|
||
|
|
|
|
Long long day, with headwinds, but not really bad overall. The city part of Pueblo ends abruptly about 2 miles east of I-25. One minute there are freeway exits and subdivisions, and the next minute there are fields and a 2-lane road. Even with 120 miles, the cue sheet would have been about half a page if there weren't so many "Narrow Bridge" warnings. The state highway people have an annoying but inconsistent habit of putting rumble strips across the entire shoulder before narrow bridges. The storm clouds blew in early in the morning. Didn't rain, but kept the temperature down in the 60's for most of the morning. Unfortunately, it also produce a mild but steady headwind that kept things slow. What can I say about eastern Colorado? I'm bored with Kansas already, and I'm not even in Kansas yet. It's farm country out here - beef feed lots, and fields of crops to feed to the cows. This is the supply side of McDonald's. Biking gives you a lot of time to think, and one of the things I thought about is why I find ruins, such as this stone farmhouse, so fascinating. It has to do with its place in the eternal dance of man and nature, order and entropy. Some time ago, someone took stone and wood, two natural materials, and shaped them into a house, a shelter against the wind, rain, snow, cold, and heat. It's an artificial construct, but a natural human activity, one that people have been engaged in for thousands of years. People were born, grew up, and died here. At some point, the people abandoned the house. The door and windows went missing, and nature got in. The attic is now filled with pigeons, seeking shelter from the wind, rain, snow, cold, and heat. Pigeons are born, grow up, and die here. The organic parts - the wooden roof and floor, will get alternately wet and dry, until they rot, and bugs will be born, grow up, and die in them. Even in entropy, there is still order. After the wood falls away, the stone will remain, in the ordered shape of a house, but no longer a house. The pigeons will leave, because it will no longer provide shelter for them. Eventually, the rain, ice, and wind will weaken the mortar that holds the stones in place, and there will be a pile of stones in the rough shape of a house. Even after the stones are broken up by the elements, and scattered by the farmer's plow, there will remain the human memory of house-ness, and the human instinct to build houses. That's the past and future of this house. In the present moment, it's in transition between house-ness and not-house-ness. And I'm drawn to it like a pigeon. |
|