I woke earlier than usual. Civil twilight comes at a quarter past six here in Colorado in late February and, as a deaf person, my alarm is not sound but the soft glow in the bedroom window. But what roused me that morning, as much as anything, was the prospect of warmth. January and February felt unusually long, dark and cold this year. There were pleasant days of sun but also stretches of days where an inversion sat low and oppressive over the Front Range, temperatures so cold I set the troublesome faucet in the basement to drip as a precaution against a frozen pipe.
But that morning, as I shuffled downstairs to make the coffee, I knew it had remained windy overnight, which meant warm. When light and temperature allow, my strong preference is to ride first thing in the morning, in the quiet of the dawn when the world is just stretching itself awake to long rays of low sun. In autumn, it’s almost always fading light that curtails my early morning excursions. But in spring, temperatures remain below freezing long after the sun first brightens the sky. Those March mornings when it’s both light and warm enough to ride early without bundling up are rare gifts; in February, almost unheard of.
My mind tells me not to get excited. False spring never lasts. False spring is a trick, a cruel feint that causes the buds on the pear trees to swell and the crocus and hyacinth bulbs to burst forth, only to be met with a reversal as swift as it is capricious. And it is just one day this week when this precious morning window opens. But even on the other mornings when I step outside and can see my breath, I know the temperatures will still warm by mid-day and the winds will not seem so fierce, and I cannot help myself but to gorge eagerly, greedily even, on the bounty.
Every spring, the anticipation builds for that day when I can reliably ride at first light. But it feels more present than ever this year. It wasn’t just the literal cold and dark but a winter of the soul for our entire household. The hollow ache of the loss of a beloved pet. The anxious precarity of a job in the balance. And above all, a world that seems to have gone not only mad but callous and cold, a meanness settling like that chilly gray blanket of inversion, pressing down dark and polluted and heavy.
I am fortunate never to have struggled with mental health. My blues are ephemeral and inconstant, easily managed with a little time outside, preferably in the woods on bikes or skis. But this winter, there has not been enough time outside to manage the world's chaos and confusion and, honestly, could not be. So while I welcome the coming of those dawn patrol rides, for the first time in my life that anticipation is tinged with disquiet.
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