Photo by Tuvalum on Unsplash
Meira didn’t realize the sun would set so quickly.
Right after she got off work, she had hung her new mountain bike on the rack of her car and driven to Sycamore Open Space, just five miles from home.
She’d rented three different mountain bikes on three different weekends before she decided to buy this one. One bike shop was all the way down in Santa Cruz. She had driven down there to rent a bike and took a ride in the butterfly sanctuary near the ocean. She’d loved the sanctuary, but not the bike. The other two bikes were from shops in Walnut Creek. Her third rental was the one she fell in love with. Sophisticated gears and a front suspension. It also put a dent in her savings account, but she was excited to have it.
When Meira started to ride up the dirt trail, the sun was dipping toward the west. She thought she’d have at least an hour of daylight in which to ride.
The beginning of the trail was flat. It meandered along the back side of a neighborhood of expensive houses, their manicured yards butting up to the golden weeds of the park. Gigantic oak trees shaded the path with strong leafy arms, and acorns crunched under the wheels of Meira’s bike.
At the end of the neighborhood, the trail rose to follow the curve of a hillside. As Meira increased her peddling, she noticed dried pads of cow manure covering the trail like dollops of brown paste. To her left, a foot-long gopher snake wiggled out of her way and disappeared into the grasses.
It felt wonderful to be out in nature. Work had been stressful. She had four meetings in the morning, one after another with members of her team from all over the world. Exhausting.
She’d spent the afternoon working on the graphics for the training video. Her eyes were tired from focusing so intently as she altered photographs and added special effects in all the right places. The only thing that kept her going was thinking about how she’d go for a bike ride after work.
She didn’t bring any electronics with her, not even her phone. What she needed was to be alone in the quiet landscape. No voices, no conflicts to solve, nothing but stillness.
The trail curved to a higher altitude, and Meira stood on the pedals of her bike to make it to the top of the hill. She noticed the cloudless sky turn a darker shade of blue. Yellow wallflowers poked their heads out from among the dry weeds on both sides of the trail. A few oak trees cast huge shadows over the hill as the sun sank lower.
She took deep breaths as she pumped the bike up the grade. Turning her head side to side to stretch her neck, she pushed her shoulders down and sat up as straight as she could. Finally, she reached the top of the ridge, braked, and put her feet on the ground.
She could see a panorama of golden hills and valleys, the hills rising higher and higher until they created the twin peaks of Mount Diablo. The gray-blue sky perfectly complemented the grasses that had taken on a rusty hue as the daylight waned.
In one of the valleys, a coyote slinked across a trail, its body strong and well-fed. Two hawks sailed overhead. They had red tails and enormous wingspans. She watched them make circles.
The path led down the hill, so Meira followed it in low gear, pumping her brakes to prevent from losing control. That side of the hill was gloomier than the western side. She’d make sure she turned around before it got too dark.
When she reached the bottom of the valley, Meira peddled fast to create momentum for ascending the next hill. She breathed deeply as she started her next ascent and stopped the bike where the trail met a second track halfway up the hill.
She’d never been down the Northgate Trail before, so she turned right and followed it as it circled around the hillside. A clump of golden poppies waved their blossoms from out of the weeds as if they were happy to see her. She was surprised to still see them still blooming in late October. The trail spiraled around the hill, slowly ascending to the top.
All of a sudden, Meira spied a dark, moving object in front of her. It was live, that was for sure. She braked and stopped the bike about a yard in front of it, leaned over the handle bars to get a better look.
A tarantula.
She had forgotten that the tarantulas migrated across the park in October to find a mate. This one was bigger than her hand.
Meira climbed off her bike and carefully set it on the trail. She crept quietly closer to inspect the spider. Fascinating.
The tarantula had long legs with little hooks on the two front ones. It was a male. She knew that the females had fatter bodies and shorter legs. They also didn’t have those little hooks that the males used to hold onto the female during mating.
