“You never know what’s around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.”
― Tom Hiddleston

The urge to explore

Every path into the woods calls to me. When I’m riding along the Paint Creek Trail or Clinton River Trail, I often feel the urge to abandon my bicycle along they wayside to see where each path leads.

Being in the woods takes me back to my childhood and my house in northern Ohio. We lived on an acre lot, with the back half being a wooded hillside. I spent hours alone in the deep cool shade, pulling up rocks, hunting for salamanders, walking through giant spiderwebs that made me gasp, and communing with chipmunks and birds. I built forts and hideouts. I dug traps. I climbed trees. I made my own trail.

Every stick on the ground was a snake. Every floating log in water was a crocodile. Trolls hid in hollow trees. “Bad men” lurked near the road that bordered our property at the bottom of the steep hill; my mother warned me not to go too far. I fancied myself as savvy for six. Any bad man was likely a hobo or bum; they would be hungry and I would offer them a slice of my poisonous mud pie… and that would be that.

When I heard my mother call for dinner, I clambered back up the hill to my house, with grubby knees, dirt under my nails, and covered with bug bites.

Solace in deep shade

I’m sure that’s why I enjoy bicycling along the canopied Paint Creek Trail. It energizes me spiritually and physically. I breath deep and absorb everything. I love the sound of the creek, birds, toads, and cicadas, the wind in the trees, crunch of leaves in the fall. I don’t understand why some people bike with ear buds, or blasting music. It seems like a rejection of the natural world.

“To preserve the silence within–amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens–no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.”  ― Dag Hammarskjöld

I’m that annoying bicyclist who’s weaving all over the trail because she’s looking everywhere else except straight ahead.

It’s pure joy for me. It’s like going home.

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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of the award-winning novel In the Context of Love, a story about one woman’s need to tell her truth without shame.

2017 New Apple Book Awards Official Selection
2016 Sarton Women’s Fiction Finalist
2016 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist
2016 Readers’ Favorite Finalist
2016 USA Book News Best Book Finalist

“…at once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey.” ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage, and critically acclaimed Once Upon a River,and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters