A Sense of Glee, Joy, Celebration

By Frosty Wooldridge

April 17, 2023

The night before, we slept in the pines along the road on the Lewis & Clark Trail in Montana. We left the main highway on a dirt road that looked very little traveled. Gorgeous scenery everywhere we looked! The night sky featured millions of stars, a full moon, and meteors slashing across the ink-black of space. It was almost like they put an exclamation point at the end of a beautiful day of riding. We cooked dinner over our one-burner stove.

For some reason, food tastes like a Waldorf-Astoria high class seven course dinner every night while pedaling all day. And the trimmings, well, you just can’t beat the sound of a Great Horned Owl hooting in the distance, or crickets chirping, or a squirrel chattering in a nearby tree. Before the sun set, we watched two hummingbirds working a flower patch near our camp.

And the sky, well, those thunderheads lit up with the setting of the sun. Purple-pink dominated the heavens while we sat on our ‘boulder’ chairs watching the Natural World entertain us.

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In the morning, we awoke to a sunny sky, dew drops on the grass and a few spider webs that had been weaved during the night, one of them on the corner of the seat tube and top tube of Sandi’s bike. We felt bad that we had to dismantle it.

After breakfast, we were packing up when a rancher stopped by in his pick-up truck. He rolled down his window, “I don’t want to alarm you folks, but there’s a big grizzly walking down this road in this direction about a mile away.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Sandi, let’s gracefully get these bikes packed and get the heck out of here….”

Have you ever heard of “flashing packing”? Well, we quickly, with a sense of urgency, flash-packed our bikes within minutes. We jumped on them and pedaled out to the road with a keen sense of really being alive. I mean, I’ve been face to face with grizzly bears in my journeys through Alaska. Lucky to be alive after having starred one down outside my tent on the Russian River one morning when I woke up. It wasn’t my day to die. He looked at me only five feet away, and then, walked down to the river. I nearly peed my pants. That’s another story that I will tell….

On the road, east bound, we calmed down rather quickly as we pedaled along beautiful meadows filled with flowers. One patch of white mountain daisies covered five full acres. It stunned us as it rolled with the terrain and glistened in the morning sun. We heard the bees humming from one flower to another.

“Sandi,” I said. “Let’s get a picture of you in the wild flowers.”

“Dear,” I said. “Just make it a PG picture showing that you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Well, since we just escaped certain death if that grizzly had come upon our campsite, yes, I’m thankful to be alive. Tell me why I married you again?”

“Remember, I said I loved adventure when we first met,” I said. “You said you liked adventure, too. So, here you are…let’s get a picture of you on this adventure.”

Sandi walked into the field. She gave a dozen poses from different stances. The picture I love best is the one she reclined in the flowers and stuck her feet up. She outstretched her arms as if accepting the beauty, joy, energy, spiritual blessings and warm of Mother Earth.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, a dear friend of Thoreau said, “The Earth laughs in Flowers.”

Flowers by Albert Lainghton

They are autographs of angels, penned

In Nature’s green-leaved book, in blended tints,

Borrowed from rainbows and the sunset skies,

And written everywhere–on plain and hill,

In lonely dells, ‘mid crowded haunts of men;

On the broad prairies, where no eye save God’s

May read their silent, sacred mysteries. Thank God for flowers!

They gladden human hearts; Seraphic breathings part their fragrant lips,

With whisperings of Heaven.

Sandi and Frosty, following the Lewis & Clark Trail, Montana, on tour through the endless energy of flowers lining the roads of our lives.

E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com