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Wild Rides and Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes
"Abbott and Rushforth [have a] knack for entertaining readers."
— BOOKLIST
"Ride along with Sam and Scott through spectacular landscape and share their vast knowledge of its many plants and creatures and the way their lives—and ours—turn with each new season."
—Chip Ward, author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West
"It's like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Desert Solitaire in Utah County."
—Scott Carrier, author of Running After Antelope
"Come fall in wonder with nature and humankind as these two scholars and mountain bike enthusiasts explore flora, fauna and the follies of life, love, friendship and aging. Abbott and Rushforth are brash and beautiful, their observations clear–eyed, precise and soulful. By the end of the ride you’ll understand more about Utah’s landscape and two men’s hearts than you ever imagined."
—Brooke Adams, former editor of the Salt Lake Observer and Salt Lake Tribune reporter
"Sometimes you have to get on the bike and go out with the wild things if you're going to get there at all. Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth show us the way. Mount up. Here's our ticket to ride."
—Charles Bowden, author of Blues for Cannibals
"Following the conversations and adventures of Scott and Sam in this work was a delight—my only complaint is that I was stung by an absolute desire to join them. The gusto and passion they have for this land comes through on every page."
—Steven L. Peck, author of The Scholar of Moab and A Short Stay in Hell
"Imagine Plato’s Phaedrus and a field guide to Utah fauna and flora left in an inside pocket of a sweaty, oft-used CamelBak get acquainted and copulate. The wise progeny, scratched and scented, philosophizing its way out, would be Wild Rides and Wildflowers, coauthored by Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth."
—Larry Menlove, for The Provo Canyon Review
— BOOKLIST
"Ride along with Sam and Scott through spectacular landscape and share their vast knowledge of its many plants and creatures and the way their lives—and ours—turn with each new season."
—Chip Ward, author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West
"It's like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Desert Solitaire in Utah County."
—Scott Carrier, author of Running After Antelope
"Come fall in wonder with nature and humankind as these two scholars and mountain bike enthusiasts explore flora, fauna and the follies of life, love, friendship and aging. Abbott and Rushforth are brash and beautiful, their observations clear–eyed, precise and soulful. By the end of the ride you’ll understand more about Utah’s landscape and two men’s hearts than you ever imagined."
—Brooke Adams, former editor of the Salt Lake Observer and Salt Lake Tribune reporter
"Sometimes you have to get on the bike and go out with the wild things if you're going to get there at all. Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth show us the way. Mount up. Here's our ticket to ride."
—Charles Bowden, author of Blues for Cannibals
"Following the conversations and adventures of Scott and Sam in this work was a delight—my only complaint is that I was stung by an absolute desire to join them. The gusto and passion they have for this land comes through on every page."
—Steven L. Peck, author of The Scholar of Moab and A Short Stay in Hell
"Imagine Plato’s Phaedrus and a field guide to Utah fauna and flora left in an inside pocket of a sweaty, oft-used CamelBak get acquainted and copulate. The wise progeny, scratched and scented, philosophizing its way out, would be Wild Rides and Wildflowers, coauthored by Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth."
—Larry Menlove, for The Provo Canyon Review
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
377 pages, Paperback
First published March 18, 2013
2 people are currently reading
167 people want to read
About the author
Scott Abbott
17 books5 followersScott Abbott likes to think of himself as an architect, builder, and custodian of prosperous companies, leadership, and growth. He has 35+ years of credentialed experience and expertise launching, operating, buying, and selling great companies. Along the way, Scott has worked with hundreds of startups, small, midsize, and Fortune 1000 companies. He has raised over $35M+ in venture capital, with several successful exits (and some not so successful). In total, Scott has led teams and organizations that generated billions in sales, serviced thousands of clients, and hired hundreds of employees. He is a finalist for the E&Y Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award, a former Entrepreneur in Residence at Indiana University Kelley School of Business, Inc. 5000 Winner, Fast Company Executive Board Member, hosts a top-rated podcast, and is the author of 4 best-selling books, including BOS-UP, BOS-UP Moments, The Co+Factor, and Level-UP to Professional. For the record, Scott likes to emphasis that he’s also learned a lot, through a truckload of failures and mistakes.
