There and Back Again
Yesterday, at 11:00 in the morning, I set out by bike to a place called Smoke Farm, about 10 miles outside of Arlington, Washington. It took me just over six hours to travel those 70 miles; this morning, starting at 6:00 AM, I rode home, arriving at approximately quarter past noon.
The point of my excursion was to visit the farm, where I will probably be taking part in a weekend workshop this summer, tentatively expected to explore what it means and do nothing. The co-owner of Smoke Farm, Stuart Smithers, a professor of Eastern Religion at Pacific Lutheran University, had organized a work party, so I arrived to help out the fifty or so college students he’d rounded up to dig fence holes, demolish tumbledown buildings, lay new flooring in an attic space, and, in general, provide free labor for the place which Stuart and his partners envision to one day be a full-fledged environmental, theological, and philosophical retreat center.
I think, though, my main contribution to the event was to demonstrate that it’s not at all an unreasonable bike ride from here to there.
More the half the trip is on bike trails: for the first 15 or so miles, you follow the Burke-Gilman; then, the major middle section of the ride is on the Centennial Trail, which connects the towns of Snoqualmie and Arlington about 20 miles apart.
The Centennial Trail blew me away; it was practically deserted and for much of it, you couldn’t even hear cars in the distance.
At one point, I thought a magic spirit was following me; for several hundred yards a big-leaf maple leaf was skittering up the trail in my wake; drunk on the beauty of the woods, I could only explain it supernaturally.
Only after firmly convincing myself what couldn’t possibly be happening really was, did I notice the fishing line connected from my pant leg to the leaf.
Still, the whole trip was pretty magical.
The point of my excursion was to visit the farm, where I will probably be taking part in a weekend workshop this summer, tentatively expected to explore what it means and do nothing. The co-owner of Smoke Farm, Stuart Smithers, a professor of Eastern Religion at Pacific Lutheran University, had organized a work party, so I arrived to help out the fifty or so college students he’d rounded up to dig fence holes, demolish tumbledown buildings, lay new flooring in an attic space, and, in general, provide free labor for the place which Stuart and his partners envision to one day be a full-fledged environmental, theological, and philosophical retreat center.
I think, though, my main contribution to the event was to demonstrate that it’s not at all an unreasonable bike ride from here to there.
More the half the trip is on bike trails: for the first 15 or so miles, you follow the Burke-Gilman; then, the major middle section of the ride is on the Centennial Trail, which connects the towns of Snoqualmie and Arlington about 20 miles apart.
The Centennial Trail blew me away; it was practically deserted and for much of it, you couldn’t even hear cars in the distance.
At one point, I thought a magic spirit was following me; for several hundred yards a big-leaf maple leaf was skittering up the trail in my wake; drunk on the beauty of the woods, I could only explain it supernaturally.
Only after firmly convincing myself what couldn’t possibly be happening really was, did I notice the fishing line connected from my pant leg to the leaf.
Still, the whole trip was pretty magical.
posted by Professor Dave at 4:50 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home