Glimmer

The evening air bit with that familiar Montana chill, not quite spring despite what the calendar insisted. Missoula’s seasons have always played by their own rules… one day you’re scraping frost off your windshield, the next you’re scrambling for the AC. I pedaled up the Inez trail with stubborn determination, my mountain bike rolling over patches of lingering mud and half-melted snow. Didn’t get far. Tried Miller Creek road next, legs pushing against the resistance. Didn’t get far there either. Little Park Creek called out with promise of better conditions, but the seasonal mess of early spring had other ideas. Three attempts, three dead ends.

The web feels thickest this time of year. It’s like some cosmic joke that repeats annually. This claustrophobic sensation that wraps around my chest when I stare at the calendar. Summer seems impossibly distant, a mirage of freedom where I can hop on my bike and point it anywhere, trails opening endlessly before me like chapters in a favorite book. But now? Now there’s nowhere to go, nowhere that isn’t soggy or snowy or simply impassable. The sticky strands of this web catch me every year around this time, this haunting realization that maybe I’ve chosen the wrong place to put down roots. The thought loops back on itself… I’m stuck, I’m stuck, I’m stuck, echoing with each spin of my wheels against unsuitable terrain.

I finally surrendered to reality and rolled back to my truck. Tossed the mud-spattered bike in the back without the usual post-ride satisfaction, just going through the motions. As I drove back toward town, buildings began to materialize and then disappear past my window, concrete markers of civilization blurring together. And that’s when I felt it. Just the faintest spark, a glimmer of something like happiness. Not the full-blown euphoria of a summer descent down a perfect singletrack, but something quieter and no less important. I’d gotten out. Left the four walls of my house behind. Pushed against the boundaries, even if they hadn’t yielded much.

Sometimes freedom isn’t about conquering mountains or hitting epic trails. Sometimes it’s just about refusing to surrender completely to the web, yanking back just enough slack in the line to remind yourself that you’re still moving. The truck hummed beneath me as I headed home, and I realized that while I might be temporarily trapped by season and circumstance, I wasn’t truly stuck at all. The glimmer wasn’t just happiness… it was a promise from spring that summer’s liberation was already on its way.