Today’s headlines are doin nothin but causin fear and chaos over disaster and death. A hell-broth of fire storms from coast to coast and if you are like me, you are feeling staggering grief, little beyond grief.

“Trump Renews Mail Vote Attacks, Again Questions Reliability of Ballots” (Wall Street Journal).

“Florida Supreme Court rules against Parkland families” (FOX News).

“Breonna Taylor shooting: A 190-plus-day timeline shows how her death changed Louisville” (Courier Journal).

“Missouri’s governor has refused to mandate masks. Now he’s tested positive for the coronavirus”  (Washington Post).

“California Fire Map & Tracker” (San Fransisco Chronicle).

Thankfully there is an outdoors, away from most of this craziness, away to blue sky and open space. And here one can retreat to a place which acts as a reminder of the before days.

I want to tell you to vote for a person with morality and substance who cares for our country, but I am disheartened because so many Americans don’t value those characteristics anymore. They instead want to return to an antiquated view of white male privilege, and thanks to #45 they are empowered sufficiently to gun down unarmed protesters who demand a change. They are driven to cast their vote for a man who’s dishonesty would under normal circumstances cause them embarrassment in their church or at their family table, but he has unleashed their own hurt and that fuels them now into avenues even my conservative Republican grandfather would shutter to acknowledge. Isn’t it enough that close to 7 million US citizens have been sickened by COVID 19 under this shoddy administration? Isn’t it enough that most of the people you know, certainly many that I know, have lost their jobs since this pandemic stuck? Clearly many of you don’t care. You want a bully and a braggart, a womanizer, a tyrant who issues his dictates from his golden throne via Twitter then runs off to golf with the boys. Yeah you want him and you’re eager to watch him end what generations worked so hard to build. Like Social Security. Like public education. Like an America that brought pride and awe from all who lived elsewhere.

So I bike. I pedal into a small corner of our nation he hasn’t infected yet, with his lack of environmental prudence or understanding of the laws of Science, which by the way, if you actually got a high school degree you’d know which facts are real. What did you people study by the way? Oh never mind, I have no use for ignorance. Our planet needs the best minds to solve all these present ills.

So, yeah, back to the biking.

Past large expanses of water and reeds and ducks and some good fishin I hear…

And over bridges looking down at the river bed…

Riding through the corn fields on the old rail trail

And straight into the woods again…

Oh America I so want to believe in your goodness, in your greatness, in your striving for everyone, because it is all right here, still. But somewhere along the way, somehow, you settled for this charlatan, and you have tarnished our precious hue into fool’s gold, into trash. Will you realize what you are doing before November 3rd? Now that would make for a fairy tale ending, and I would love to retell that one.