Things from my evening ride on the bike trail.
1.) I raced a bunny. Everything was fine, until my shadow fell across it. Then it seemed to mutter the bunny-equivalent of “OMFG!” and took a sharp right turn into a cornfield.
2.) Some sumac leaves are turning that bloody, fiery red that says fall is coming.
3.) I found myself pushing the pedals a lot harder when my iPod switched from “Break on Through” to “Roadhouse Blues.” If I were smart I’d make an exercise playlist with songs in an ascending order of thumpiness. But I’m sure to forget unless I write this down somewhere.
I too, race bunnies when I go cycling. Hares seem to be faster, though. Rats and field-mice, not so much — I see their flattened corpses on a regular basis.
I haven’t noticed any hares locally, but it’s only recently that I’ve been able to see through the sweaty red fog that descends on me when I’m biking and actually take note of the countryside as I pass. A week ago I saw three deer in a field by a small stand of trees. The sun was setting and they were strangely luminous against the dark green of the woods. Nothing so very extraordinary, maybe, but not the sort of thing I was used to seeing when I was biking around in a city.
Luminous or numinous?
Sounds lovely, actually.
A bit of both, maybe, now that you mention it. It reminded me a little of the “Three Ravens” ballad, though I’m not sure why.
I’m not familiar with that. Maybe google will be my friend?
It’s this weird old ballad about a dead guy getting buried by his sweetheart, who’s in the form of a pregnant doe. It sometimes appears with a crueller and funnier Scots version “The Twa Corbies”.
How ahead of schedule are the sumac?
–Jeff Stehman
I’m not sure–they seem to be the first thing that goes red around here, and I usually notice them at some point in August (which it just was).
I raced a bunny.
I don’t know why, but this is almost too awesome. It’s nothing like anything I’ve experienced.
Seriously, your shadow probably made the bunny think that you were too close.
You guys are probably right. It was interesting how my noise didn’t seem to bother the little guy but my shadow did.