SPRING SUNDAY: SINGLE TRACK ESCAPE

26 May SPRING SUNDAY: SINGLE TRACK ESCAPE

I was on my mountain bike, speeding down a trail. My mind should have been sinuous singletrack before me. Instead, I found myself focusing on the harder sections of trail up ahead. Would I be able to stay on my bike for all of those steep switchbacks? Could I navigate that rock drop this time? How about those roots—would I remember to keep my speed up?

I was riding my mountain bike through one of the most gorgeous stretches of subalpine forest. The rains had finally lifted, and trees were releasing that good earth smell. The last bit of snow was gone: summer had arrived. And somehow amidst everything going on—parenting, writing, and teaching—I had found an hour to myself. Yet, instead of relaxing, I was worrying.

I forced myself to focus on the trail before me, which for the time being was quite perfect singletrack. The trail rolled along, winding past views of glorious mountains and glorious streams. Still I couldn’t do it. Instead of worrying about the trail, I started worrying about my children’s summer schedules. That progressed into planning dinners for the week, which progressed into planning out my life five years from now. However much I tried to “seize the moment”, I couldn’t do it. My mind kept drifting ahead.

3 year old, Quincy Shoff, lets it fly while biking at Boggy Draw

But as reflected upon it later, I realized that I’m not the first one not to find the release I was looking for in nature. Over 200 years ago, William Wordsworth, complained in the poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” that as he looked at the perfect daffodils swaying before him, he felt none of the lightness he hoped to feel: “I gazed—and gazed—but little thought/ What wealth the show to me had brought.”

Despite our best intentions, we can’t always be in the moment. Can’t see the flowers beneath us or the clouds above us. Can’t even see the trail we’re riding on. But maybe that’s okay. Perhaps we’re absorbing the experience for later days, saving it for a time when we can appreciate it. Wordsworth, it seems, felt the same. He ends the poem with this way:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

Is reading a waste of time because we can’t remember the plot of a story a year later? Is taking a trip futile if we forget our camera? Time spent outside is always worthwhile; if not in the moment, then for the future. We never know when we might need it.