Vaya con Rios

No apologies for the post title. I've been storing that one up.

A quick hour or so early on a Sat. morning, before the townfolk are on the roads, down to a peaceful area along the Connecticut River in Hadley, a place where everyone goes for solace, beauty, reconnection.

First the gravel roads down there, described in a recent post, then wound my way onto a six-inch-wide trail through a cornfield, the leaves whacking me bupbupbupbupbup -- first time I've been shucked by corn -- and I am wet through my clothes by the end of one row. Onto the footpath, at first a raised bed that runs above the fields. I stop and lay the bike down to stand at one particular place where, in the early mornings, you can face east to the ascending fire of the sun, masked comfortably behind a single regal tree rising at the edge of a cornfield. Birds singing madly everywhere, a little tai chi breathing and gazing at the amazing. Crops EVERYWHERE, as far as the I can see... green, green, green... redolent musk of flowers, moist warm earth, pollen, basically the perfume of GROWTH and LIFE hanging heavy in the heavy air. Clouds burning off.

A few hundred yards down that path, I'm riding along the river, mist rising off mirror-still water, birds yet in concert all around, and the sole human in sight a fellow out on a scull, the morning so gentle I can hear his oars (if that's what they're called in sculling) working in their fixings. I race him along the path, back to the road, and then I'm off up the hill by more farms and farms, 'til I pull on to our lawn.

Yes. This is where I live.