12 February, 1997

One of the rewards of constructing simpler habits is that my life is slowed to a pace that allows me to take more enjoyment in each day, and squeeze more living out of it.

Instead of driving my car and coping with heavy urban traffic each morning and evening, I sit leisurely on the bus. I walk to lunch and sometimes walk home from a far bus stop.

The dangers of riding a bus through the city seem to be overrated. I ride with people whom the bus is not an option for simpler life. It may be their only means of transportation. Most are working people who quietly endure the ride to the jobs crosstown in restaurants, malls, fast food stores or as temporary workers. Few of them read while riding to work. Most sit and quietly stare ahead or out the window. It is a time to collect your thoughts, to relax. It is time to yourself, unless someone enjoins you in conversation.

Occasionally, when going through the rougher parts of town, you sense a person could be trouble. Then you mind your own business, continue reading, and don't return their stare. In the more than a decade of irregularly riding the bus through the city I have yet to witness a violent encounter on the bus or at the bus stop. I have to think that the risk to injury is probably much greater in a vehicle on the city streets.

One bus driver would laugh at the cars that rush into the lane to be in front of the bus. They risk their car and self to avoid the 10 or 20 seconds of delay in having to pass the bus. The bus driver remarked that if they cut it too close it is their 1 ton vehicle up against his bus which weighs 10 or more times that. Good Luck.

My views are not shared by very many of my associates. In a work complex of several hundred people I only know of two or three that ride the bus. Some figure I am some sort of loser that I have commute to work on the bus. Their view of me does not change on the days that I drive my car to work, since it is a 26 year old plymouth.

But I have always prided myself as being independent. As I sit and calmly read or write or relax, and look out the window at the congested traffic that gets worse every year, I do not feel like the loser.

Leaving my car sit during the week means that the old reliable plymouth might keep running for years. When you ride a bus all week you appreciate the freedom to drive up to the mountains to go hiking on your days off, no matter what the car looks like. And this good old car, with its faded paint and a little rust, performs beautifully. (long may she run). My dogs and I pile in and drive up to the beautiful Rockies most weekends.

Last Saturday we drove to a place we had never hiked before. We followed a trail up to a flat top mesa that was covered by a three day old snowfall. We followed deer, fox, coyote and porcupine tracks through the snow. I scanned a canyon below with binoculars and witnessed 4 deer browse and lazily watch a red fox scurry around in the mountain mahoghany and serviceberry.

A rocky peak rose in the center of the plateau. On its summit a prairie falcon watched us for the two hours we explored the mesa. The falcon was still there, quietly watching, when the setting sun made us begin the descent back to the car.

Several times this week I visualized my walk while riding the bus. I remembered the late afternoon sun turning the fox into a blazing fiery red. I recalled how the sun cast its yellow gold on the beautiful wood grain of the juniper posts of an ancient fence line. I could feel the chilly air and hear the silence of this peaceful spot. I could hear notes of amazing grace, shenandoah, streets of Laredo, from my harmonica travel off the mesa edge into the valley below. The walk occurred physically on saturday, but the good memories of it went with me all week as I sat on the bus and let the driver handle the stress of urban traffic.

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