For the Love of Trails: Sterling Lorence

Author:
BIKE
Apr 14, 2020

Below, you'll find a gallery from BIKE Senior Photographer Sterling Lorence of glimpses from trails around the world. We find them stunning, calming and inspiring, and hope that they can bring you some of the same. "Sterl" is one of the godfathers of mountain bike photography; a North Vancouverite who fell into photography with his riding buddies on the North Shore and documented much of the original evolution of freeride. He's been a mainstay in BIKE's pages for most of our history, and there are few whose lenses we'd rather live vicariously through.

A few words of reflection, from Photo & Video Editor Satchel Cronk:

We're mountain bikers, and singletrack is our solace. Lines of dirt, decorated with rocks, leaves, grass and the marks of compatriots that came before us. Bends and straights that arc, tantalizingly and satisfyingly, into the distance. One of mankind's oldest and most natural creations, trails are tools that have always connected us to each other, near and far. In our times, they've become not just bridges between places, but links to less tangible locales—to that clear and balanced headspace that is only found on a long climb, or to a flow-state; that mode of clarity combined with exhilaration that you feel once, and are hooked on forever.

In hard times, we've always been able to turn to trails. Whether they distract, re-energize, calm or inspire, they're always our allies: silent, dependable, singletrack. Yet sometimes, the days get dark, and we're forced to keep our ribboned sanctuaries to a distance. As hard as these times are, it is in these moments that singletrack can be its most sanative; a reminder of solidity, potential, beauty, and connections that cannot be wiped away by injury, illness, or the day-to-day upheaval of our world.

Trails will carry on, and so will we. Things will change. Dirt will slide, rocks will move, trees will fall, but we'll adapt, and find a new line. Sometimes, even, catastrophe: avalanches and fires change the landscapes that we know and love, but we always find new ways. These experiences can be hard, exhausting, and even tragic. But they also bring us together, to remember, to think, to draw new lines on maps, to swing tools together in a long line of community and shared passion.

And whenever we're ready, the trails will be there, waiting to move us once again.

More trail escapes:

Mattias Fredriksson