I remember reading T.S. Eliot’s masterwork The Wasteland back when I was an arrogant, impudent sophomore at the University of Vermont, arguing with my professor (as arrogant and impudent sophomores will do) about the poem’s very premise.

As a refresher (or if you’re unfamiliar):

The Wasteland is a meditation on the teasing, soul-crushing nature of time. And from the opening words of its opening stanza, the poem puts a stake in the softening ground of spring as the cruelest of all seasons.

Specifically, Eliot pegs April — the fourth month of the Gregorian calendar, the time when Persephone packs her bags, dusts the ashes of hell off her shoulders, and skips out of the underworld — as the true Shiva of seasons, the destroyer of worlds, the ultimate human heartbreaker:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.

I, however, in the early spring of my own youth, had a bone to pick with this. And still kind of do.

I appreciate the bitter poignancy of the poem’s conceit, that birth and beauty and rejuvenation are never to be trusted, because they cynically plant and water seeds of grass only for the scythe of time to grimly mow down.

But I don’t fault April for that. I freaking love April…the thawing and up-pushing and budding and greening and awakening. The wet fecundity of it all. It’s also when the bikes come off their tenders and riding season begins. That’s my happy.

Maybe I’m just a literalist, but to me September has always been the cruelest of months. September is…the school bell tolling. The daylight shrinking. The laconic pleasures of summer—lolling, lazing, wasting time—cashiered for the labored seriousness of production. Party’s over. Put on a shirt. Back to school. Get to work.

It’s what Pat Benatar would have lamented if she hadn’t been rueing “the right kind of sinner to release her inner fantasy.”

September, you’re the real heartbreaker.

https://youtube.com/watch/clip/UgkxIt-0Qt-47lnzZBmuXfhi8GJNnnd7USMG?si=Ukb5CP6C2VTKnspD

And so circling back to motorbikes: last September, while the grass was still a vibrant shade of green, before the leaves started turning and falling like calendar pages, before the hoar frosted, the peepers stopped peeping, the crickets stopped cricketing, and the chill set in for good (until we circle back around the sun, God willing), I decided to take an end-of-the-cycle-season moto voyage to the land of Green Mountains, and up to Emerald Lake.

Here is my “stop-time” machine, provisioned, rok-stapped and laden for the journey north.

(September may be the color of cruel. But green…green is the color of Triumph.)

And here is your presbyopic time-pilot…not green, but rather more grey, insulated against the changing seasons of time with cheerfulness and down, stuffed like a sausage into his Belstaff, and ever grateful just to be riding.

This anti-hero departed from southern New England early on a Friday morning, rolling up the nineties (first the dreaded I-95, then I-91) into the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Somewhere on 91 on the journey north.

Up, up he soars through Connecticut…

Up, up through the Bay State, alighting at the Roost in Northhampton for a brief respite and refreshment..

And up to Greenfield, MA, where (if you so choose) the pavement ends, and the real fun begins.

Welcome to Green River Road: what the Yellow Brick Road is to the Emerald City, this meandering dirt path is to Vermont’s Emerald Lake.

Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Massachusetts anymore.

At some point I turned off Green River Road and onto plain old River Road, which dwindled and became increasingly primitive two-track until I rounded a corner into a clearing, where, several guys were there where several pickup trucks and a cluster of guys standing around with…

guns.

As it turned out, I’d stumbled upon the Leyden (MA) Rifle Club, a literal stone’s throw from the MA/VT border.

I’m a gun owner myself (long arms only, including an M1 Garand that belonged to my Dad) and an occasional range visitor myself. But there’s something strange and awkward about bursting in—unannounced and uninvited—on a gathering of firearm enthusiasts, in the middle of the woods—their woods—on a motorbike.

Stopped in Newfane to collect myself, hydrate, and add a layer.. it was a little chillier.

Newfane

You can’t get very high on an empty stomach, so I stopped in Jamaica for some Honeypie.

It was out of this world.

Then, up up up to the great Emerald Lake, where my landing site was excellent, but about as level as this.

Camping craptastica…

Overnight support pod…

And a quick flight to Manchester for comestibles at the always excellent and thread-appropriate Seasons Restaurant.

Then back to basecamp for fire, farting around, and sleep.

(Yes, that’s William Shirer’s history classic. Yes, I’m reading it. Yes, I was worried someone would see me and think I was one of those oddball New England militia cranks, rather than someone communing with nature for Rosh Hashanah and brushing up on world history).

Happy camp…happy camper.

On Sunday morning, after ingesting some Jet-boiled rocket fuel, I packed up, loaded up, and rode south.

My goal was to find a southern trajectory through as much atmospheric Vermont dirt as I could find. South of Bennington, I stumbled on this, which was entirely out of my league. Because most of it was actually Vermont rock.

It took about a half-mile grind up into this rocky atmosphere until I recognized that, like Icarus, I was flying too close to the sun. But unlike Icarus, I had the good sense  to turn around. No shame in not melting your clutch (or your wings).

Joyful that I didn’t crash. Grateful to bid such a sparkling adieu to summer.

And happy—always happy—to get home in one piece.