Last night I rode my bike into the wind, one way. Usually, when I ride, it’s into the wind on the way out so when I’m tired, on the way back, there’s a lovely boost. But last night, I rode a long ways, uphill, into the wind. I’d be getting a ride back later. So this was just all hard for the fun of it being hard. No promise of a boost. No easy later to balance out the hard now. I planned it this way.

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I have been thinking a lot about Renoir working on his boating party painting, how he says he has to do this painting, which is a little bit harder than what he is able to pull off. The project will require of him skills he doesn’t have mastery of and he knows this! What strikes me most is how aware he is of what he can do, what can be done, and where he is, technically.

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Last night, it was in the mid-eighties. In Michigan, in May, this is a heat wave of record-breaking proportions.  People stay inside. They go down into their basements! I rolled out grinning. I rode slow. I imagined the air coming up from Mexico. It’s hot, wet, soft, sweet air. Thick. I pedaled evenly and I said this moment, this moment, over and over. I went slow into the wind, my body like a sail—not helpful!—but I had such a beautiful evening on my bicycle.

I saw frogs. I saw turtles and turkeys. Bluebirds, goldfinches, maybe a yellow flicker. I heard owls communicating. I think they were saying are you watching the egg? I’m watching the egg! Are you on it? I’m on it!  I saw the astonishing reflection of the rhododendrons in the river. Two men from Turner fishing in the slough in the late light, another painting to love forever. I saw the hills covered with purple and white phlox. And then a hummingbird came to my cheek. It turns out hummingbirds are scary, beady-eyed little micro buzzards up close, but still, it was very very cool to see one. I walked my bike up the sand road past the blueberry fields.

Not an easy ride. But it was the best ride in a long time. And this post is all about the writing life, not about the bike. It’s about writing. It’s about the plot point.