Naturally Renewing

There are mornings where just looking at the mountains causing such a stirring in my heart – I guess you could call it joy, or gratitude, or excitement for life – whatever it is, it makes me happy to be alive.

And I wonder if it’s because the mountains are a place I have always been taken to get away from the worries and stresses of life, away from school and work and the never-ending presence of other people and buildings and cars. A place I equate with being alone and at peace with nothing to prove and no one to prove it to.

Because as much as I love socializing and getting to know new people, there is a part of me that will always needs its space to figure out who I am away from the confusion of other ideas and opinions and theories and personalities and beliefs. How am I like these people and how am I different? Too many presences of other people pressing on my own sense of self overwhelms me, drowns me in its complexity, and I have to run to someplace devoid of the evidence of human civilization to slowly be able to let my own self seep through again.

I suppose that’s why I find such joy in riding my bike. Nobody can keep up with me, nobody wants to, I can look at the houses and the mountains and the trees and not worry about anybody looking at me.

Most days I go down to the trail by the river, pavement surrounded on one side by a darkly flowing river and on either side by trees, now changing color to match their cousins in the mountains.

This is heaven. The wind, the smell of water, the leaves falling and covering the path, no one expecting me to talk or think or do anything but keep those wheels moving, round and round and round and round, and it feels so good to run away from the things that stress me most.

And sometimes I find a place where I can walk my bike down to the bank of the river, and I leave my bike behind with my stress as I walk along the packed-down dirt and stones and plants. And sometimes I just sit and memorize the ever-changing pattern of the river’s flow, or the way the trees grow sideways off the bank on the opposite side.

And, if it’s not too muddy, I take slow steps into the river itself, letting the coldness of it flow over my sandal-shod feet on its way to where it’s going from wherever it’s coming from.

And while it would be interesting to find out where those places are, all that matters right now is that at this moment in time the water is running over my toes, cooling my feet and calming my soul. I watch the water as it goes, and marvel at how it’s always replaced by more water in a never-ending cycle of renewal.

And with that constant renewal of water comes a renewal of the worn-down pieces of my soul, and again I feel excited to be alive.