Chick-a-dees and Letting Go, Ride # 93

I ride alone. Probably 95% of my rides are solo. That's partly due to circumstance and partly due to choice. Riding alone affords time for reflection, introspection; it's a turning inward powered by repetitive pedal strokes. The meditation is to stay present & mindful in the Riding Moment while at the same time allowing the mind to free flow. One can achieve a sort of physical humming presence of Moment while also meandering through ideas, reflections, and mental landscapes past and present.

Today I rode to the nearby town of Shirley, to the house in which I grew up and where my father was living alone in May 2012 when he passed away. No one has lived in the house since. Yet I pay a neighbor to keep the yard properly mowed, to park a car in the driveway to suggest occupation, to keep an eye on things. My father's estate is still not officially closed after all this time so no decision has been made nor action taken on disposal of the house and accompanying 15 acres of land.

Shad Head & the House, 11/21/13

One thing is certain - I won't ever live in the house again. And yet, despite the logic of letting go and moving on, of transforming the structure and land into money (a tool that can be used to get along in this culture), I ponder schemes that would allow me to hold onto some if not all of the property. There are 15 acres at stake, mostly woods with hemlocks and white pines and some hardwood (old maple trees, younger oaks), also a beaver pond and a swampy area. Most of it isn't suited to development. I think of donating it to conservation but retaining the deed; I think of carving out a couple acres with the old stone wall as a border and keeping it, maybe building a meditation hut on it.

In the long I should just sell it and be done with it. But not yet.

Instead, I ride over there in the late afternoon, it's about ten miles one way, and what do I do? I fill the bird feeders with sunflower seeds. Yes, nearly 18 months after my father died, I'm still feeding the birds. And they are plentiful. Chick-a-dees mostly but also titmice and nuthatches and blue jays and cardinals. I stand still next to the feeders in the gnarled old French lilac bush and the birds' wings hum and whir around me. I delight in their enthusiastic and frenetic darting and feeding.

I realize that I'm sentimental and attached to the damn songbirds!

This I contemplate on the ride back to Lemonstar. I wonder where this quality in me came from, this deep well of sentiment and empathy (some might say pathological sentiment and empathy). It's as if I cannot distinguish between one type of sentient being and another. I grieve for them all, I celebrate them all, I feel responsible for them all. I meditate on this riding back and try to get out of the trap. What would the Zen Master in Zen Mountain Monastery say?

Shad Blur in Ventoux Yellow, Backyard

I also think about what my good friend Mawgz emailed me a couple days ago when we were discussing this very thing, the process of letting go (or not being able to), the reality of Loss and aging and transformation and how it all can weigh on you. He shared a proverb which I paraphrase:

It is a foolish man that trips over something behind him.

It occurred to me with a flash of recognition that I am a foolish man, one who quite easily stumbles.

The house, the birds, the fantasy of small and large mammals living in bucolic harmony in the woods I once roamed, these are my trip wires.

The ride is beautiful but I'm a little later than I want to be getting back to Lemonstar, it's starting to be darker than is safe (despite my rear blinking light and my bright yellow jersey, a gift from Scrod and his triumph at Mont Ventoux). Nevertheless, I pause at the top of the hill by Gove Farm and look down the slope of the last apple orchard in the birthplace of Johnny Appleseed and take in the sunset.

I was strong in the saddle today. The bike rode like velvet; soft and silent.

Sunset over Lemonstar

Ride Stats: Ride # 93. 23.26 miles (37 km), 15.2 mph, 1 hour 31 minutes approx. Temperature in the low 50s; sunny at the start but the sky clouded over as evening approached.