For me, there are few things as invigorating as a long, quiet bike ride through a place in which natural beauty intertwines with both history and the daily life of town and city dwellers; few things I enjoy more then the contemplation and kind of moving meditation such journeys allow and invite. The Erie Canal bike trail offers them all in abundance if you want them and as the summer nears its end, I was fortunate enough to, once again, experience them.
And very happy I did.
Predictably, Trump signs were abundant, especially in the small towns. Indeed, it seemed to me the more economically devastated the town, the greater the number of Trump signs. I engaged, in fact, in a few conversations over coffee with various Trump supporters that echoed the utter incoherence of Trump himself, minus the man’s viciousness.
So it goes.
To give perspective to America 2016, to Trump and Clinton and all they embody, at the Jesuit shrine in Auriesville, I visited the graves of two recently departed friends to whose lives and teaching I am forever grateful and whose radical humanity I think of daily.
And daily was the green and the silence. And daily was the water.
Flowing.