Pitch Black

It's cold in the Boston area. It's been colder and it will be colder this winter, but it's still fairly cold. But with layered clothing, gloves, scarf, etc., it is actually quite comfortable to go biking. So, I biked into Cambridge, about 40 minutes from where I am when I take care of the granddaughters. I always enjoy Harvard Square, particularly the book stores. Actually, just one book store: Harvard Book Store, but no connection with the university.

On the way home, it could have been pitch black. But much of the way was, of course, was lit with street lamps. Still, much of the way was pitch black. The night reminded me of those pitch black nights when we walked from "here and there and back again" in Yorkshire.

It's funny. I really don't recall ever seeing Pateley Bridge in the daylight; of course, I must have on several occasions but the memories are distant or unmeaningful. I do remember the pitch black nights from the valley to the Pateley Bridge bridge. Wow, it was dark. There were no street lights lighting the asphalt patch but we had walked it so many times, we didn't need any light or torches (as they called flashlights in England). It took me three or four times before I felt comfortable walking that path in pitch black; it was probably the same for her when she took her first walks many months earlier. But by the time I departed Yorkshire, I could walk that path in the pitch black.

Riding "home" tonight on my bike I thought about those nights. But other memories kept intruding. The sidewalks were uneven due to large trees and their roots lifting the concrete. I first saw that phenomenon in Storm Lake, Iowa, when we visited our maternal grandparents. There were "no" trees in Williston. There were, but there were few, in comparison to the East, and what trees we had were relatively young and certainly not old enough to have large enough roots to life concrete. So our sidewalks in Williston were flat. But not in Storm Lake, Iowa. A lot of sidewalks were cracked and raised by tree roots, one of my earliest memories while visiting my grandparents. Riding through the residential area of Belmont (MA), it made me think that it looked a lot like Storm Lake, and it probably looked a lot like the nicer suburbial areas of St Louis.

But in Williston and Storm Lake and St Louis there were street lights. That path from the valley to Pateley Bridge was pitch black. But I can see the asphalt path as "plain as day" as they say.