The other morning J and I pulled out the mountain bikes and rode straight from the house out to Marshall Mesa — this grand sweeping hillside on the south edge of town that for most of the year has been unrideable due to abnormally heavy rains. Even that day, after weeks of beating sun, we splashed through a few puddles, splattering our legs with mud and cow shit, the remnants of the near-daily 3pm thunderstorms.
I think it was one of the most gorgeous mornings of the whole summer. The sun was warm, but not too warm, you know? Enough to make your forehead drip and your lower back a little swampy, but not so hot you wanted to crawl out of your own skin. The runners were out, shirtless, glimmering. No doubt training for some hefty ultra-marathon, 26.2 miles something to spit at. Good on ‘em.
The foothills rolled like green mossy velvet, bunched, wrinkly and rocky. The air buzzed with the hum of a million late summer pollinators while black Angus beef cattle mosied along the hillsides. Deep gray clouds hovered to the west, reminding us of the clockwork afternoon storms we’d need to race against on the ride home.
I spotted flower after flower in the meadows along the bike path — so many of which I’ve recently learned to call by name. That’s gumweed! That’s salsify! That’s Penstemon! Some J and I couldn’t identify and screeched the bikes to a dusty cloud-inducing halt noting the coloration and how many petals and the shapes of leaves, hoping to find their name later in the worn Colorado wildflower field guide we picked up in a used bookshop several years ago. We toted that book around Washington for two years, I think knowing in our own way we’d need it again soon enough.
There were dozens of clusters of prairie dogs, their burrows built right up to the trail edge, chirping and clapping, seemingly fearless. The tiny babies, the little fuzzy beans I’d seen all spring huddled around their mounds now grown — mostly — hard to distinguish from their parents save their ever so slightly smaller bodies.
There were two golden eagles (eyeing the prairie dogs no doubt), and a particularly pettable goldendoodle who nuzzled our palms. Then I spotted three golden retrievers chest deep in a cattle culvert. All kinds of gold scattered all over the landscape.
I’ve been reading Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights and because I am so easily influenced by what I read, my current state of mind is delighted. Once you start reading someone else’s delights, it’s hard not to see them everywhere.
That show Andor on Disney+ that J convinced me to start watching? Delight!
Riding bikes anywhere under the warm summer sun? Delight!
This essay about sandwiches and walking? Delight!
Herbal tea brewed in an actual teapot? Delight!
Outside, the wind is whipping the trees into a lather. The 3pm thunderstorm arriving right on time. The bright red male house finches and their chestnut brown female companions — the only birds I’ve lured to the feeder this season — are knocking seeds around in a hurried frenzy. The tomato plants bump against the bounds of their flimsy wire cages, heavy with green, unripe fruit.
Delight, delight, delight!