As for his current professions and passions: he has the joy and privilege of being the Founder & CEO of BOS-UP, Straticos, and Phase4 Investments. He’s also a Business & Executive Coach, Angel Investor, and Board Member. Most of all, Scott loves helping good and caring people - along with team-centric organizations - effectively learn, implement, and leverage the essential concepts, tools, and disciplines for exceptional leadership, management, teamwork, and accountability: in business, work, and life.
Learn more about Scott at http://www.scottabbottabc.com and connect on social media @scottabbottabc.
As for his current professions and passions: he has the joy and privilege of being the Founder & CEO of BOS-UP, Straticos, and Phase4 Investments. He’s also a Business & Executive Coach, Angel Investor, and Board Member. Most of all, Scott loves helping good and caring people - along with team-centric organizations - effectively learn, implement, and leverage the essential concepts, tools, and disciplines for exceptional leadership, management, teamwork, and accountability: in business, work, and life.
Learn more about Scott at http://www.scottabbottabc.com and connect on social media @scottabbottabc.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 25, 2014
"Getting Off the Mountain Alive" Review of Wild Rides and Wildflowers by Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth. Originally reviewed by Larry Menlove in The Provo Canyon Review: http://www.theprovocanyonreview.net/l...
Imagine Plato’s Phaedrus and a field guide to Utah fauna and flora left in an inside pocket of a sweaty, oft-used CamelBak to get acquainted and copulate. The wise progeny, scratched and scented, philosophizing its way out, would be the new book coming in March 2014 from Torrey House Press titled, Wild Rides and Wildflowers, coauthored by Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth.
Culled in part from a monthly column written for Catalyst Magazine at the turn of this century, the authors, Rushforth and Abbott, both accomplished academics, strike a deal with nature and with their aging selves to ride mountain bikes on a portion of the Great Western Trail under the shadow of Mt. Timpanogos through all seasons and painstakingly note what they see, hear, and touch. To report on their lives filtered through wildflowers, weeds, butterflies, careers, trail conditions, lichens, faith, prostate health, relationships, conservation, birth and death, and the lazuli bunting, to name but a few.
“‘You’re talkin’ like a book, Abbott,’ I say. ‘Let’s drop the bullshit and see if we can get off the mountain alive.’” Rushforth says this to his companion who has just called to mind the works of
Greeks and Romans, Thoreau and Goethe, of “growing up white and male and Mormon in the mountain West.”
It’s true enough. They do sometimes talk like a book. Dialogue that is filled with dense research, perfect diction, and erudition. It took a couple of pages for me to settle in to that style, but once I had been on a few “rides” with these guys I was compelled to follow like a dewy freshman on a field trip pedaling like mad to keep up with Phaedrus and Socrates in their Lycra robes who were always disappearing around the next bend and dip in the trail where I found them just as likely sprawled on their backs from a fall or else butt-up head-down close examining the pink-tipped reproductive organs of Claytonia lanceolata.
I’ve personally ridden most of the trails that are documented, though I can’t be certain I’ve conquered “Frank.” Frank is a high hidden trail with loose rocky chutes, C-turns, and jersey-grabbing oak branches. Frank is their fate. Frank is where their conversation often turns to the complicated. Here they discuss religion and death and divorce. At the outset both Abbott and Rushforth are teaching at BYU. Both are dissatisfied with the lack of academic and intellectual freedom they find there, and both move on to take positions at the neighboring state college, UVSC, and nourish their developing philosophy on life and what might come next. Rushworth says:
"As I see it, our lives are like the wildflowers we enjoy so much. They can be beautiful and wonderful, but they are, naturally, short-lived. To deny the ephemeral nature of our lives is wrong—it robs us of the beauty of the moment. This Earth and our time here are not trivial or everlasting. It’s what we have. We can’t pretend this life is not important, hoping the next life is more important. We can’t diminish the beauty of a relationship, the glance of a dear friend, the unexplained event that creates love and beauty, however temporary." (pg. 301)
Abbott’s marriage melts and erodes like a snow bank that deters and slows their path in the spring, but on the other side they find “glacier lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) in a small fellfield. A couple of hundred plants, yellow petals turned back on themselves, rise[ing] from the wet soil at the edge of the snow.” Abbott worries for his children, but he recognizes as he has chosen his own path, his own migration, so will they. There is an innate call in everything to survive. All is like the “lazuli bunting, Passerina amoena. The familiar bright cinnamon breast above a white belly. Two white slashes across the dark wings.” The bird that returns each year always within the same few weeks in May to the canyon and hillsides with its “quick, high-pitched song.”
