I went directly to Columbia Lake, enjoying every turn of my wheels. My mind was steady, and if it was a little distracted, it was distracted by and into emptiness, which is a form of being settled, although not the deepest form. As I came through the narrow hedgerow entrance to the back fields, past the lake, I remembered that during my first trip through here at the beginning of this season (a fast dash in a new territory), I had seen a board swing on a tree overlooking a stream just to the west of this very path. I had meant to stop and explore this spot all summer, but the time hadn't yet been right.
It was a brilliant day, a slow and quiet one, and suddenly I discovered that it might not be a day for exploration so much as for contemplation, and that seemed right. I pulled onto the narrow dirt path surrounded by thick tufts of wild green grass, and left my bike there. I followed the little loamy, hilly path along the side of the stream bed and came to an open space under a spreading willow. The little swing was tied to a branch running along side the stream, and I sat down and watched the bubbling water. The banks on the opposite side were high with grass, and beyond them I could see the pale blue of the lower sky. After a while I climbed into the many low limbs of the willow and looked out of over cornfields, a colourful woodlot dividing them, protecting the little stream all the way to Laurel Creek Conservation Area. The slight mistiness or dustiness of the horizon, the yellow of the fields, the hum of the morning. Freedom is somewhere out there, in the dust or mist. Freedom is sitting here, looking for itself, finding itself, quietly. I listened to birds warbling softly, and the tingle of leaves falling, and the hum of the powerlines nearby.
I took a picture and sent it to my mother, because I knew she would appreciate the charm of this spot. I read for a little while down at the bank of the stream, and watched a Shepherd dog come down and wade in the water near by, then shake off and return to the path. I began to wonder what effect it might have on me to sit under the humming electric lines for so long, and suddenly this charming spot felt a little strange, as though occupied by a mysterious or dangerous or uncertain force, like a beautiful old sunny apartment next to a clinking factory sending out strange odours. I decided to carry on with my trip.
I came up onto the main path again and followed it a little further to the edge of a cedar wood alongside the stream. Crouching down and entering into this dim and burnished space, I was delighted to see another swing. The woods are filled with lovely human surprises, artifacts of beings and doings. I read a little while, and explored a little, admiring bright green moss on an eye level fallen tree branch, and then carried on my way.
I decided to scrap the plan of trying to get any further west and just come up around Bearinger. I felt happy that this had always been the further point of my journeys, a dangerous ground, and now it was familiar and comfortable. I decided to enjoy that feeling today, instead of trying to go further. I stopped in the shade of an old tree halfway up the hill, between the road and the cornfields, and had some water, and looked at my map and felt burstingly happy and filled with bright light. I turned north east and ventured into the unexplored suburbs via Toll Gate Blvd, feeling that familiar thrill of fear in my body at an unknown path. I slowed my mind, became ordinary, and trusted the map. Coming out onto Glen Forest, I experienced a moment of disorientation, knowing that I knew where I was, and yet not recognizing. And again, everything shifted and it was familiar again. I was still holding on to trust, the reliability of roads to return to their usual places after the surreal dances they would do in my mind.
I took the bikepath east through the school yard, past the mysterious yellow woods, and turned at the last minute northeast on Parkside, inspired in a flash of cool wind and sun to see if I could make it out to Benjamin Rd. I pushed with strength and comfort, steady willingness of body and mind, out to and then north on Weber, all the way to the lights at the top of the small hill from the top of which you can look down at see the confields peeking out around the corner of the bush to the east, the Best Western and the outlet mall to the west.
Just to look at these fields, slightly blue and misty, filled with light and space instead of concrete and movement, like what follows when the world as you know it comes to an end, and you realize it is just something so completely different and wonderful as to be incomparable with what you currently experience. Just to look at these fields, in the distance, to be freedom recognizing freedom, to feel something disapear from your mind, to feel nothing replace it, to feel the health return to your bones, to feel air return to your lungs, to feel silence return to your ears and yet within that silence, the natural and obscured answers to simple questions, which you could never hear in the din of the city. Just to look and then I turned around, feeling that it was enough, that fear kept me at this line, and that I was committed, since Riverbend Drive, to never push against fear, but rather, delight in experience.
I came back down Weber all the way to Sugar Bush Park. I was feeling a little tired from sun and exposure, and I also wanted to really sit and read for a while, and this dimly, greenly, sunlit woods was the perfect place arriving at the perfect time. The trees in Sugar Bush Park are magnificently high, so that you find yourself in a great green hall, tiny maple trees covering the floor with a gentle, whispering green carpet, with deep rich brown paths weaving through it. I found a comfortable spot at the base of a tree and settled myself.
I looked at my phone and my mother had sent me a reply to the picture I sent her.
"I should have named you Joy :D"
it read, and I cried, and realized that I was Joy, and always had been, but only now could see it, in this golden green moment under the trees.
My identity is re-written, by my mother, by the trees, by the sunlight, by autumn, by bicycles, by books, by breath. Now I am, can be, in this green space, that which I have loved and dreamed of for so long.
I will return to the city, attend a Thanksgiving dinner, experience anxiety, experience tiredness, go to the house of someone I care for and feel invisible to him, wonder if love makes sense, enjoy a quiet moment with a friend while she eats turkey at 10 pm and I lie on the couch, and then fall asleep, and things will return almost but not quite to ordinary.
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