At some points, engulfed in the rush of the ride, “your head feels like it’s going to pop off your shoulders,” said 2026 Remember the Removal mentor Freida Saylor.
Saylor participated in RTR in 2025, a three-week, approximately 950-mile bike ride that traces the northern route of the Trail of Tears — one path of forced removal of the Cherokee people to Oklahoma from their Southern Appalachian homelands — following the 1830 Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson.