SWITCHBACKS // SUE MINCASTER // GETTING PAST MEMES
Bloomsburg Fair, 2024, By Heather Shayne Blakeslee
Signs of the Times
To connect with our fellow Americans, we have to get past flags and memes
by Sue Muncaster
Volume 7 // Issue 2 // Fall 2025 // Conservation
Six days into a seven-day gravel-bike pilgrimage exploring Idaho hot springs—running on fumes of cheese, hummus, rice, and pesto and dreaming of bread that wasn’t shelf-stable—we clattered into Featherville. The dirt-road hamlet lies southwest of the Sawtooth Mountains and the Frank Church Wilderness, only 70 miles away from the gilded patios of Sun Valley. We couldn’t be more out of place rolling up like a Title IX advertisement gone feral—six women in sweat-glazed tech-wear, backed by a Sprinter van with Arkansas plates and a fire-engine-red rack hauling six equally filthy bikes like trophies from some questionable quest.
This was exactly two weeks before the shooting of Charlie Kirk.
Our last chance to stop before camp, we timidly drove past Cyndie’s Featherville Cafe, covered with Trump-Vance banners letting us know (as if we didn’t already) we were in “ULTRA MAGA COUNTRY,” flying above others promising pizza, hot dogs, ammo, and fishing gear. With a sense of awe tempered by trepidation, our legs tight after a full day of riding, two of us staggered out of the van. As we approached, I frantically waved my hand at my friend’s iPhone, worried she might be caught snapping photos. An upside-down “blue line” American flag in the window, with something about Hunter Biden written in Sharpie, obscured any view of what was inside. I was in the lead and just before turning the door handle, a final double warning caught my eye: “I’m a bitter gun owner clinging to my religion” and “Does not play well with Liberals.” //
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