Recently I rode my bike down the beautiful path from the northern end of Manhattan, along the Hudson River, to Sekhnetville, about 13 miles south.  I really must post some photos from these trips, it’s a very photogenic ride.  You can see how beautiful the island was before wealth-crazed developers began heedlessly exploiting virtually every inch of it.   

 The ride on the bike path becomes magical around sunset when the sky and the river are constantly changing color.

As I’m now older, 61, and aware of certain health concerns, I tend to take a couple of breaks along the way.  I generally find myself resting just past the sewage treatment plant the city built in Harlem decades back.   In the plaza in front of Fairway I get off the bike, sit on a bench, have some water, a snack, rest a few minutes, watch the river flow.   

The other night, as I was about to get on my bike to continue on a particularly beautiful section of the path, I saw a giant black rat racing toward me.  It was impossibly huge, this rat, and coming straight at me as I began to stand, hands on the handlebars of my bike.  The mutant rat was illuminated by the headlights of a car.  When the car turned, and the light shifted, I saw in that instant that the immense black rat was actually a tiny, terrified mouse, scrambling for cover about ten feet away and to my left.  What I had seen was its monstrous shadow, created by the headlights of the car.   

Reminded me of Plato’s allegory about the cave.