The Persistence Of Pattern

Morning weigh-in: 184.5#, 11.5% BF

"Sitting by my window,

Watching the snow

Fall." -- Laurie Anderson

I've been contemplating a late night ride tonight, especially if any of this falling snow sticks. Bust out the singlespeed, and just do a sprint workout. Easton, west of say 6th Street (and once you're up away from the rivers), is like a huge shallow bowl, or maybe a halfpipe: as Northampton rises heading west into Wilson Boro, the side roads to the North and South themselves rise up from Northampton. So what I do is ride back and forth on the side streets, sprinting up away from Northampton, then moving over one block and dropping back down. Traffic lights and stop signs kill my momentum as I cross Northampton again, and then I sprint up the other side of town. I can do that for hours with out getting bored, and that view of nighttime Easton is the one I like best, the one most like my dream-Easton.

The shape isn't perfectly like this of course, and as you get toward 15th Street the North side actually drops down to the valley that holds Bushkill Creek. I sometimes wonder what made the bowl though -- was there a river or creek that shaped it? I don't think that's what it is, but I am used to thinking in terms of downhill and water, sitting as I am on the shelf above the Lehigh and Delaware (and "Bushkill") Valleys. What always amazes me is that the rivers didn't find the valleys to flow through, they were there first, and cut through the mountains (which once were as high as the Himalayas) as they were forced upward. Rock to me seems so persistent, and the course of the river seems ephemeral in comparison, but the simple rules and multiple interactions of moving water give rise to deeper patterns that -- though you can never step into the same river twice -- will be here when everything else is gone. And as above, so below.