Abbott and Rushworth most often chew over the decline of the environment: the winter inversions of Utah Valley that so readily serve as a gray backdrop to their rides; the love-hate of non-native plants and animals that subtly shift the balance of nature; and the overgrazing by both man and beast that leaves an uneasy echo of that love and hate when Rushforth encounters a cattle drive on Highway 12 in southern Utah:
"Two cowboys, one old, one young, ride at the back of the herd. The young cowboy sits on a big buckskin. “Good-looking horse,” I tell him. “Thanks,” he nods and rides on. The other cowboy, who won’t see seventy again, rides over and smiles. “Beauty is as beauty c’n do,” he says. “I got horses back in my barn prettyr’n that horse and they don’t look half as good.” This while a cow pisses next to me, a great yellow gusher that splashes me up both legs.
"Makes an old green activist wonder about the future of the cowboy, about the interactions between the old west and the new. Makes me wonder how we can learn to talk together long enough to solve our differences." (pg. 49-50)
Over the course of five years our intrepid Phaedrus and Socrates fall from their mountain bikes so often that one would wonder how it is they find the pleasure in getting back up and on the bike to clip in and pedal ever higher. But they do, and they do it with joy. They are their own metaphor for the lonely earth they chronicle that seems to be in a constant state of crash and fall and rejuvenation. These men hope the earth, like them, can continue to rise and find its own way on, to always be, however flawed, a thing of natural beauty.
Abbott: “We’re aging,” I tell Sam at the top, “and our rides are growing less and less wild, but there will always be wildflowers.”
Imagine Plato’s Phaedrus and a field guide to Utah fauna and flora left in an inside pocket of a sweaty, oft-used CamelBak to get acquainted and copulate. The wise progeny, scratched and scented, philosophizing its way out, would be the new book coming in March 2014 from Torrey House Press titled, Wild Rides and Wildflowers, coauthored by Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth.
Culled in part from a monthly column written for Catalyst Magazine at the turn of this century, the authors, Rushforth and Abbott, both accomplished academics, strike a deal with nature and with their aging selves to ride mountain bikes on a portion of the Great Western Trail under the shadow of Mt. Timpanogos through all seasons and painstakingly note what they see, hear, and touch. To report on their lives filtered through wildflowers, weeds, butterflies, careers, trail conditions, lichens, faith, prostate health, relationships, conservation, birth and death, and the lazuli bunting, to name but a few.
“‘You’re talkin’ like a book, Abbott,’ I say. ‘Let’s drop the bullshit and see if we can get off the mountain alive.’” Rushforth says this to his companion who has just called to mind the works of
Greeks and Romans, Thoreau and Goethe, of “growing up white and male and Mormon in the mountain West.”
It’s true enough. They do sometimes talk like a book. Dialogue that is filled with dense research, perfect diction, and erudition. It took a couple of pages for me to settle in to that style, but once I had been on a few “rides” with these guys I was compelled to follow like a dewy freshman on a field trip pedaling like mad to keep up with Phaedrus and Socrates in their Lycra robes who were always disappearing around the next bend and dip in the trail where I found them just as likely sprawled on their backs from a fall or else butt-up head-down close examining the pink-tipped reproductive organs of Claytonia lanceolata.
