Rogaine Thoughts

Thinking!
You can do that on a mountain bike, and you do a lot of it while you ride.
You think about all sorts of things, like route choices and strategies.
You think about where you are and where you are at.
You think philosophy and know you are free to think.
It’s the feeling of freedom that endures. Your thinking mind is free, detached from the mechanical constraints of place and time.
With your body plugged into your machine your soul can fly.
And it does. Wonderfully.
Memories take you back to your last goodbye, flash forward to your next hello. A fragment thought about a faraway problem, and flash back to the present to avoid a branch, navigate a corner, adjust speed. Philosophise.
It was like that as we rode, William and myself, on the MTB Rogaine in the forests near Dullstroom. William said he noticed how broad was the range of subjects we spoke about. He said “We speak so much nonsense about everything”. It was true, but isn’t that the nature of friendship? Sharing nonsense. Sharing freedom. Friends in the forest. Friends of the forest.
This is how it should be. The openness of the grasslands merging with reeds at the marsh. The marsh merging with the lakes. The forests running up the hills. Green forests. Brown grasses. Blue and yellow veld flowers intense in their freedom.
Here, there are not many people. It’s like this for miles around. No others to invade our thought space, to intrude with impatience and rudeness. Brash, in your face bustle. City life. Randomly moving crowds. Noisy trucks and cars and endless tar, melting in the heat, unnatural smells that choke the senses from what life should be. Unshared selfish existences. Meaningless.
A buck runs out of the reeds, a little startled by our speed. A hop, a jump and then gone, hidden again. What else lies hidden in the marsh? An owl? Rabbits? A kite looks down at us, unperturbed. Looking for those rabbits?
This is how it should be, and that is how it was.