Hooky

I played hooky this afternoon. 70 degrees and sunny, the world just hues of gold and burnt gold and golden gold. I flipped down my laptop in the windowless office, climbed into my bike shorts, consumed the last icecream cone of the year, and set off on my bike.

I went east, towards the lands of Hammond Hill State Forrest, the golden corn set against the auburn hills. Glacier carved hills so prominent and jutting in these parts, and heaving up and around them, I could say the same for my legs after a season biking around here: carved by glaciers. For miles it was just me and crunchy floating leaves; the peace of empty roads with no lines down their middles. My favorite is to see a steep bugger ahead, "oh arg", but there's a decline before it, and I can pedal frenzied enough to coast half-way up the other side. Being out here is leaving the bike lanes and the Priuses of Ithaca, entering instead into space and forest punctuated by diesel trucks, baseball hats, and the occasional horrifically tacky lawn display. In East Nowhere I stopped at a farm store and bought cheese curds, $4 said the sharpie-written cardboard sign, all homespun looking with a quaint clip-art on the label of their zip lock baggie and tasting inarguably of Barn. Delicious. The big man behind the counter was so friendly and refilled my water bottles and gave me free apples.

I biked into the woods a bit, just listening to the trees and the wind. I sat on an outcropping of moss tuft and had thoughts. Just to sit in peace and solitude in a forest is a wonderful thing. I highly recommend leaving work and sitting on moss in the woods for a while sometime.

I thought I'd have some nice profound thoughts while I was there in the peace, but all I could come up with was how incredibly good my life is, and how indescribably blessed and fortunate I am. Also, simply looking at a forest floor, with all the colored leaves, weed species, slanting shadows, illuminated by bright sun: the visual information is almost overwhelming, the shapes and colors...especially contrasted with our constructed simplified creations of indoor walls and office desks.

Being in the warmth, in a forest, on new roads: this was like going on vacation, just not with all the logistics of where the next hotel would be. Pedaling and observing the passing-by of it all.

This is what I love best.

I came home at the same time as I would have if I'd been coming out of the office. Back into the students and the traffic. But instead 31 miles later and with the heady knowledge that there is so much else out there.