One of those moments

You know those moments when you read something, and you marvel at how the author has put into words what you have always thought, or at least felt? It's such a satisfying feeling. "That's it", you think, "he has somehow made it concrete, something that can actually be written down." I had one of those moments yesterday while reading this little book about cycling called Need for the Bike given to me by a good friend. It goes:

"Contrary to what happens when I'm in a car and the landscape allows itself to be seen and not 'be,' on a bike I'm sitting in it.

With the bike there's an animal relation with the world: the mountains you see are there to be scaled, the valleys are for cruising down into, shadows are for hiding in and stretching out. To be in the landscape, in its heat, its rain, its wind, is to see it with different eyes; it's to impregnate oneself with it in an instinctive and profound way. The mountain rising before me isn't a mountain, it's a first grade to climb, a test, a doubt, sometimes anxiety. At the summit, it's a conquest, lightness. I've taken it and it's in me."

Today while cycling along some peaceful country roads under a blue sky, I remembered this and it hit me all over again. I was "sitting in it".