Rounding the corner on my bike just now I accidentally took part in a mass demonstration. I don’t know what it was about, maybe just a celebration of biking. People seemed easy and relaxed, it is a sweet sunny day with high white cloud, a blue sky, the pack of people travelling at jogging pace over the bridge, guarded by police on massive motorbikes, reminded me of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s description of her father’s experience of riding up out of the river bluffs with a big wolf pack travelling on all sides, they must have just killed and eaten, he told her, they showed no interest in me whatsoever. This was a quiet deed: shared, fruity, holy; some cyclists had dressed up, about a third were wearing helmets, but most of us travelled incognito, as our regular selves, quiet chat here and there like flowers in the grass or fishes occasionally leaping from the water. At my street corner I peeled off and passed the flower stall that has suddenly appeared since the weather turned autumnal, the strands of cut purple grasses stirring their flimmish pretty seedheads in the breeze like a prairie. America once was all prairie. A body of buffalo roamed it from end to end, turning each time they eventually reached the coast, nosing each other, “it’s not here! go back!” like the sparkling water in a snowdome slapping from end to end slowly. This may not be the exact scientific truth.