Fear

I rose from bed at 5 a.m., careful not to wake the husband or the children, and found my pile of clothes on the chair. As I dressed, I noticed a tan line on each leg from my bike shorts. The sun had turned my skin over to summer as if nothing had happened.

Grabbing my water bottle and my shoes, and, moving faster than I expected, I found myself standing outside a full hour before sunrise. I turned on the garage lights to put on my gloves and helmet. I turned off the lights. I rolled my bike out into the dark driveway where a full moon hung before a June dawn. I stood with my moon shadow on the gravel drive at my feet, the birds silent still.

This, I had never done.

I climbed on my bike and set off, fast, before I talked myself into waiting for daylight.

I hit the paved road out front and turned left. I stood on my pedals and pushed with the full length of my legs, swinging my bike back and forth beneath me like I had on my first red bike as a child. Today, I did like I had then: I wheeled right down the middle of the empty road.

A mile later, I turned onto a dirt road and headed for the trail. My eyes strained to see ahead. The trees looped their hands above the road and pulled in tight. I pedaled harder, forcing myself to enter the dark tunnel and leave behind the comfort of even moonlight.

I waited for my eyes to adjust, and I hit every hole in the dirt road until they did.

Finally, I got my bearings. Firmly in the forest now, I rode, pushing myself to go faster, to trust the feel of my bike, the trees giving way to the left and right, revealing the way to me at the last minute over and over. I felt the cold of the night dissipating, and I heard the birds coming to life.

Then, I heard the scuttle and silence of something running and stopping. I looked up, letting the spike of fear arrive. And in the next moment, it was in front of me.

It took me a second to work out the brown, thick coat of the doe and another second to grab my brakes, hard, as she ran, both of our full-out sprints coming together. I tore a thick, deep line through the dirt. I didn’t have time to shout; I was already on top of her. My bike, her rippling skin and the dark morning a blur. My front tire sliced sideways as I clipped her back leg. We touched, for a moment.

Then, she was gone.

I saved myself from falling, barely and stood in the forest, alone. I couldn’t hear her or see her. The leaves had sprung back into position, closing her dim escape from my view. It was suddenly so quite that I might have imagined her.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Straddling my bike, I let the adrenaline shake in my arms and legs rattle through. Then, I got off and crouched to look – at my front tire, at the Vs her hooves pulled in the dirt, at the mark I’d left. I hooted – a cry of disbelief – I’d hit a deer with my bike! Wild.

I looked around for her. I’d barely touched her; I knew she was fine. She was long gone, and it was over. We’d both lived.

I started off again, turning my body back over to my bike to settle it, heading toward the sunrise I could see coming from below the tree line ahead. I was delighted, and I slowed up, looking for more deer.

And that was how my fear had changed.

For all my 32 years, I had never had the nerve to venture very far into the woods alone. But that summer, the first without my mother, I traveled miles and miles alone on my bike, with barely enough light to find my way. My fear would leap and die a dozen times on any one outing, but I went anyway.

I was doing things I never would have done. Not if my mother had lived.

The woods, it turned out, had become an ally, a salve, a conspirator to my change. I could handle the small fears now - the dark woods and running deer and broken branches. I rode into the mornings still with fear – but now I realized – with strength, too.

I carried that thought with me all the way to the lake and back again, past my marks in the road, past the deer tracks, past the woods - and past the fear. And I would carry it with me on all the miles ahead, too.

Because, despite all the loss, I could see – at last – what I was gaining.

❤️