Chapter 1: Prelude
Scarborough, Maine to Cartwright, Labrador — riding through Maine, the Maritimes, remote Quebec and Labrador, and the ferry to Cartwright. A journey north to begin the descent south.
One year after completing Europa 360, I set out again—on the same bike, but this time with a mission unlike any before. I left from Scarborough, Maine with 1,400 miles ahead of me, bound for Cartwright, Labrador at 54°N. That remote outpost would mark the starting line of Climate Zero, my attempt to solo-ride from 54° north to 54° south and plant 5,000 native trees—enough to erase my lifetime carbon footprint. But first, I had to reach the edge of the road-connected world.
Crossing the full span of Maine, I pushed north from Portland to Fort Kent, hugging the contours of ancient Appalachian hills and valleys, blanketed in deciduous forest. I followed quiet roads northward through patch-work forests in rotation, river drainages, and borderland. I camped under skies pulsing with late-summer stars, each rotation of the pedals inching me closer to the launch point. The riding was long and head-clearing, and I began responsibly shedding everything nonessential—material and emotional alike, as I absorbed the feeling of being outside, exposed, like the wildlife that silently observed my progress. On this prelude, I was not yet “going south.” I was riding toward something deeper: a test of resolve before the true descent began.
From the U.S. border at Fort Kent, I entered Canada and after a short transit through New Brunswick and the Gaspésie Peninsula, crossed the St. Lawrence River and descended deep into the sparsely populated, southern and central reaches of Québec. That part of my journey began at Baie-Comeau, where I turned north onto the notorious 389, towards isolated outposts and hydroelectric giants—like Manic-2 and Manic-5—each one of them carved into granite and glacial till, but mostly towards wilderness. Gravel replaced pavement for long stretches. When the weather turned, mud replaced the dust and threatened to annihilate my drivetrain and brakes. The boreal forest closed-in around me, quiet and immense. This was a land ruled by weather, wildlife, and water. I climbed hills worn smooth by ice ages, descended the same, and eventually crossed into Labrador near Fermont, where pavement returned, without breaks, on Route 500—the western designation of the Trans-Labrador Highway that continues beyond the twin towns of Happy Valley-Goose Bay as Route 510.
Turning east from what was more or less a northern trajectory from Baie-Comeau on the 389, I followed the 500 through hundreds of miles of vast, unpeopled country, with few exceptions, until reaching the twin towns of Happy Valley–Goose Bay. Two days later, I boarded a coastal ferry that traced the fractured Labrador coastline, stopping first in Rigolet—the southernmost Inuit village in eastern Canada—then continuing to Black Tickle, a mostly seasonal fishing community clinging to a rocky island barely above the frigid Labrador Sea.
The following morning, I stepped off the ferry in Cartwright, eyes glazed and weary from the opening scenes—the prelude to Climate Zero. Unlike Rigolet or Black Tickle, Cartwright was connected to the rest of the continent by a 100-kilometer (62 mile) gravel road. It marked the farthest I could reach by bike in eastern North America. Like Ushuaia in southern Argentina, Cartwright sits at the edge of the navigable world—beyond it, no further passage by road is possible. To the north and west, wilderness stretches across North America to places like the Yukon Territory and Alaska, To the east is the Labrador Sea and roughly 600 miles in a straight line to the northeast is the southern tip of Greenland.
At Cartwright, and Rigolet the night before, I had entered the neighborhood of 54° north latitude. Remote, raw, and precariously road-connected. More importantly for my journey, this place also shared a quiet, latitudinal symmetry with Ushuaia, which sits at 54° south. I discovered that latitude connection just weeks before the tour began—an accidental, elegant alignment, and at that juncture, almost immediately after the realization crystallized in my mind, Cartwright became the obvious place to start my journey to Ushuaia.
There’s something magnetic in that kind of balance. A mathematician might call it parsimony: the elegance of matching endpoints, the satisfaction of symmetry. To begin at 54°N and end at 54°S was to write the journey across a clean axis, one that cut through continents and climate, spirit and resolve. It was never just about mileage—it was about closing an arc using nothing but human power, and planting 5,000 trees with little more.
Crossing the full span of Maine, I pushed north from Portland to Fort Kent, hugging the contours of ancient Appalachian hills and valleys, blanketed in deciduous forest. I followed quiet roads northward through patch-work forests in rotation, river drainages, and borderland. I camped under skies pulsing with late-summer stars, each rotation of the pedals inching me closer to the launch point. The riding was long and head-clearing, and I began responsibly shedding everything nonessential—material and emotional alike, as I absorbed the feeling of being outside, exposed, like the wildlife that silently observed my progress. On this prelude, I was not yet “going south.” I was riding toward something deeper: a test of resolve before the true descent began.
From the U.S. border at Fort Kent, I entered Canada and after a short transit through New Brunswick and the Gaspésie Peninsula, crossed the St. Lawrence River and descended deep into the sparsely populated, southern and central reaches of Québec. That part of my journey began at Baie-Comeau, where I turned north onto the notorious 389, towards isolated outposts and hydroelectric giants—like Manic-2 and Manic-5—each one of them carved into granite and glacial till, but mostly towards wilderness. Gravel replaced pavement for long stretches. When the weather turned, mud replaced the dust and threatened to annihilate my drivetrain and brakes. The boreal forest closed-in around me, quiet and immense. This was a land ruled by weather, wildlife, and water. I climbed hills worn smooth by ice ages, descended the same, and eventually crossed into Labrador near Fermont, where pavement returned, without breaks, on Route 500—the western designation of the Trans-Labrador Highway that continues beyond the twin towns of Happy Valley-Goose Bay as Route 510.
Turning east from what was more or less a northern trajectory from Baie-Comeau on the 389, I followed the 500 through hundreds of miles of vast, unpeopled country, with few exceptions, until reaching the twin towns of Happy Valley–Goose Bay. Two days later, I boarded a coastal ferry that traced the fractured Labrador coastline, stopping first in Rigolet—the southernmost Inuit village in eastern Canada—then continuing to Black Tickle, a mostly seasonal fishing community clinging to a rocky island barely above the frigid Labrador Sea.
The following morning, I stepped off the ferry in Cartwright, eyes glazed and weary from the opening scenes—the prelude to Climate Zero. Unlike Rigolet or Black Tickle, Cartwright was connected to the rest of the continent by a 100-kilometer (62 mile) gravel road. It marked the farthest I could reach by bike in eastern North America. Like Ushuaia in southern Argentina, Cartwright sits at the edge of the navigable world—beyond it, no further passage by road is possible. To the north and west, wilderness stretches across North America to places like the Yukon Territory and Alaska, To the east is the Labrador Sea and roughly 600 miles in a straight line to the northeast is the southern tip of Greenland.
At Cartwright, and Rigolet the night before, I had entered the neighborhood of 54° north latitude. Remote, raw, and precariously road-connected. More importantly for my journey, this place also shared a quiet, latitudinal symmetry with Ushuaia, which sits at 54° south. I discovered that latitude connection just weeks before the tour began—an accidental, elegant alignment, and at that juncture, almost immediately after the realization crystallized in my mind, Cartwright became the obvious place to start my journey to Ushuaia.
There’s something magnetic in that kind of balance. A mathematician might call it parsimony: the elegance of matching endpoints, the satisfaction of symmetry. To begin at 54°N and end at 54°S was to write the journey across a clean axis, one that cut through continents and climate, spirit and resolve. It was never just about mileage—it was about closing an arc using nothing but human power, and planting 5,000 trees with little more.