Meira scanned the trail for signs of holes covered with white threads, places where female tarantulas waited to mate and then lay their eggs. She parted some of the weeds to search harder. No luck.
Well, this poor guy was going to have a long walk to find a mate. She sat down on the dirt about a foot away to watch him slowly crawl across the trail. He didn’t seem to mind her attention. He continued his turtle crawling, one furry leg at a time.
Before Meira realized, the sun had fallen behind the Las Trampus Mountain Range in the distance, washing the sky in a smearing of orange and red streaks.
She stood up, dusted off the back of her jeans, and nodded to the tarantula.
“Gotta go, Buddy. I hope you find yourself a girlfriend soon.”
Meira climbed on her bike and turned it around to follow the trails back to the parking lot. Their outlines were hardly distinguishable from the landscape around them. She pedaled as quickly as she could around the side of the hill to find the four-way stop where she had turned. As she passed by an oak tree, the path became so dark that she couldn’t see to avoid cow paddies or rocks in her way.
Finally, the reflectors on the four-way stop lit up like a single match in the dusk. She turned left.
The problem was, she still had to take the trail up the next hill and down the other side in the dark. Then she had to follow it behind the neighborhood to get to the parking lot.
She drove fast, hoping that she wouldn’t hit a rock and throw herself into the weeds. She reached the valley floor and started up the next hill when she heard the yips and howls of a coyote. Or maybe more than one. She shivered.
The oranges and reds of the sky had turned to reds and purples. Behind her, the sky was indigo. How long before all evidence of light was gone?
When she reached the top of the hill, she stopped to catch her breath. She was wheezing with fear, wondering where those coyotes were.
Would she meet a rattlesnake and not see it? Would she run over a tarantula? They were fine in the daylight, but not at night.
The coyotes insistent yapping cry rose again. Meira held her breath, opened her eyes as wide as she could to see through the dusk, and looked frantically around for moving shadows.
Without seeing more than a few yards in front of her, she started down the trail again, going slow so she wouldn’t fall off the bike. The temperature had dropped at least five degrees; cold air bit her face.
She couldn’t see where the trail flattened out so when she hit the bottom of the hill, the back of her bike jerked up and threw her off. She landed with her right leg stuck under the bike. Her right hand had landed on a rock and she could feel thick warm liquid oozing out of her palm. Blood.
Slowly, hoping she wouldn’t feel a furry tarantula or the scaly body of a snake, she untangled herself from the bike, stood up, groped around to find the handlebars, and pulled the bike up.
The neighborhood of expensive houses was a few yards ahead.
Whew, she was almost there. All she had to do was follow the flat trail behind the neighborhood to the parking lot.
Some of the houses had back lights turned on which cast enough light so that she could at least tell where the fence line was. The other side of the trail was pitch black since the massive oak trees completely blocked the fading sunset.
Meira pushed the pedals as fast as she could, following the porch lights and fence line. Up ahead was a lone street light. The entrance to the parking lot. She hiccupped a breath as she leaned over her handlebars to increase her speed.
The single street lamp created a circle of light on the ground. Meira stopped her bike underneath it and searched the small parking lot to find her car.
There it was. The only car in the lot, covered in shadows from the nearby sycamore trees. The only sounds she heard were the crickets chirping like cell phones in the blackness.
She was safe.
She walked her bike to the back of her car. The straps of the bike rack hung like despondent arms lost in the night. Meira shook her head quickly to dispel her fear, hoisted the bike onto the rack, and strapped it securely.
She unhooked the pack on the back of the seat and removed her water bottle. She had left her cell phone at home, so she didn’t have to worry about that.
It would be good to get back and have dinner.
Meira scanned the perimeter of the lot for signs of movement. Breathing shadows? Hungry animals that hunted in the darkness? Slithering or crawling predators? Seeing nothing but pitch blackness, she took a long, deep breath.
All clear. Let’s go.
She bustled up to the driver’s side of the car and reached into her back jeans pocket for her car keys.
They weren’t there.
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