Up I-80

THANKSGIVING RIDE

MY FRACTURED RIGHT FOOT sufficiently healed from last month’s dog toy incident, I straddle the GSA for a quick loop in the Sierra. The foot works okay and the weather is of those late November gifts that makes one thankful, in a selfish and perverse way, for climate change. It lengthens the riding season.

Above Colfax along the Interstate, the Tahoe is decked in her finest fall fashion. Dying leaves cling to stands of black oak creating acre-sized swaths of gold lamé across the cool evergreen fabric of pine and fir. A late autumn sun admires its part in this work from the southern edge of a crystal, azure sky. “God gets color,” I muse.

Approaching the turn-off for state route 20, I pause at the summit between Nyack and Yuba Gap. The mountains have survived another growing season. Above, their granite flanks dazzle. Below, their expansive forests hush. Snow glazes the highest peaks, and at this elevation, the leaves are gone. The gentlest up-slope breeze prompts me to zip my leather jacket tight around my neck and seek a sunny place to stand for a moment. Remnants of what ploughs pushed aside border the pavement warning me to drive gingerly. Resuming the road, daggers of cold pierce my heaviest riding gloves. All foretells the advent of a winter cold and still.

I HOPE THE SNOW FALLS. I hope it falls in great quantity this season, renewing our aquifer and satiating our over-taxed environment. But I am thankful that the old man had held off until my foot repaired itself so that I could – one last time – touch the beautiful Sierra.

My spirit arrives home soothed.

And my mountains may now rest until spring.

© 2009
Church of the Open Road Press