I watched the sun bob above the horizon this morning, peeking over a silhouetted tree line, as if to see if it’s safe to face another day.
Finding no reason to object, the day dawned. Grayscales changed to polychrome. Faceless people in cars on the interstate pushed forward, rushing with a purpose and reason I can only imagine — to family reunions or shopping malls or time-and-a-half pay. All the while, I was carried along on the same impersonal stream of blacktop.
Outside my window Indiana brightened, illuminating miles of flat farmland spotted with barns and silos and row crops eager for the sun’s attention. Seeing those wide-open acres is like rolling down my window and filling my lungs with air. It’s a necessity, I’ve come to realize. These vast spaces of rural life instill in me a sense of peace I can find nowhere else.
Thirteen hours later Liz and I are on County Road 275 West, riding beside more flat cornfields as an impatient sun casts shadows across the pavement, the lengthening ghosts pacing beside us, conjuring up the piano intro of classic Dan Fogelberg.
Sometimes in the night I feel it
Near as my next breath and yet, untouchable
Silently the past comes stealing
Like the taste of some forbidden sweet.
Along the walls; in shadowed rafters
Moving like a thought through haunted atmospheres
Muted cries and echoed laughter
Banished dreams that never sank in sleep.
The music continues. A mile. Two. We round a curve and dart from the sun, into the grays of oak and ash and buckeye, while the words follow us.
Down the ancient corridors
And through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of days
That we left behind.
Down the ancient corridors
And through the gates of time
Run the ghosts of dreams
That we left behind.
The loop runs unabated in my mind, not so much the lyrics as the piano notes, climbing and falling with our cadence and elevation as we roll over a series of hills on the back side of the Pike, making our way home.
It isn’t until later in the night that I temporarily put Dan Fogelberg to rest, pulling out Gordon Lightfoot’s Shadows, the scuffed jewel case a sign of my love for the album over the years. Like some of the works from Fogelberg’s The Innocent Age, Gord’s music has a melancholy tone, often reflecting on lost relationships. It’s the title track I seek.
Let me reach out love and touch you
Let me hold you for awhile
I’ve been all around the world
Oh how I long to see you smile
There’s a shadow on the moon
And the waters here below
Do not shine the way they should
And I love you just in case you didn’t know
Let it go
Let it happen like it happened once before
It’s a wicked wind
And it chills me to the bone
And if you do not believe me
Come and gaze upon the shadow at your door
Hours after the ride, tracing some of the same backroads on a trip home from town, the cool of night having pushed the sun out of the sky, it’s Gord that’s playing. I’m riding through the dark with Liz. Thinking of the day, of the ride, of the shadows that have followed me for years. And of the ghosts that still lurk there.
Road bike: 20.07 miles — Henry County
