Try as I might, the ravens would not renew that remarkable conversation with us, mentioned a couple posts past. So I couldn't really get a good photograph of them playing with ridge lift just above my head. I took this as an omen. It is time to leave Patagonia.

For old time's sake I wanted to mountain bike from town to the San Rafael Valley. It's a vast, rolling grassland at 5000 feet and is the headwaters of the Santa Cruz "River."

I always loved the small fields along the road, a few ranches,


and the way the creek runs for a half mile or so, and then goes underground.

It surprised me when I abandoned the East ten years ago and became a full-time RVer out West that I no longer cared for the mountain and forest scenery that I loved as a youth. As a semi-geezer I like land that's good for something other than just postcards: ranch country, or irrigated fields along rivers, or high grasslands. (There are no low grasslands out West--low altitudes belong to cactus.)

Today's ride along the creek featured this sort of dry pastoral scenery-- varied, balanced, full of the equipoise of Man and Nature.

When you think of the dilemna in Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," the battle between classicists and romantics, roads like this prove that I'm a classicist.

And yet I was worried about something...about reaching the top where the view suddenly opened into the wide open spaces of the San Rafael Valley, framed by distant mountain ranges. It had literally taken my breath away when I had first seen it, ten years ago. Would it still do so?

Many times I've wondered if older folks are affected by music like a youngster is. And if not, would I even want to be alive then?

What if my favorite places no longer affect me anymore?

Fortunately the climb up to the top distracted me from these troubling thoughts. Thirst and heat became my main concern. There was only one more hill until the top. We gave it our best. The animal spirits had risen once again. We crested the hill, and there it all was...

What had happened to the classicist of a couple miles back? How had he been transformed into a hot-blooded romantic? Which one was really me?

Later that evening I watched Out of Africa, partly because the scenery reminds me of the land here. But I also wanted to know if John Barry's soundtrack could still send chills down my spine like it used to...