It’s four miles on hilly country roads — South Moore, Plum Nelly and Fawn Dawn — in order to avoid the 55-miles-per-hour main road that would get me there faster and more directly, but I manage and I make it to the Dollar General, my goal. I fold up my bike, pop it into a cart, and stroll the aisles, making mental notes of the stock in case I need hot sauce or a hair accessory. I buy a new rain poncho and pens.
The ride back feels shorter and I realize the hills were front-loaded so there’s a lot more coasting, wind in my hair, streamers flying off my handlebars. Disco (my duck traveling companion from Round America with a Duck) bobs along, strapped next to my light blinking white in the foggy mist.
I stop to make a wish on a dandelion, to watch the raindrops ripple in a babbling creek (wondering if, perhaps, my new book will make any ripples in the world as well), and to dance in the hemlocks.
I am currently living on the very top of Lookout Mountain on the border of the USA states of Tennessee and Georgia. I’m WWOOFing on an organic lavender agritourism farm while staying in a vintage Aistream trailer from 1970 — the same year as the very first Earth Day. I was six then. I am sixty now. There are still things I’m longing to experience and living in an Airstream is one of them:
I dry off and make a warm cup of elderberry tea and think about what’s next. Canyon State Park is not much farther than the Dollar General, but far enough to be a challenge so I’m looking forward to that on my day off.
In the meantime, there’s an annual gardening expo in Chattanooga at which we will be a featured vendor, and the lavender plants and products need to be packed and loaded today.
It is peaceful, pleasant work — this thing called life — and I am grateful to be here. In this trailer. At this farm. On this Earth.
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 