Gorgeous

[susanstinson]

It's been hot in my apartment, and so cold in the library where I've been working that I have to bring a sweater, but last night, E wanted to go out on the bikes as soon as she got here, so, even though there was lightening and it was getting dark, we rode out on the dirt roads in the fields behind the small airport. On some parts of the roads, the dirt was soft and deep, so that I had to push with all the muscles in my thighs just to keep moving. Corn and banks of black-eyed susans were high and green (and yellow and brown) on both sides, and the lightening kept up with white and orange bolts and whole sky flashes. It smelled of manure, so much like the barn in Texas. We passed the curved, black end of runway, with its orange windsock, and E kept turning farther into the fields, away from the highway, which we could hear in swells like surf, looking for a way to loop to Venturer's Field Road so we wouldn't have to double back. The Holyoke range, with its blue flanks of old, low hills where Jonathan Edwards picnicked with visiting ministers, got closer, as did dark, except that it was already there, so it wasn't really getting closer, but just more pervasive or intense. We never found the crossroad, and I couldn't do the soft dirt, so we turned and made it home before the storm.