Snake on a Bike Path
Symbolism, Unscheduled
Spring break in Lewiston. We’re rolling down toward dinner, Mo’s birthday I think, following a bike path that climbs over an overpass above a tangle of highway and river. Snuggles is somewhere behind me. The Snake River is doing its thing below, wide and indifferent, the kind of water that doesn’t care what day it is. Then we round a corner and there it is, hanging on the chain-link fencing of this mosaic-covered pedestrian bridge: a massive snake, tile by tile, yellow-bellied and green-eyed, tongue out, mid-strike. The whole bridge is covered in this stuff, ceramic fish, spiral forms, animals assembled from broken glass and river color. It stops you. Not in a dramatic way, just in a quiet, oh right, there’s beauty out here sort of way.
I didn’t think much of it then. We had dinner reservations and cold beers waiting.
Now it’s weeks later and I’m having what I call a survival day. The rules are minimal: don’t talk to the police, don’t sleep on the tracks. Lie low, regulate, let the burnout from the weekend metabolize on its own. I’ve been scrolling old photos instead of doing anything useful, and I keep landing on those bridge shots. The snake. The light. Snuggles looking genuinely delighted by a piece of public art while holding his purple mountain bike like it’s a dance partner.
I haven’t been on the bike in over a week. Last weekend had other plans for us.
But today feels like the right day to close it out properly. Simple ride. No agenda.
May 12th Keeps Talking
May 12th has been accumulating stories for over two decades, from rainy coffee shop mornings and Monopoly losses to bike accidents, desert animals reading the archives, and a hidden waterfall on Bass Creek. It is a date that keeps showing up, same as the person writing about it. Twenty-three years of evidence that the pattern, whatever it is, continues.
Read more: https://8i11.vercel.app/story/5f20fvah