So I was able to take some lovely, long bike rides (12 miles one day, 23 the next, etc.) while listening to all sorts of music (from rock oldies to Rachmaninoff and Benny Goodman to Dierks Bentley) on the old headphones. Or turning them off and just listening to the birds and the squirrels...

Saw a few deer, too. Some close enough to reach out and touch:

But he (or she?) was a speedy little devil and made it before I got there. I was just going "whew" when, for reasons that I will never understand, the little guy (or girl?) froze solid, had a terrible change of mind and reversed full speed in the opposite direction. Or, in other words, directly across my path again. I managed to miss him (or her?) with the front wheel, but I felt the hard bump through the seat as the rear wheel ran right over the unfortunate fellow. Or lady...

Of course I grabbed the brakes and skittered to a stop. But when I looked back, the poor creature was flailing and flopping around like a freshly caught fish in the bottom of a boat. All sorts of horrible thoughts and notions were racing through my head as I leaned my bike against a tree and ran back to it. What should I do? What COULD I do??? But as I approached, the ground squirrel seemed to settle a bit, laid flat, profiled against the asphalt, twitched a few final times, and that's when I saw and felt its spirit leave its body. It was gone.

I felt terrible, of course. Worse than terrible. But there was nothing I could do. So I eased its lifeless carcass off the path and into the tall grass with my toe--I didn't want the little kids who used the path with their families to see it--and then there was nothing to do but shrug, feel bad, climb back on my bike and pedal away. But it stayed with me, and made me think, especially in the current environment, about how random and yet final death is. But also about the terrifying magic of what I'd just seen. I think the basis of most religious philosophies is the fear of death. And the even more harrowing fear of what may or must come afterwards. But I've always felt (not to be confused with "believed") that what happens when the life spirit or whatever leaves the physical body, it doesn't vanish to nothing, but continues on in some way. Like what we learned (if we happened to be paying attention) about Einstein's Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy in science class in high school:

In any reaction, matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, just changed from one form to the other.

I surely believe there's a greater power/creative force in this universe than people, but I also feel it's arrogant for anyone (or any group) to think they understand the nature of that power or think they know what happens or what things will be like beyond our current lives. I've always kind of felt--again, rather than believed--that ancient man most likely created God (or gods) in his own image rather than the other way 'round...

Sorry for taking you up this path with me, but I wanted to get it off my chest (if not out of my system). Won't do it again.

Probably...

Repeating One More Thing Dept in case you weren't paying attention (like in science class when the teacher was explaining Einstein's law of conservation of matter-energy):

As previously mentioned, we ran into some unexpected glitches re: the proper ordering of chapter tracks with our first shipment of USB flash drives. This only occurred on a few in-car audio systems, but it was a definite problem. I'm happy to announce that, after a lot of irritation, anguish, gnashing of teeth and chasing our own tails, finally uncovered the cause. Our new batch should play fine everywhere. If you are having trouble playing the flash drive you have on your car stereo, we will be happy to fix or exchange it for you. Please note that the problem USBs will work just fine on home or laptop computers and can be downloaded to your audio library and uploaded to your smart phone like any other mp3 files.