We in southern New England have been spared a tough winter. Shit can still happen, but this winter has been a breeze compared to last year’s two-month cycle of weekly snow storms. A few mid-fifties temperature teases thrown in here and there in February have been a harbinger of an early spring—furthermore, the groundhog didn’t see his shadow.
Then two days ago, we broke a temperature record and hit 70 degrees. This is all good news for everyone, but especially for me. Because the arrival of early spring coincides with a signature event in my life—I’m back in the saddle again.
I wrote frequently in summer and early fall last year about how one of the central features of my early sabbatical weeks was the rediscovery, after many years, of the joys of bicycling. I loaded tons of pictures, wrote blog posts, got in the best shape of my life, then disaster struck. I tipped over unceremoniously in a completely non-spectacular bike mishap and broke my ankle in early October—less than a week before riding the seventy-mile round trip Woonsocket to Bristol trip that I had been building up to for three months (for those unfamiliar with Rhode Island geography, that’s pretty much the top of the state to half way down and back).
It could have been worse—I didn’t need surgery or even a cast, only requiring a boot for ten weeks or so. But no more bike riding for at least three months, and by that time we would be in the dead of winter, so probably no more bike riding for six months.
This was more of a problem than just being laid up without exercise for a while. As wrote in a September blog post,
“Riding my bicycle early in this sabbatical is doing the same sort of thing for me that reciting the psalms and saying prayers with a 
bunch of Benedictine monks on a daily basis did for me during my last sabbatical seven years ago. Cobwebs and impediments are being removed by simply finding ways to get centered and discover what’s going on beneath the complicated and pressured surface of things on which all of us skate in our manic day-to-day existence.” As I watched my writing productivity become less natural and fluid when I no longer could spend 3-4 hours per day on my bike, I began to wonder about the mind/body connection, a favorite philosophical puzzle of mine ever since graduate school. Is it really the case that paying specific attention to the body is good for the mind and soul?
Not long ago I heard Maria Popova, a social media/blogging phenomenon, talk about the mind/body connection in an interview with Krista Tippett. 
Where, Tippett asked Popova, do you get your most creative and fertile thoughts? I resonated fully with Popova’s response:
Those ideas, the best of them came to me at the gym or on my bike or in the shower. I used to have these elaborate theories that maybe there was something about the movement of the body and the water that magically sparked a deeper consciousness. But I’ve come to realize the kind of obvious thing which is that these are simply the most unburdened spaces in my life, the moments in which I have the greatest uninterrupted intimacy with my own mind, with my own experience. It’s a kind of ordinary magic that’s available to each of us just by default if only we made that deliberate choice to make room for it and to invite it in.
In the early weeks of my sabbatical when I was still feeling a bit guilty about riding for hours per day when I was supposed to be writing, a colleague (who is also an avid biker) said “You have it all wrong. Sabbaticals are all about thinking (while riding bikes), then maybe when you get home, you write something down.” She was exactly right—the first drafts of two of the first chapters in my big sabbatical writing project were formed in my head while floating down a bike path.
I took my first real bike ride since October two days ago, a beautiful day when even the turtles were seeking to get an early tan.
My ankle is ready for it. My mind is ready for it—I need some inspiration for my next big project that doesn’t seem to be coming just sitting in my library recliner. My body is not entirely ready for it—I rode twenty miles and can tell that I’ll need a while to get my stamina back up to where it was in October. My greatest concern, though, is how to make the mind/body wonders of bicycle riding transferable to my “real” life once sabbatical ends and I am back in the classroom in a few months. I’ve found that the inner healing and silent centeredness that were features of my last sabbatical have been transferable to real life, as long as I take the time to work at it. But I will not have three to four hours available per day for bike riding once sabbatical is over—what might serve the same purpose?
It should not be impossible to create more “unburdened spaces” in one’s life, but it goes without saying that our twenty-first century world does not readily accommodate the finding or constructing of such spaces. The only other space in my life where I occasionally have moments of “uninterrupted intimacy” between my mind and body are when 
I’m working in the yard—something about digging in the dirt liberates my mind from its usual fifty-things-at-once energies. One thing to remember is that although the mind/body connection goes both ways, this particular facet of it goes from body to mind, not the other way around. My body has never become healthier by my simply thinking a lot (although improved attitudes certainly can help), but bike riding and working in the yard are two examples of how physical activity can liberate my mind and consciousness. Maybe this is why my mother used to knit all the time, so often that one of my father’s nicknames for her was “Madame Defarge.” Maybe this is why apparently mindless and rote activities find their way into the routines of so many people. I need to cultivate such activities; something tells me watching a lot of television, even the good stuff, doesn’t count. Suggestions welcomed!
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