The Longest Day of the Year

Heavy downpours all last night and into the early morning. Humid. Then mist and low gray clouds into the early afternoon. Then clearing. Sunday afternoon. Languid thick air, everything verdant, pulsing with green. Photosynthesis hum. The giant neighborhood trees regal and still, the air breeze-free. Stillness. Sun in blue sky while the clouds break up and spill away.

I hadn't planned to ride but opportunity presented itself late in the day. It was after 6:00 when I wheeled out of the driveway and rode passed Elm Park with its steamy playground and massive oak trees, its scores of park-goers promenading in the after rain moistness. The climb up to Beechmont St, then through the neighborhoods up near Salisbury St and Assumption College, then Walter St and down into Tatnuck and onto the Reservoir loop road.

Swath of the primordial

Most of the road around the reservoir was just paved. It happened while I was distracted, perhaps during a gap of a week or more when I rode elsewhere, or wasn't riding. When I came this way a week ago, voila, new pavement. Now it's beyond perfect. And tonight in particular - no cars, fecund forest thick with hardwood trees alternating with stands of healthy pines on one side, and the reservoir utterly still like an eleven mirror pool on the other.

Becalmed in thick quiet

Despite the big mountain summit 47 miler yesterday, I don't feel completely beat tonight and I settle into a happy cadence for significant stretches alone the bank of the reservoir. I imagine myself a damp arrow sluicing through a Bavarian forest, I expect to see a sign for Baden Baden. But there is nothing but me and the pavement, me and the rich green surround. I fly.

Flight in a dream

Parables lurk in the woods along the path but I am hurtling through the cathedral of pines and onto the slopes of the sacred climb. I pedal as if I have been written into narrative, as if my legs were churned by someone else's imagination. Eventually, I emerge into Eden and pass into legend.

Still heading north toward enlightenment

Northern tip of the reservoir looking south
June 21, 2015, late evening

Finally, it occurs to me. Summer solstice. This is the longest day of the year. Warm air washes over me as I whir into oblivion's benign embrace. Up up up Reservoir Rd.'s final climb to the intersection with rt. 31, then turn around and head back down and back along the same western shore toward the Woo.

Glorious new surface