I’ve personally ridden most of the trails that are documented, though I can’t be certain I’ve conquered “Frank.” Frank is a high hidden trail with loose rocky chutes, C-turns, and jersey-grabbing oak branches. Frank is their fate. Frank is where their conversation often turns to the complicated. Here they discuss religion and death and divorce. At the outset both Abbott and Rushforth are teaching at BYU. Both are dissatisfied with the lack of academic and intellectual freedom they find there, and both move on to take positions at the neighboring state college, UVSC, and nourish their developing philosophy on life and what might come next. Rushworth says:
"As I see it, our lives are like the wildflowers we enjoy so much. They can be beautiful and wonderful, but they are, naturally, short-lived. To deny the ephemeral nature of our lives is wrong—it robs us of the beauty of the moment. This Earth and our time here are not trivial or everlasting. It’s what we have. We can’t pretend this life is not important, hoping the next life is more important. We can’t diminish the beauty of a relationship, the glance of a dear friend, the unexplained event that creates love and beauty, however temporary." (pg. 301)
Abbott’s marriage melts and erodes like a snow bank that deters and slows their path in the spring, but on the other side they find “glacier lilies (Erythronium grandiflorum) in a small fellfield. A couple of hundred plants, yellow petals turned back on themselves, rise[ing] from the wet soil at the edge of the snow.” Abbott worries for his children, but he recognizes as he has chosen his own path, his own migration, so will they. There is an innate call in everything to survive. All is like the “lazuli bunting, Passerina amoena. The familiar bright cinnamon breast above a white belly. Two white slashes across the dark wings.” The bird that returns each year always within the same few weeks in May to the canyon and hillsides with its “quick, high-pitched song.”
Abbott and Rushworth most often chew over the decline of the environment: the winter inversions of Utah Valley that so readily serve as a gray backdrop to their rides; the love-hate of non-native plants and animals that subtly shift the balance of nature; and the overgrazing by both man and beast that leaves an uneasy echo of that love and hate when Rushforth encounters a cattle drive on Highway 12 in southern Utah:
"Two cowboys, one old, one young, ride at the back of the herd. The young cowboy sits on a big buckskin. “Good-looking horse,” I tell him. “Thanks,” he nods and rides on. The other cowboy, who won’t see seventy again, rides over and smiles. “Beauty is as beauty c’n do,” he says. “I got horses back in my barn prettyr’n that horse and they don’t look half as good.” This while a cow pisses next to me, a great yellow gusher that splashes me up both legs.
"Makes an old green activist wonder about the future of the cowboy, about the interactions between the old west and the new. Makes me wonder how we can learn to talk together long enough to solve our differences." (pg. 49-50)
Over the course of five years our intrepid Phaedrus and Socrates fall from their mountain bikes so often that one would wonder how it is they find the pleasure in getting back up and on the bike to clip in and pedal ever higher. But they do, and they do it with joy. They are their own metaphor for the lonely earth they chronicle that seems to be in a constant state of crash and fall and rejuvenation. These men hope the earth, like them, can continue to rise and find its own way on, to always be, however flawed, a thing of natural beauty.
Abbott: “We’re aging,” I tell Sam at the top, “and our rides are growing less and less wild, but there will always be wildflowers.”
May 12, 2025
The nichest of books but it happens to be MY niche.
March 19, 2014
"Following the conversations and adventures of Scott and Sam was a delight--my only complaint is that I was stung by an absolute desire to join them. I wanted to step into the book with them and ride the trails they were riding, to explore the landscape they obviously loved and knew well. I wished to accompany them as they discussed philosophy, memory, religion, place, botany, and the ecological diversity of one of my favorite places on Earth. I longed to share directly in their wit, humor, wisdom and foolishness (of the best kind). However, that being impossible, this is a wonderful substitute. So I'm grateful and content that at least I got to share their rich world through this remarkable book. The gusto and passion they have for this land comes through on every page."
