Cemetery At Dawn

Remember when I talked about carrying a camera on rides? Well, this morning was the reason why I wanted to do that. As I was riding the scooter to work, I was passing the cemetery, and I looked over… and there was a fog hugging the ground. Tombstones were jutting up out of it and the sun was coming up… It was astonishing to look over during my commute and see, right there, what that looked like something out of a movie. Occurring quietly, right in the middle of the world I live in every day, was this amazing scene. I pulled over and pulled out the camera.

I don’t think I would have done it if I had been in a car, or even on the motorcycle. There is something about a scooter that makes it so easy to take advantage of a situation like this. I didn’t even have to check for a parking space. I just pulled over immediately, knowing there would be some place to put the scooter for a couple minutes, even if I had to pull it up on the sidewalk. If I had been in a car, I might have glimpsed the scene and thought, “Oh, I wish I could have seen that.” But with the radio going, in that bubble of conditioned air, it would have seemed like too much to evaluate traffic, pull over, park, and get out.

And I think you are more apt to notice a scene like this on a scooter. You are out in the environment, a part of it. You smell things you don’t in a car; leaves, wood fires and food cooking. You feel the temperature change from small hills and valleys. The details of the world are finer and you move through them. The ride to work is a series of places instead of an eventless part of your daily routine. Everywhere you go is like that. You experience the world instead of just moving from one artificial environment to another via another.

This morning, instead of a commute, I had an experience.