached us. We were just leading our bikes and trailers out of the service station where we had used the restrooms. He had strayed from the side of his pickup truck specifically to talk to us. 

 I shook my head. "It's not so bad," I said, "We sweat..."

"...and burn calories, shed fat, and all that," he finished, nodding, supposing like most people do that the most important function of sweating is losing weight.

"No," I said, "What I mean is that when you sweat and you are moving, there is this wind that you create by your own movement and..." I'm not sure he followed my words. He thought he already knew what I was going to say. But since I didn't get the satisfaction then of elaborating for that man my most recent delightful discovery, I'm going to share it here, with you.

We started our 300+ mile cycling journey in Washington D.C. just across from the Watergate towers. Though it was only 7:30 a.m, the air was warm and moist. We were excited to begin our journey. The canal towpath was lined with brick houses and pretty bridges on each Georgetown city block- each one a perfect postcard picture. The trail was marvelously shaded by a canopy of trees, but as the day wore on, the sun scooted higher and higher and the air became hotter and hotter. Sweat poured off us as we We bumped along over a rough dirt and gravel paths, sweat pouring off us, as our trailers dutifully clattered behind us, collecting dust.

It was on the first day of this journey that I rediscovered the age-old technology of sweat and its crucial pairing with movement. In this case, the speed of the bicycle perfectly complemented the amount of sweat I produced in order to keep me at a comfortable temperature. As long as I kept moving, I kept cool. When I stopped to rest or to refill water, I quickly grew hot quickly. So I kept riding.


Sugata and I used other means to keep cool. We bathed in the Potomac River, doused ourselves at  water pumps, removed our shirts as we rode and allowed the air to directly touch our sweaty skin. But of all these methods, it was my own sweat that fascinated me most that day. I could not help but feel proud of this liquid I produced and the entirely natural cooling process that accompanied it. I could not help but think that humans were indeed born to move and to be far more active than we are today. We are one of the sweatiest animals on the planet and our nearly bare skin helps to accentuate the effectiveness of our sweat. Yet what do we do?

Not long before beginning this bike journey I started rereading Walden. Thoreau writes about how dependent people have become on fire. What once was a luxury, he said, had now become a necessity.  Of course he didn't mean a necessary necessity, rather he lamented the fragility of modern human beings. It was reasonable, he thought, for humans to clothe and shelter themselves, but they had weakened their bodies' natural response by relying too much on fire.

I have to wonder likewise about the air-conditioning that has become "a necessity." We sit around so much that we require our environments to do the work of cooling (and heating) us. We have air-conditioned offices. We have air-conditioned cars where we "move" without exertion. Even gyms have air-conditioning, "necessary" because in gyms people move in place on treadmills. The air does not naturally flow past them as it would if they were walking outside. 

Movement seems to be the cure for being either too cold or too warm, yet we seem unwilling to rely on our own bodies to regulate our temperature. What do you think about this?


Anyway, that is all for now. I'll soon be out sweating under a canopy of trees.