Spinnin' Wheels

I’ve written more than twice that wheels keep twirling inside my skull. They’re ever spinning, never stopping, only rarely slowing down.
I suppose it was preordained by my DNA. It’s simply how I am.
It’s my nature.

I’ve always accepted it, generally benefited from it, and have often been bemused by all the commotion, the constant whirling. Still, one can live too long inside one’s own head.

Oh, how these wheels of thought have spun and twirled these last few years! I’ve been lost in the cogs and the mayhem. I withdrew from the world as I agonized, sifted, sorted, puzzled and pondered. A bit of contemplation is a good and useful thing. An endless glut? Not so much.

Summer grudgingly gives ground to fall. The light slants low, casting glorious shadows. Ensconced within my car, I travel past a forest preserve and notice golden leaves glowing against the dark asphalt of a bike path. I’m overwhelmed with yearning. I was once a runner, padding along wooded trails almost daily...a semi-denizen of the forest. I was healthier, once. Happier. My senses reveled in Nature’s glories. I came to know a few of my fellow wanderers - the deer, coyotes, rabbits, squirrels, owls and crows. I believe a few came to know me.

I hunger to be wild and free again, to feel the sun and wind and rain, again.

I’d traded in my marathon runner’s legs for the legs of an aged man. The cartilage in my knees and hips has eroded to frayed fiber. I can no longer glide along a wooded trail, merely hobble. But the golden leaves, the dappled trails beckon. If I do not answer, if I remain blind and deaf, insentient, I will surely wither and die.

And so I found myself wandering into a bicycle shop. “I need a bicycle for trail riding,” I say. “We have just the thing,” she says. So there I am and there it is, a hybrid trail bike to call my very own.

Dawn arrives cool and comforting. Leaves scamper through the forest. I have returned to the forest, my refuge, my sanctuary, my church. OK, granted, the animal souls peeking at me are somewhat bewildered by this half animal/half machine, but it’s the best I can do. I trust they’ll someday come to accept my chrome and rubber stratagem to, once again, become one with them.

These wheels beneath me quiet the wheels in my head, and take me where I need to be.

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Gratuitous non-sequitor: I have fallen madly, head-over-heels in love with Natalie Dessay.

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