Today's bike ride was through summer mist and stillness. I started at 7:00 am, to beat the heat, and rode on some old roads that were strange to me -- long, hidden, and silent roads that wound among trees that were utterly still in the breezeless air. I stopped beside a place of dark woods, and as I watched for a few minutes I saw no leaf moving even slightly. A bit later, after pumping up a long and difficult hill, I passed the tree shown above, with the mist over the farmland behind it. Again, nothing was moving, all was still, no sound all across the hills.