Electro Lights
“Dad, ya need to brush your teeth so you don’t get stung by a bee.” -Mae
“We are no longer achieving an acceptable level of whimsy.” -Parker Richards
Discarded pumpkins and brown mums peek out from slushy, matted leaf piles. Meanwhile, the late autumn daylight gets short like my fitness. A few rays surrendered every day. Waistband tighter? Check. Legs heavier? Check. Better for tolerating the already frigid Mettawee. We still ride, just slower, past the early Christmas decorations and under the shedding trees. The kids flock to leftover halloween candy like retirees at the Homestead Road estate sale. I test most of the Reese's for safety. All of this change is welcome. There is a time for every season and a new one has arrived. Of the 282 hours spent in the saddle this year, most of it isn’t remembered in sharp video-like scenes. What remains is a warm, fresh nostalgia from getting outside regularly. The residue of a practice well-maintained and the knowledge that there’s no guarantee of it being repeated. How can you? The weather is never the same, the routes morph, roads are paved, the mix of people and moods evolve. It’s impossible to repeat anything but always worth another try. Strength in going again.
It’d be lazy to categorize this season of my life as unimportant, wrapped in vague strava stereotypes, privilege and dad-joke cliches. It’d be cheap to dream up a few cool sentences about how epic it all was and call it a day. Maybe color these days as perpetually exciting and effortless and easy? Make it a tidy lesson like a plastic license plate border that says “Enjoy Life”. I say throw-away things all the time and they’re generally accepted. “The vacation was a blur.” “The ride was hard.” “I’d be a lot cooler if it was Friday.” I could say it, yet I’d be embarrassingly short on truth. The truth is, many times, my life has not been a blur. There’s moments when I’m a keen observer where my canvas is blank, open to the colors of the world. I’m fueled by these uncomplicated moments of clarity and I sometimes have them on the bike. The wood grain bends, there’s a small pool in the rocky stream, a fallen tree surrenders to the green forest floor and becomes dirt. Physicist Carlo Rovelli said, “Between observation and understanding, the road can be long.” I welcome the road and don’t care to understand it.
We all click off our lights and my eyes adjust slowly. Once they do, my breath unexpectedly catches in my throat. The unencumbered full moon pushes light everywhere in a midnight sky. Our bikes glide over the second undulation on Wilbur Ave., facing Willard Mountain. Something expands in my chest, Grinch-like and whatever it is, it takes my voice and surprises me. It’s an experience with no words as my eyes reveal the night landscape surrounding Odd Duck Farm. Through my visible breath, starlight reflects off the pond to our right. Everything is uncomplicated and simultaneously complex. I’m not on the edge of experience at that moment. I am.
Things can be hard without being a hardship and the last five steps out of Moreau Lake are suddenly unquestionably hard. Seaweed tangles my toes and the inside muscle of my right leg has gone full cramp. November has made the water less welcoming, more intense. The makings of the cramp started five hours earlier, as we eeked the requisite speed to keep Brad’s three person bike upright, all pushing off at the same time with our left feet. We lumbered out of the parking lot with the 70 pound steel frame below us, never speeding up too quickly or slowing down too quickly. Ducks in the feeder canal scatter at the sight of us or maybe they’re scared of the huskies that we shared the path with. After the ride, we ran up to the overlook, slippery, leathery oak leaves under foot. At the overlook, the lake looks like a puddle. It looks altogether different as we get ready to jump in.
The late smell of cattails and honeysuckle swirl in the air as a farmer meets us unhappily with his right hand on his hip. We’re almost off his double track and nearly back on asphalt and not nearly as lost as we’d like to appear. The corn stalks bend toward us, creating a tan tunnel and a shock of red maples block a John Deere pulling a manure spreader in the distance. It’s not the lawn mower variety. I put my shoes back on after the creek crossing and apologize to the farmer for making narrow tracks on his muddy path. We all make sure we’re well out of range before shots of laughter echo past the porta-john and deep into the trees.
I come back into the house, the outside temperature like a sharp note designed to build tension in a song. The smell of the cinnamon and lemon in a warm house is the resolution of the tension. I look to my left and the garbage drawer is pulled out, the garbage bucket akimbo and a new white plastic trash liner is half installed and twisted. It’s untidy and beautiful and I realize that either Will or a racoon has taken the trash out and attempted to replace the liner.
Brad sits on my shoulders and I can tell he still needs more height as he strains and reaches toward the ripe cherries ten feet above us. Others mill and offer jokes and words of encouragement in the chilly air. The Erie Canal rests like a liquid arrow pointing east, tapering into the distance on our right. There’s a road to our left. Below us is the wet stone dust of the path that will wind us through the rusting steel bridges of Montezuma Nature Preserve, through the clogged urban landscape of Syracuse and eventually back home. In the meantime, I push up onto my toes and lift Brad a little higher. A rouge cherry hits me on the top of my helmet and thunder rumbles in the distance, gathering speed.
We didn’t know how cold and wet it would be. If we did, the adventure up Kelly Stand Road in Vermont would have been snuffed out before it started. We didn't know the wet white sand would chew through brake pads and sting eyes and grab tires. The bourbon-colored Battenkill river snakes past Hawley Mountain Road, unflinching. Arm warmers flail against the elements. Jamie works to open his eyes fully against the sandpaper spray. The clouds open up again and again. The rain doesn't care that our gloves stopped working hours ago.
It's 2005 in Colchester, Vermont, and I sit on the concrete pad behind Townhouse 319 at St. Michael’s College. It’s late fall and we just finished another soccer practice. Hollowed out from running within the lines on a level field, I stare into the trees. A single rider from our college mountain bike team rides by, his rear hub buzzing. He was up on his toes, fresh, eyes straight ahead. I was wrapped in the warm cocoon of a team sport with locker rooms, uniforms and celebrations. When we would go down a goal, we’d ‘chase the game’. When we’d go up a goal, we’d ‘park the bus’. Within that framework, I realized that taking a road to nowhere was a radical, silly act. No referees, no clock, no coach, no plan. Someday I’d be brave enough for that freedom. Not today. I went back inside and cracked a can of electro light.
The smell of cigarette smoke drifts from a stack of returned paperwork on my desk. My email has never performed this feat. I’ve never smelled a text. Technology has always felt intuitive to me and sometimes I wish it didn’t. I’m a floundering luddite so I try to make technology as clunky as possible, putting restrictions on my phone to keep my chin up to the horizon, my nose into the wind. Setting a sand timer instead of a digital one. Starting a wood fire in the sauna a few times a week. Lighting a flame lantern instead of an LED one. I was born into an analog world and maybe we discarded too much of it. On cue, an email appears in my inbox. A higher educational expert referring to the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) states, “There’s a delay in the start of the form due to the complexity of the simplification.”
I wonder how complex simplification needs to be and close my laptop.
木漏れ日,
Andy
