Mental Wanderings

How much better would the day have been if I had spent it like this? Sigh.

The road passes by in a blur. I remind myself to relax and slowly ease off the gas, and the trees slow down and allow my eyes to catch up. It's easy in a car to forget how much nature surrounds you. The windows incubate and anesthetize by allowing only one of the five senses to experience the grand panorama that marches on either side.

On a bike it is different. One becomes a part of that which he observes- consciousness itself is released in small strands that reach and cling outward. This is rare, but it happens. On a late spring day in south Georgia I rumbled down a red dirt road and the yellow pollen struck me wildly in the face in little clouds; birds sang in the drifting wind and the humid heat enveloped me. Hackneyed as it sounds, I knew everything and nothing all at once.

A car, however, merely teases. Like a young girl holding her father's hand at the county fair, one is allowed glimpses of life but forbidden to wander free and alone.

So I pull the care over. In the absence of the engine's motor, the world takes on a new perspective. Things once unheard now blare and trumpet their arrival on the scene. Somewhere in the nearby woods a tiny bird causes a racket by crashing through a pile of leaves. Crickets, growing braver by the moment, begin their nightly song. The sun has not yet set, but for thousands of years crickets have hastened it to its descent; this night is no different. For all they know, they are the reason the sun falls down.

For all we know, they could be right.

I leave the car there, tilted awkwardly on the shoulder, and head in the direction of the woods. After a short time the first leaves glance and kiss my shoulders as I slowly disappear into the foliage.

I do not turn around.