August 4, 2017
These stories worked better when they were first published in a monthly magazine. They were fun and thought provoking and were always the first thing that I read in Catalyst. The two authors have a remarkable friendship; their observations on life and the universe were at the same time amusing and profound. However, reading each essay one after the other in book format became a little tedious. It became more of a study of two aging men going through their individual midlife crises and I have to admit that I was glad to get to the end of the book. My advice to a reader starting this book would be to pick it up now and again, take a year to read it. It is well written and entertaining, but it is a book where the sum is definitely not greater than the parts.
September 3, 2017
Delightful. What an entrancing idea to stick to the same trail and record its variations and recurring features. What an entrancing idea to stick to the same two friends and record their evolution and entertaining banter. Sam Rushforth is what happens when Robert Kirby becomes a PhD in biology. Scott Abbott is Novalis reincarnated. They both should have buildings named after them at UVU.
The end was jarring though. How does this impact their riding, and their friendship?
The end was jarring though. How does this impact their riding, and their friendship?
February 14, 2018
Fun to read. Interesting. Overall, an enjoyable read.
March 3, 2021
Wonderful encounters with flora and fauna, with all of their species' names, in the mostly Utah Valley and mountains area. Also thoughts on academic freedoms and mid life changes.
April 12, 2014
Abbott and Rushforth read at The King's EnglishTwo men stand silhouetted against an sublime sunset, scholars perhaps, contemplating their place in the cosmos. Such is the cover image,suggested by author Scott Abbott, by 19th -century German Romantic landscape painter, Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich's paintings characteristically set a human presence in perspective in expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension." A smart, appropriate and elegant cover for a smart and elegant book . Of course, then a mountain bike ran over it. (see it here)
The best thing about publishing has been the people we meet. Scott Abbott and Sam Rushforth are smart, passionate, highly educated men. Not to mention strong enough to conquer mountain bike trails that put younger men to shame. Last night they opened Wild Rides and Wildflowers at the incomparable King's English Bookstore in Salt Lake to a standing room only crowd. Before the reading we grabbed dinner next door to the store with Scott and Sam and the women they dedicated the book to, Lyn and Nancy. Sam and Nancy have just retired from Utah Valley University while Scott and Lyn continue their stint there a while longer. Dinner conversation ranged from publishing to how death and dying is taught and covered in the humanities. You should have been there.
Next door, as they elegantly took us through the book, alternately making us laugh and cry, I was hit by one of those moments of clarity where I was glad to be a publisher and proud that we had a part in making this work see the light of day. These men are full of heart and love. The proof is in their lives. No less than three of their sons came up to Kirsten afterwords thanking her for publishing their dad's work. I think she was feeling pretty happy too.
-Mark Bailey
February 23, 2017
I received this book, for free, in exchange for an honest review.
This book is a well written ode to nature and bicycling.
Contrary to the book's description I don't find much spirituality in this book. The author comes off as pretentious and self-righteous. I don't think many people will receive insights from this book, but to be fair I have a certain ideal for a spiritual person and I could be judging this book unfairly for not meeting that ideal. That being said, I would highly recommend this book to cycling enthusiasts, but not to seekers
This book is a well written ode to nature and bicycling.
Contrary to the book's description I don't find much spirituality in this book. The author comes off as pretentious and self-righteous. I don't think many people will receive insights from this book, but to be fair I have a certain ideal for a spiritual person and I could be judging this book unfairly for not meeting that ideal. That being said, I would highly recommend this book to cycling enthusiasts, but not to seekers
February 5, 2015
Scott is my cousin, and he sent me a copy with a very nice inscription. I have thoroughly enjoyed a slow read of this book. So many references to his life journey which have given me much insight into who he is now. When I reached the final few pages I found myself grieving that I would be finished. I have dog-eared many pages for future reference. I also enjoyed all of the botancal conversatioins and enjoyed learning more aobut the birds and bees, so to speak.
December 16, 2015
I enjoyed reading this biking/botanizing diary when the columns appeared in Salt Lake Observer and then Catalyst Magazine, but it is even better compiled into a book where the philosophizing coheres into a whole narrative of midlife crisis and grief for the world.
July 26, 2017
I liked the wilderness writing aspects of this book, but wasn't in the mood for the religious politics nor the swearing.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews