Steve Lyons

I entered this world in a mid-sized, Midwestern town, one that took the name of a fierce Ottawa chief. This courageous, prescient warrior successfully united all the tribes in the Great Lakes region, during the 1770s, to fight the invading red-coated British. Although he failed to oust them, their descendants admire him to this day for his strategic skills, leadership and gumption. I saw an almost life-size portrait of the chief-- wearing a bearskin robe, buckskin leggings and carrying a war club--often on my meanderings around town as a boy, in the banks and in the civic buildings. He was my hero. Many years after he took his last scalp, General Motors named a line of automobiles after him: Pontiac. My grandfather was an executive for that car company and my older brother, Mike, welded the automobiles together in the local factory.

When I was ten my father, a cardiologist, moved our family to the wilds of suburbia, three miles from town. It actually was wild: we arrived before suburbanization caught on, and woods, large estate farms and lakes surrounded our house. My brothers, friends and I spent our time on and in Upper Long Lake. We built boats, canoed, sailed, fished, hunted and played endless games of water tag off Bozell’s dock.

I went to college as expected--but I missed my calling (to search and sift the dusty earth as an archaeologist) because questions like What is life all about? And Why am I here? kept nagging me and demanding answers. They led me astray. I graduated from Oakland University with a B.A. in psychology, but without the answers.

After my first marriage to a bright woman (I was 21 and she 23) fell apart (she asked me when I was going to get over my identity crisis so we could settle down, buy a house in the suburbs and start a family. I hadn’t a clue.), I went on to a Ph.D. degree program at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. After completing the first year, I dropped out to study Zen Buddhism at Shasta Abbey. Six hours of meditation each day rearranged my priorities: I left to roam the world as a pilgrim, visiting sacred sites as varied as Stonehenge in southern England, monasteries in France, Italy, and Greece, a kibbutz in Israel and ashrams in India.

When I returned to the U.S., I joined the Kripalu Yoga Fellowship and became a full-time staff member at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in western Massachusetts, which at that time was a yoga ashram. Kripalu specialized (still does) in teaching yoga, holistic health, massage and other progressive, new age programs. I lived in the ashram for ten years and continued to work there as a massage therapist for three years after moving out in 1991.

While living in the ashram, my buddies and I spent our free time bicycling (as yogis we practiced brahmacharya, which includes celibacy: we had energy to burn). The Berkshires offer outstanding road biking: well-maintained rural roads, little traffic, small, quaint New England towns, forests, mountains and crystal-clear streams. After I moved out, I eased myself into secular life by writing my first book, The Bicyclist’s Guide to the Southern Berkshires. It’s a work of art--much more than your typical tour book--with photographs and text that capture the joy of biking, the beauty, and the fascinating culture of an area considered the “millionaires playground” during the Gilded Age at the turn of the twentieth century. Berkshire residents included writers Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edith Wharton, and artists Norman Rockwell, Henry Hudson Kitson (Continental Soldier), and Daniel Chester French (Lincoln Memorial). Contemporary artists call the Berkshires home as well. One of my tours, Arlo Guthrie’s Historic Garbage Trail, traces the route and story made famous in Arlo’s 1960s hit song and movie, Alice’s Restaurant.

When an acquaintance had an asthma attack and died on his living room floor in front of his wife and children, I decided to face up to the seriousness of my own asthma, which had been getting progressively worse over a ten-year period. I moved to the small rural town of Paonia, in Western Colorado, with my wife Phyllis Swackhamer, a loving friend and former Kripalu Center yogini. After settling in, I researched and wrote my second book, Black Canyon of the Gunnison Explorer’s Guide.

I write one to two feature articles a month for The Valley Chronicle, a North Fork Valley news magazine. I vow to start a new book when the inspiration strikes-- not a guidebook this time, creative nonfiction instead.

In addition to numerous newspaper articles, my work has appeared in: Mother Earth News, Boston Magazine, Berkshire Magazine, Oakland Press and the American Whitewater Journal.