Good evening, Spy Pond!

I have been back to Cambridge for almost three weeks.

It took longer than I thought to get resettled because of many miscellaneous things that I need to take care of after I came back. But mentally it is not easy either. I have been traveling in the past whole year. It was an exciting life, packed with activities. I also managed to meet many people especially during my stay in Taiwan. The interactions have been quite pleasant. Now I am back to Boston. I need to adjust to my life in the old days, quiet, regular, and solitary. It is a contrast to my travel life, but I know deep in my heart that as a humanities student, I will spend more days like this than those I spent in the past year. I am not complaining because I am quite all right with a solitary life. It is just that for this time I have been traveling for such a long time, I need a bit more time to get back to my normal life, that is, to establish a routine for my reading and writing. There is a slight sense of loss and loneliness, though, that had lingered with me these days. 

So today I biked to the Minuteman Bikeway, my favorite bike route in Boston. This route almost becomes the counterpart of Nicole Arboretum in Ann Arbor, my spiritual sanatorium. Ah, Nicole Arboretum, I miss you! The Harvard one at Jamaica Plain pales in comparison. But the Minuteman Bikeway is cool. It is almost like biking in the woods, and you have the feeling of entirely being emerged into nature. Each time I see the sunlight penetrating through the tree leaves and imprinting shades of all kinds on the road, I find it touchingly beautiful. When is the last time I saw this? Maybe in southern France last summer? On the way to the Grand Chartreuse? 

Initially I had the plan to just bike to Bedford, a mid-point on the path. Once I arrived there, however, I had the energy to go even further. So I did, and eventually reached the Walden Pond near Concord. This is the second time I biked to the pond, this time with more efficiency. It was quite a ride. Exhausting but worthwhile. I will tell you why. On my way back, I passed the Spy Pond near Arlington. It was already after eight and the sun was gone, but the clouds still had the reflections of the sunlight. It was truly amazing to see those clouds above the serene pond. In the past year, I have seen many beautiful sceneries, but beauty is everything, as long as you have the eyes to see it. Here and now, I found it! Let's hope the moments of beauty in life, like this, will motivate us to move forward and embrace all the challenges and difficulties.