Fifty After Ely
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
July 6, 2026
Greetings from the shadow,
Fifty years is one of those milestones you take notice of. I’ll admit that most of my life I’ve been too young to think about it, but lately, those occasions turn up more and more.
Ely is a small town on a lonely stretch of a two-lane road in the middle of the desert in Nevada. It is a hard town to visit. If you are traveling on your bicycle, it is a day’s ride to the next town in either direction.
I was traveling east, riding my bike on my way back from the west coast, grinding along the empty road, baking in the relentless sun. When I reached Ely, it was the Fourth of July. There were flags and banners, even a small parade. None of that mattered to me, all I cared about was water.
I laid up in the shade near a shop until early evening and then started pedaling into the dark desert. Riding at night was the only way I could survive the next stretch across the emptiness to find the first town in Utah. It was one of the most remarkable nights of my life.
Thirty-five years later, I sat on a picnic table in Ludington, Michigan, celebrating Independence Day with friends. We’d spent the day watching the parade, playing in the water, chasing kids around, and cooking brats on the grill. My phone rang. It was my daughter Katherine. She was calling from Ely, Nevada.
Kat was riding with a small group across the desert, heading west on their bicycles. They had made the big jump from the last town in Utah and rode into Ely, and they were stopping to rest overnight. She had no idea how our paths had crossed; didn’t know I’d been there sweating in the same town on another fourth of July. We talked for a while, and I was so grateful she was safe, but the tears came for another reason. It was the magic of that intersecting moment.
A few days ago, I sat on the porch looking at the first light over Ludington. The air was damp, the sky still cloaked in the last of the morning clouds. The day would fill up with all of the usual traditions, ending with the big fireworks. Before the first hint of any of that I felt this other thing.
Five decades had flipped past, huge chapters of living, filled with amazing experiences, with all manner of joy and ache. But as I sipped my first cup of coffee sitting on those porch steps, I could feel my nineteen-year-old self as bold as if he were sitting next to me. I could feel the excitement and the fear, pushing off from the last shade in Ely and heading into the furnace. Into the emptiness, and then, into the dark.
That young man couldn’t feel the presence of his daughter coming the other way on that lonely road, thirty-five years later. He couldn’t imagine the moment when she, and the man she would marry, would step off their bikes just feet from where my younger self been sitting waiting for the sun to find the west edge of the world. He wouldn’t know that their shadows would share space on the same road as they pedaled toward another horizon.
But now I could feel it. From way up high, sitting on this porch, watching their lives unfold, I could see them, feel them, know them. I could hear the thrill in Kat’s voice on the phone, how they had done this big thing, and now crowded into a room with other riders, they were celebrating in the little oasis of Ely. I could see them on the road, passing the ghost of a nineteen year old man who’d sweated on the same hot pavement decades before.
I put my coffee down next to my bare feet, still a bit of sand between my toes. Behind me in the sleeping house was my daughter and the man she rode across the country with. Their children dreamt in the room next to them, another generation of adventures already growing. I could feel the myriad of intersections waiting for all of us, feel the next decades unfolding, see the lines we would make on the map, crisscrossing with our past and future selves.
And I could feel the fifty-year moments happening every day. They won’t all have fireworks, but they will all be worth celebrating.
Hope this finds you remembering,
David
See more about this story from the Passages Storytelling Event.
This essay was written by the author and does not include Ai content.
Copyright © 2026 David Smith
Comments