"You look happy," I say to the stranger, but there is nothing strange about her. I have seen those eyes before, bright with joy. I have seen the haggard pilgrim lean on her cane. I have seen the tennis shoe-ed soul on the jogging path, or the sidewalk smiles, the hundreds, the centuries of gazes that meet mine and that well up with happiness, with wakefulness, with surprise at the dare in mine - do you see me?
"I am!" she says, and her accent is not Cuban, and her happy eyes follow mine. The humid dusk rests on her flushed face and my shoulders heavy with groceries. She puts a hand to her chest, "The Lord is in my heart!"
From a bicycle, a city of pretty much any size is a wilderness. Inhospitable streets bristle up like briars, and in them dwell adversaries armored in steel. Traps reach out to seize your wayward wheels, traps like hamburger joints and hotels with comfortable beds and swimming pools. In comparison, the quiet of forests and unclaimed, usually un-posted nature between those cities offer the truest hospitality.
Now, after about a month luxuriating in the forests, I find myself in Miami, a true city and certainly a true wilderness. As I pad along these sidewalks, and peer at the local members of this strange cement and credit card ecology, I am struck by the sustenance that I can glean even so. Sustenance like the smile of a stranger, and her resonance with what gives her meaning.
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