{from May 2015} I ride a wide road past open fields.  I labor as smoothly as possible up gentle hills and then coast down and around each next bend.  By gum, spring is really at it today.  Grass, birds, leaves, insects, air — all are in the most delicious hurry to show us, to hasten the ever-widening sense of NEW MORE HERE.  Here the trees dressing themselves, rushing to fill back in the spaces between them that have been too stark since last November.  Here the mossy egg-shaped stone that thinks it is as pretty as a dapple gray horse’s shoulder.  Here, and here, and here, small birds dart up frantic from the grass.

The road is smooth and cracked, heaved and settled.  I ride through cooler sudden patches of air.  To my right, Maxwell’s is encouraging their strawberry fields for the paths of wandering June pickers who will park in the grass in neat rows and fan out, who will need no longer than an hour of reaching under the leaves to top up slope-sided cardboard trays.  Then, here — here is the sudden view of the ocean, straight over my shoulder.  A chickadee’s “fee bee!” reminds me of my mother’s voice calling me to dinner on a long-ago summer night.

Why does asphalt sparkle?  I watch the road continuously peeling away under my wheels, marvel at the thousand glints.  I think of talking with an acquaintance who complained that his 3,000 square foot house was not large enough, that he grew up in a 6,000 square foot house, how on earth is he supposed to LIVE in a house smaller than that?  I think of riding home to our very modest house, of having to carefully shift the wide laundry basket so I don’t bump walls as I travel from bedroom to hallway to kitchen to basement.  But: go outside.  Out here, the grass, birds, and leaves signal to you, open your sight wider and wider, invite you to look as far as you want, as long as you want. Out here, your mother is part of the sky, the green grass, the berry fields, the low stone walls, the small joyous stirrings all around.