Tallahassee Sunsets

As I get older, I've learned that one of the secrets to happiness, or at least to my own personal happiness, is to stay busy.

Now that school is out for the summer, I'm not studying and working all the time. That will change on June 15th, when I begin working for a wrongful death firm. But until then, I find that most of my evenings are free.

About five times during this past week, I had the chance to go for an early evening run. After I finished the jogs, I decided to stay busy by hopping on my bike and riding for an hour or so until the sun set.

I go for bike rides in Innovation Park. The Park contains various buildings dedicated to industrial and technological pursuits, such as the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the FSU/FAMU School of Engineering. Innovation Park is where I ride my bike because there are many open spaces of woods or fields (the FSU golf course flanks one side of the park). Each day, I stopped somewhere to watch the fabulous pinks, purples, oranges and yellows that colored the clouds as the sun went down.

The other things in nature that I come across on my bike rides are also fascinating. One day I saw a red fox lying in the grass, watching me with curiosity. It kept sitting up and laying back down, trying to decide if it should run away. Another day, I saw a fox (perhaps the same one) trot rapidly away from me as I rounded a curve and spotted her. The fox carried one of her pups in her mouth as she slinked away into the woods.

Twice, a red shouldered hawk has flown over me as I rode. The first time, the hawk had a small snake in its talons. The second time, it looked like it had a mouse.

I also startled a Great Blue Heron standing in a creek. It flapped its large wings and took off deeper into the woods.

As the day ends and the sky turns from bright blue to darker shades and then black, bats come out. They curve toward me and then away from me very fast, relying on their built-in sonar. Thousands of frogs start chirping away right as the sun disappears, too.

When the sun goes down, I decide to head back to my apartment. The last half mile is all down hill and I don't have to pedal. I can get up some nice speed, and the evening air hitting my face and hair is one of the best sensations on earth. It brings back memories of summer rides when I was a boy. Freedom.

One night as I finished a run, I heard what sounded like a insane human, laughing at me from up in a tree. I quickly deduced that it was an owl... The owls are great, here, too. I can hear them often at night when I'm lying in bed... Shortly after the laughing stopped, out of the corner of my eye I caught three large owls, one right behind the other like fighter planes in tight formation, swooping across the parking lot and then disappearing into darkness. The only noise they made was the slightest rustling of wind- a noise that I would not have noticed had I not turned my head to look right at them. I'm not sure what kind of owls they were, but their undersides were white.

If the weather is good, I'll go for another bike ride today. It is a great way to spend an hour around sunset in Tallahassee.

Universal Health Care Now,

Nathan Marshburn