A mythical ride through a familiar landscape
JOHN LANDRETTI
photographs by dan oldre
MY TWO BOYS, ages three
and six, love a good bike ride and
I take them out often. We travel
on a single vehicle that includes a
bicycle, a tag-along, and a trailer.
My boys call this elaborate rig the
“Burley Train.” Come Friday
evenings, if the weather is fair, we
board in the garage and make the
long trip north to a Dairy Queen.
We live in the Twin Cities about ten miles east
of the confluence of two great rivers, the
Mississippi and the Minnesota. Ponds and lakes
sprinkle our neighborhoods; walk a few blocks
in any direction and you’ll find geese along the
soaked edges of an outfield or cattails crowded
behind someone’s garage. Local maps—of
Roseville, Shoreview, Maplewood—are checkered green, marking scores of parks and preserves, many of which are joined to one another
by bike trails that weave along
river bottoms and old urban rail
beds, or, in our area, meander
through the narrow wilderness of
the Saint Paul water utility.
Soon after we’d settled in
Roseville, I happened upon it—
the soft-serve place at the far end
of a trail that wanders through
woods and marshes and emerges near the parking lot of an Xpress Lube. Late summer offers the
best of those evening rides, with a hint of fall in
the air and an early sunset that promises a return
under stars. Each departure carries the charge of
a real journey, with the boys eagerly clamping on
their helmets and my wife trailing down to the
end of the drive to wave farewell. She always
lingers until we round the corner, hugging herself in the protective way of a person piqued by
the deeper levels of goodbye, but also like some-
We are forever
performing the
rites of life’s
disorganized
religion.
