Blue Lane

Sometimes it's easy to stress out and get stuck in your own thoughts. The question is, even when you get stuck, do you stop moving forwards?

It's the height of autumn and days are getting shorter. I'm headed over to a friend, but it's already late and the sun stands low on the horizon. I'm going from city to town through a rural area. Practically every area outside city or town limits in the Netherlands can be considered a rural area. You're never more than a few kilometers away from civilization of any kind. I walked with the sun in my face, warming me, its radiation felt almost as though it burned. I was walking on a cycling path running parallel to a road. It's a quiet road, part of the charm of wanting to walk here. I smiled in the warm sun as a moved along the road. Long and in a way anonymous to road was mostly functional, moving to connect A to B. The red asphalt a common sight, as was the black asphalt next to it. I walked as I would always walk, small rocks and sand gave every step a crunchiness to it. Accompanied by the music of birds and the last remaining leaves rustling on the trees, the atmosphere was peaceful, there was an air of tranquility.

As I had already left fairly late, I would arrive by dark. Indeed as I went on, the sun started dipping below the horizon and the shadow cast by the planet itself quickly crept up the trees. As it moved beyond me, the change of temperature was immediate. The warmth gone like a switch was simply flipped off. It wasn't cool, but the effect of the lack of warmth cascaded through me. It quickly moved through my extremities my hands were the first to feel the chill. As the light moved further up, it didn't take long until it passed the tree tops only the sky enjoyed the suns warmth. Shades of bright orange clouds simulated an earth on fire. Though now the cool crept in. As the light went away the wind came almost immediately. I now felt cold.

I tightened my clothes, I tucked in my hands and checked every part of my clothes for gaps. I hadn't anticipated how quickly the cold would come. As I worried about my clothes and the cold, the sky quickly shifted from light to darker blue. The cold deepened and the street lights turned on. A seemingly infinitely repeating pattern as the lights stood out, their cones projecting on the red asphalt road. The direct projection well illuminated, then from one light to the other the light faded to dark and then to light again. The pattern stood out especially when a car approached constantly going in and out of the light. The sound of the air going around it similarly reflecting on the light posts as the whooshing changed intensity. As it grew louder in a wavy pattern in sync with the light projections. Then as the car passed the sound changed, the wavy nature less pronounced. Gradually it just faded away, eventually my footsteps were louder and the car was gone entirely. Feeling the chill I focussed on my footsteps, left, right, left, right. With each step my shoes made a satisfying tap sound on the asphalt.

This was supposed to be a short walk and I was supposed to arrive at my friends house shortly after sunset. Though the street just seemingly went on forever, my mind tricked I just kept going on. I got colder looked up, the clouds were now gone, the sky dark. Then I started noticing the stars, first just a few of the brightest showed. The sky polluted by the orange glow of the city radiating and dimly reflecting on the different layers in the sky. Though beautiful it was, I was getting restless and picked up the pace. The cadence of the tapping of my feet moved and the steady but calming rhythm became restless and increasingly irregular. I never checked my watch, but everything told me I was now late. As looking at the asphalt just made me increasingly restless, I started looking at the fields. The clear skies allowing the light of the stars illuminated them, although not much. Though beautiful I felt restless still.

Then I resorted to looking up. The hundreds of stars turned to thousands and then millions. The rest of the world faded to the background and all I saw were more and more stars. Every step I took, I just blindly went on. My mind wandered, all these stars, many are just galaxies on their own, I felt humbled and inspired. Then I noticed them shift. Though the more I looked, it was I that was shifting, a result of the earths rotation. As I kept focussing on the stars, I noticed something. A denser cluster of stars and a nebula seemingly surrounding them. It was our own milky way galaxy and I smiled. My worries about when I was going to arrive were gone. Then as I went on I no longer noticed the tapping of my feet anymore. The longer I went on, the more I felt pulled towards the stars, the more I felt like I was floating. In my mind there I stopped walking and just gliding along. My head was facing the sky as I tried to take it all in as stars, galaxies, nebulas went by, all brightly illuminated. I could only smile as the infinities of the universe looked down on me with both insignificance and deep significance both.

I grew tired and the calming sensation of this gliding brought me to a state of serenity. I breathed in deeply and closed my eyes. My mind surrendered to the universe itself. Everything was bright and calm and collected, an ocean of stars illuminating my mind. Then I breathed in again and opened my eyes. I found myself at my friends house. It seemed that I had already rang the door bell. I looked up and saw the sky was dark blue, still early at dusk, the rest was just a dream.