The Boy on the Bicycle Never Really Stopped Riding

I hate red lights.

If I’m coming up on one and there’s a chance to turn right and find another way to where I’m going, I’ll probably take it. I don’t care if the other route is longer. At least I’m moving.

My wife and I can be headed out on vacation, get a few miles down the road, and realize we’ve forgotten something at home. Let’s say it’s a phone charger. I’ll be the first to suggest buying another one when we get there.

Turn around and drive back home? I’d rather buy another charger.

I know that doesn’t make much sense. Sometimes waiting for the light would be faster, and buying something we already own isn’t particularly smart. But that’s how I’ve been most of my life. Once I’m headed somewhere, I want to keep going.

I’m much the same way when I visit people. I can genuinely miss somebody, look forward to seeing them, and enjoy the visit. But after a while, something inside me says it’s time to go. It doesn’t mean I’m tired of their company. I’m just ready for whatever comes next.

Come to think of it, my grandfather was a lot like that.

He lived about an hour away when I was growing up, and he made a point of visiting everybody each month. He’d come by, sit and talk for a while, and eventually say something I can still hear him saying today.

“I guess I need to be going.”

And off he’d go.

Nobody had upset him. He’d made the drive because he wanted to see us. But once he’d had his visit, he was ready to get back on the road.

I find myself doing much the same thing now. Sometimes I wonder if I got a little of that from him. He kept making those monthly visits, though. He didn’t sit around waiting for people to come to him. He got in his vehicle and went to see them. I appreciate that more now than I did as a boy.

When I catch myself getting ready to leave after visiting somebody, I can almost hear him saying he needs to be going.

I’ve been restless for as long as I can remember.

When I was a boy, my bicycle was my freedom.

I rode that thing everywhere. Down to the local convenience store, through trails in the woods, or over to the ball field where I could swim at the city pool. Sometimes I had somewhere particular I wanted to go. Other times, I just wanted to ride. There was always another road to take or something down the street I wanted to check out.

I didn’t need somebody to drive me somewhere. I could get on that bicycle and go. At that age, I wasn’t thinking about independence. I was just a kid riding his bike, enjoying the fact that I could decide where I was headed.

There was a whole world out there to explore, even if that world was only a few miles from home.

I’ve never completely outgrown that boy. I’ve even compared myself to a shark that has to keep swimming. I don’t particularly like being stopped. I want things happening around me, something to catch my attention, or somewhere to go.

But there’s something that doesn’t fit that description.

I can sit still for hours. And some of my favorite memories are of doing exactly that.

My daddy started taking me deer hunting when I was twelve years old. At that age, I was all about getting a deer. I wanted to see one come through the woods and have a chance to get it. That’s what we were out there for, as far as I was concerned.

I shot a few deer over the years, but as I got older, something changed. I started enjoying everything else happening around me.

I’d sit in my deer stand watching squirrels chase each other around the trees. I’d listen to the woods and let my mind wander wherever it wanted. Sometimes I’d just zone out for a while, watching whatever happened to catch my eye.

I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t bored. I was enjoying being there. Hours could pass without my getting restless.

I still enjoyed seeing deer, but bringing one home wasn’t nearly as important anymore. I could spend the whole hunt watching squirrels and come away feeling like I’d had a good day. Somewhere along the way, the woods themselves had become the attraction.

Daddy and I kept hunting together until 2019. He passed away the following year at age 73.

In all those years we hunted together, Daddy never killed a deer. Not one.

We’d meet back at the truck afterward and ask each other how things went.

“Did you see anything?”

“Yeah, just a small doe.”

Or maybe all we’d seen was a bunch of squirrels. That was often about the extent of our hunting report.

I think Daddy enjoyed being out there as much as I eventually did. He kept going year after year without ever bringing a deer home. There must have been something about those hours in the woods that made him want to return.

I wish I’d asked him about that.

Daddy was one of the most patient men I’ve ever known. I can remember only a few occasions when I saw him lose his temper. When I was a young adult and life got difficult, he was the person I could go to for advice. He had a way of helping me see that things weren’t always as bad as I believed.

“Everything is going to work its way out.”

I can still hear him saying those words. He understood what it was like to face difficult things, and he didn’t lose patience with me when I was struggling.

I miss his guidance. I also miss those ordinary afternoons in the woods, when we’d meet back at the truck and talk about what we’d seen.

For years, I never really questioned how I could be restless in some situations and perfectly happy sitting in one place in others. Lately, though, that question has brought back another memory.

Probably twenty or more years ago, we visited a bear attraction while on a trip to the mountains. You paid to get in and walked out onto an elevated concrete platform overlooking several different kinds of bears. Visitors could buy chopped-up treats, including sliced apples, to throw down to them.

There was one bear I’ve never forgotten.

He paced back and forth in his concrete enclosure. He’d walk one way, turn around, and walk back. Over and over again. People were tossing treats down to him, but he barely seemed interested.

I remember watching him and feeling sorry for that bear. He had food and shelter, but I couldn’t help thinking there had to be more to his life than walking back and forth on concrete and eating sliced apples. That bear didn’t belong there. At least that’s how I saw it.

I didn’t know what was going through his mind. I only knew that I felt he should have somewhere to roam instead of being confined to that same patch of concrete.

At the time, I didn’t compare him to anything about my own life. I simply felt sorry for him. But lately, I’ve found myself remembering him, moving back and forth without being able to go anywhere beyond those walls.

He had no choice about that. I have choices, and I’m not pretending our circumstances are anything alike. Still, I think the picture stayed with me because I’ve always valued being able to go somewhere and decide what I want to do next.

And yet, one of the places where I feel the most freedom these days is somewhere I hardly move at all.

For about six years now, I’ve spent most of my lunch breaks on a hill outside the building where I work. There are some big oak trees up there that I’ve grown attached to.

In the summertime, they provide plenty of shade. When the leaves fall, the sunlight comes through the bare branches in little shimmers. There’s usually a breeze blowing across that hill, and I love it. I don’t care much for dead, still air. I like feeling the wind and seeing things moving around me.

Sometimes I’ll sit there watching insects crawl through the grass. Other times, June bugs are making circles near the ground. That might not sound like much, but I enjoy those little things.

Usually I’ll send my wife a text and ask how her day is going. It’s a little connection we have in the middle of the workday, and I look forward to it.

Others have joined me up there from time to time. These days, it’s generally just me. I’ve come to appreciate those thirty minutes alone beneath the trees.

That hill is magic to me. It’s been there through six years of lunch breaks and changing seasons. Sometimes I think about something I’ve been working on. Sometimes a memory comes back, or I wonder about something I haven’t quite figured out. And some days I don’t think about anything important at all.

I just sit there and look around.

I’ve spent more than twenty years working in an office cubicle, and sitting beneath those oak trees is an entirely different experience. I’m still sitting down. I’m not accomplishing anything or going anywhere, but I’m perfectly content to be there.

That hill reminds me of the deer stand. Both places give me something to notice, and plenty of room to let my thoughts go wherever they please.

Maybe I’ve been describing myself wrong all these years. It’s not that I can’t stand sitting still. I’ve spent some of the best hours of my life doing exactly that. It’s feeling stuck that I can’t stand.

I’ll probably keep taking the right turn at a red light. I’ll probably still be the first one ready to leave a visit. Some habits don’t change just because you’ve started to understand them a little better.

But on that hill, I can sit beneath an oak tree and feel no urge to go anywhere. I think of those hours in the woods with Daddy, when I was twelve and believed the whole point of hunting was to get a deer.

Daddy kept going all those years without ever getting one.

I wish I could meet him back at that truck one more time.