Marc Kitteringham
The town is home to only a handful of permanent residents. Most people are just passing through. They brought with them stories, stickers, road dust and enough money to buy a beer or two at the tavern. Some people got their mail delivered there. Some people just walked in, got a scone from the bakery and left. The main buildings are the famous Mercantile store, where you can get everything from an individual band-aid to a freshly baked scone. The place was packed inside with people from all over. It had an old general store-meets-tourist trap vibe inside. Around back were the few permanent residences, a stage, the tavern and a farm stand. There was also the Polebridge library, which was a small box attached to a pole across the one street. Everything in town was run on solar power. There was also a gas station -- a large fuel tank covered in Bernie Sanders stickers.
As a rest stop for nomadic folk, Polebridge is distinctly modern and old-fashioned at the same time. The need for movement is inherent in people, but in a world increasingly hostile to travel (gas prices, politics and simple economics are making road trips less and less accessible), more sustainable human-powered modes of transportation are necessary. It was the only place in America where I didn’t have a feeling of unease over me. It was a place for the wayward, for just a passin’ through. It was like the old roadside towns of a past age, where the only thing to do was stop and stay a while.
We drove through town on the way up to the lake. Stopping quickly, we toured the Merc, got a few pastries and a few beers for up at the beach. The road up was dusty and rough, washboarded from countless adventure rigs going up and down to various places in the national park. We planned to hang out at the lake for a few hours, have a small picnic and ride back into town. We snuck some beers and cans of wine and avoided the glare of the much-too-well-armed park ranger (hand gun, taser and bullet proof vest for a National Park Ranger? Really?) before we got the bikes down from the roof to head back into town.
The ride down to town was bumpy as hell. I think it might've cracked my axle -- which I later replaced, and it made my whole body numb. We started in the middle of the pine forest, just a road winding through the soft green light. It was a narrow one-car road, so we often had to pull over to get out of the way of an angry truck or let a motorhome pass us. I was with Kristen and Bob, her father. Bob was telling us about a time he and Kristen's mom rode up to the lake from town and stopped for a rest near a burnt-out swath of forest. He said that the wind blowing through the trees sounded like ghosts, and that they thought the road was haunted.
We kept riding, past a few hikers making the long hot journey up the hill to the water, stopping once to check out a little creek along the side of the road. Once we got to the ranger station, the road mellowed out and became a dusty two-lane service road. We cruised in to town and stopped, dusty as hell and smiling. Polebridge has a special deal for people who have either hiked or biked in to town. We left our rides outside and went in to ask about it. The clerk plopped down two enormous scones. "On the house!" he said,
