A year ago I accomplished a lifelong dream; a solo, long distance bicycle tour. Half way through the journey, dehydration and dangerous roads forced me to alter my route. The redirect had me crossing the Flathead Indian Reservation in Northwest Montana, along the Mission Mountains around the southern corner of Flathead lake to the west gate of Glacier National Park. Any one of these sights is stunning, but the way they’re piled up in one spot is absolutely breathtaking. On the day I rode there the weather was crystal clear, cloudless and calm.

Initially, the beauty of the scenery was all but obscured by the traffic. Pandemic be damned, the narrow mountain road was clogged with pickups, logging trucks, SUV’s and giant motorhomes. As was the case for most of my trip, motorists did their best to give me space, but I was following the Flathead River through the mountains which meant the road was winding and sometimes the shoulder would all but disappear. I probably don’t want to know just how close some of these vehicles actually came to me. As I pedaled on, a profound irony came to mind. Surrounded by the treeless, razor sharp peaks of Glacier Park, I couldn’t help but feel the tension between the beauty around me and the ugliness of the world and the work I do. The ugliness became clear to me years ago when, early into my journey in the anti-sex trafficking effort, I sat down with my friend Esther. She is a national expert on the trauma inflicted on sex trafficking victims. I asked her to help me better understand this issue. So with great detail and carefully chosen words, she began to unpack the nuances and systemic roots of this heinous evil. At one point I stopped her to ask for clarification. I said, “…so you’re telling me that all across the country men are paying to rape (that’s what non-consensual sex is even when there’s money involved) and abuse young women, boys and girls, and other men are profiting from these transactions?” She looked at me with the satisfaction any good teacher knows when a student gets it and said, “Yes. That’s what this is.” Ugly. That’s what it is. And in the ten or so years since that conversation, I’ve seen a lot of it. I’ve heard the stories of countless survivors who were bought, sold, beaten and abused. Even uglier are the stories of the men who consider it their right and privilege to buy sex and thereby fuel the demand that drives this evil market. Myself and the men I work with have been on the receiving end of obscene text messages, images and not-so-veiled threats of violence including death. The work is ugly. But that day while pedaling along the Flathead river, I recognized a deep and mysterious irony hidden within all this ugliness and it is simply this: beauty is has a restorative effect in the face of evil. There’s so much ugliness in our world today and it’s way too easy to focus on it. True beauty isn’t an escape from ugliness as much as it is a tool that helps you navigate your way through it; and for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, it makes you stronger, and more resilient.

Racial tension, hostile-even lethal political divisions, pandemics, suffering of all kinds; there’s no shortage of ugly to focus on. And I’m guilty of prolonged and obsessive focus on the ugly. I’m a news junkie and over the course of 2020 I feel as if I’ve devolved into a moth drawn to the incessant flame of 24/7 news. But what I’ve learned since that day near Glacier Park is that beauty acts like a vaccine against the the withering effect of the ugliness around us. It doesn’t make the ugliness go away, but it can inoculate us against its most debilitating effects. Beauty is incomprehensibly diverse. Culture and tradition have taught us that things like paintings, sculptures and other more classical styles of art are “beautiful.” This is certainly true, but there’s so much more. We know that nature itself abounds in beauty; sunrise, sunset, storms, wildlife, plant life cry “look at me and find beauty!” If you can learn how to recognize it, you’ll begin to see it everywhere. After 10 years of full time work in the anti-trafficking movement, I began to realize just how desperately I needed beauty.

A couple years ago my organization was asked by the director of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally to host an awareness event in the middle of the largest gathering of bikers in the world. Even if you don’t ride, you’ve probably heard or seen stories about this notorious spectacle. Part of our plans for this event was a motorcycle raffle made possible by the generous donation of a brand new bike from Indian Motorcycle. The bike was a stunning piece of machinery made even more so by a one off custom paint job and thousands of dollars of custom parts. The colors, the lines, the design of the motor and the execution of that design reflected all the key elements of beauty; design, craftsmanship, aesthetics. And the beauty was even more evident by its proximity to some genuine ugliness. The Sturgis Rally attracts more than 1/2 million bikers from all over the world. The atmosphere is not unlike a frat party on steroids…only the frat boys are mostly middle aged men pretending to be outlaws. The streets are filled with overweight, older men wearing leather in 100 degree South Dakota heat. Much of their time is spent drinking and leering at young women wearing next to nothing. The women are there to make money. Bartenders can make several month’s worth of wages during the Rally, but it comes at a cost. They’re required to dress like Victoria Secret models and endure endless corse come-on’s from men. And many of these women (some are even teenagers) are forced to do more. I met one who spent one entire Rally locked in a dark hotel room where she was sold for sex multiple times a day, all day. She was back that year for a much different purpose; to assist in the identification and rescue of victims. I stood at booth on the West end of Lazelle St. with a group founded by a husband and wife who were by all appearances, bikers. Leathers, tattoos and all. They were also licensed therapists and victims themselves of sexual abuse and exploitation. The banner flying over their booth read “Bikers Against Trafficking” and as I stood there talking with “Doc” about their work, he told me that earlier that same day the street was clogged with bikers headed out of town. They were stopped at the light right in front of the booth when he noticed an overweight, weathered old biker. On the back of his bike was a young girl about 16 years old. She looked at Doc, read the sign and mouthed the words, “Help Me!” Before he had time to even write down a license plate number, the light turned green and they roared away. There was nothing he could do to help her. Ugly.

Does the aesthetic beauty of a well engineered motorcycle make up for the hellish abuse inflicted on vulnerable people by privileged men who believe they’re entitled to rent others bodies? Absolutely not. But I can tell you after more than ten years in this work that learning to recognize, name and dwell on true beauty in all its forms acts like a vaccine against the withering effect of chronic ugliness.