Farmers Roads

I woke up this morning and checked -as one does these days- that the world had not ended during the night. There had been enough noise the evening before to make that a genuine question rather than a dramatic one. But the birds were doing their thing, the light was coming through the curtains, and the sky outside was doing its best impression of a perfect day.

We were still here. That felt like a win.

And I decided, right then, that it was going to be a great day.

I took the afternoon off. Just like that. And I went.

I ride the farmers’ roads. The narrow ones. The ones that wriggle between fields and open skies, where the world slows right down. Cyclists love these roads, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. No traffic, no noise, no reason to rush. Just me, my bike, and whatever song I’ve decided today belongs to.

Today it’s Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight. Quiet, vast, and achingly beautiful. Exactly right for riding through a landscape that’s slowly waking up.

🎵 On the Nature of Daylight — Max Richter

The landscape is doing that beautiful in-between thing. Some trees already have their leaves : soft, pale green, almost shy. Others are still bare, just branches and light. The fields are the same story: some dark and turned-over, waiting. Others already neat and ready, the farmers working them with focus and purpose, like the earth has given them a deadline. The fruit trees are blooming. Whole rows of them, white and pink against the dark soil.

Tractors everywhere. At some point, I notice one behind me. A big one. I keep pedaling, aware of it, ready for the usual: the roar of acceleration, the gust of air, the moment I’m nearly sucked off the road by something the size of a small building. It happens. You grab your handlebars, wobble into the mud, and hope for the best. Farmers are wonderful people, but patience is not always their most outstanding quality. To be fair, we cyclists don’t always make their lives easier. These narrow roads are our playground, but they’re also their workplace. I imagine we can be quite the nuisance when you’re trying to get a field done before dark.

But this one? This one just… stays behind me. At my pace. Matching my speed, holding his distance.

After a bit, I spot a farm up ahead and decide to pull over, I’m starting to feel slightly guilty for holding up his afternoon. I stop, step aside, wave him through.

He turns right into the very same farm.

He was never stuck behind me at all. He was just going home.

I stand there, slightly ridiculous, bike between my legs, having stopped for absolutely no reason.

And then he waves at me from the cab -this big, cheerful wave- and shouts something warm and grateful and smiling, because I’d been kind enough to stop for him. Even if he didn’t need it.

I laugh, wave back, and get back on the road.

Sometimes the nicest moments are the accidental ones. The gestures that weren’t necessary. The small, human warmth that happens on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon between a cyclist and a tractor driver, on a road that doesn’t appear on any tourist map.

I keep riding. The fruit trees keep blooming. The fields keep waiting for their seeds. The music keeps playing in my ears.

Spring doesn’t announce itself dramatically. It just quietly gets on with it, and if you’re paying attention, you feel it everywhere. In the air, in the light, in the rhythm of the land waking back up.

And in that little wave from a tractor cab.

That, right there, is a delight.

image taken with my phone