if you follow your dreams, they will lead you where you want to be

The bike trail is a featureless brown ribbon running through the tangle of gaunt springtime trees; it felt like I was following the path of an eraser dragged through a pencil sketch on a paper bag. At this time of year, the land looks at once old and young, like the wrinkled head of a baby bird.

The eraser smudge turns into a clean strip of concrete extending toward the vanishing point across the gray, matted grass of a marsh. Surrounding us, a graphite scribble of forest. All the world the color of a weathered old telephone pole. Beyond the scrim of clouds, the sun calls its warmth across a vast distance.

The path crosses a still silver river that hugs the brown curves of earth and reflects the sky like a mirror. A few reeds stick out of the water like pins in a silk dress. And then it ducks back into the woods, between great mossy rocks and beneath thorny branches adorned with white apple blossoms. 

When I’m cold, I put on a jacket; when I’m hungry, I eat; when I have to pee, an outhouse materializes and I use it. My needs met, I get back on my bike and continue to ride, smiling at the beautiful world around me. 

A dream doesn’t come true when it concludes. It comes true in moments like these, when it takes you without fanfare to the places you never knew about, but that you recognize immediately as where you’ve always wanted to go.