Things had changed at Ira Needles and Erb. New condos were being built on the south east corner, and a new box store was fully grown on the south west. Past it, the high, wide hill leading to the dump was a free and open as always. To the north, past the stores, the rising fields of corn still lay open against a background of red and yellow trees and big sky.
Inhale. At the end of the universe, where the city stops, where I can breathe, where wild thoughts have room to fly without crashing, wheren fear empties into freedom and then returns again, fills and empties. I turned north up Ira Needles and followed the wide, curving bikepath. I had decided to go all the way around to Keats Way. I wasn't able to do this last year - I was only able to go part of the way down Ira Needles, and then turn around.
It was longer than I expected. I asked an older woman, walking towards me along the path, if Keats Way was ahead, even though that I knew that it was. She told me it was at the next lights. I feel safe when I ask for directions. They are even safer than a map. This is someone's most ordinary space, their intimate neighborhood.
As the path curved and the lights didn't appear, I began to tighten and then to repeat the woman's words: "Keats Way is at the lights". I was coming up to a pond on my left and everything felt much more open and rural than I remember from my travels up here years ago. I couldn't locate the co-op which I had used to visit. In a moment everything was strange and I felt disoriented, afraid. I continued to repeat "Keats Way is at the next lights", knowing the lights must appear. I was on the very edge of the turn, looking into a colourful forest, the road going right through it, amazed at the abundance of leaves and sky, the feeling of being so far from the city, afraid to be so far, grateful to be among trees, filled with tension.
I thought to myself, imagine you are on the train, and the world in colour is slipping past, while you watch, your mind has let go, you have given over to movement towards your destination. No will, just waiting, watching. My mind emptied into the circles my legs were making, the quality of the air, and the colours of the big gathering of trees ahead.
The tension in my body hummed under the emptiness of mind, building as the scenery became more unfamiliar to me, particularly so because I expected to recognize it. As it sharpened, in my belly, my shoulders and then spiking into my brain, I made hasty plans to retreat back down Old Erbsville Rd, and then scared myself thinking I would find it also too unfamiliar. I told myself that I must continue to empty my mind and move forward, that this mind and body motion were my salvation and my sanity, my peace of mind, my reality. And then I recognized where I was, as it sometimes happens, when a landscape re-arranges itself to fit a memory - at the joining between the Erbsville Road and Ira Needles. Then I knew I must be close to Keats Way, and then, up ahead through the trees, I saw the lights.
I knew I wouldn't go further west or north today, although my imagination was delighting at what lay within and beyond the colourful west woods, and my memory took me north down Erbsville Road to the town of Erbsville, to Conservation Drive, to the farmer's fields and little woodlots beyond, golden in my memories of late summer evenings of over 10 years ago. Instead, I pedaled more slowly and breathed in the expanded moment.
Turning down onto Keats Way, I swiveled my head to watch the big tree lot rear up high against the sky, and then I let go and flew down the hill, stopping once to admire the view down a narrow path to the north, following under the power lines for miles, imagining where it came out on Columbia, in that little park where I'd enjoyed the wildflowers after my trip around Bearinger. I turned off Keats Way into Mary Johnston Park, following the bikepath down through the woods where the dirt hills under the trees have been built up into waves for bike tricks. I remembered a day last year, or maybe the year before, where I'd been biking down this path, out in the open section of it, under a wild blue sky, and a very low flying bi-plane had come up so suddenly and violently I was thrilled to my bones, afraid and joyful all at once. I smiled with this sparking memory, feeling that same blast echoing today in my body, the smile a living ritual of remembrance.
Coming out onto Fischer Hallman, I made my way through the suburbs to Clair Lake Park. Instead of going around to the main section of the park, I came down the hill by the school, on the south side, into a little clump of sumacs, buckthorn bushes and old willow trees about 5 metres thick by the lake's edge. In this very quiet and solitary world of small yellow leaves against the sky, trailing grape vines, water like a rippled mirror, ducks, and deep sun on grass,I spent the rest of my morning reading, grieving, meditating, exploring, dreaming, eating and finally, finally, being. The sun was atoning in gentle gold for summer's fire, and prolonging summer dreams more real than those dreamed in July. You can live a lifetime, remembering something that you loved and that loved you, and not quite catching it, and then right before the end, it flashes for a time, that golden moment where you have always existed, and here it is today, a perfect summer day in October. I closed my eyes and faced into the sun, under the lattice of sumac and the grapevines bobbing in the wind.
The week having caught up with me, I left the woods at 12:30 and went to the grocery store, and then home, to put away my groceries and prepare my home for another week.
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