I had the strangest and most sublime experience today on a bike ride I do near my house. It’s a 25-mile loop past a beautiful reservoir that was framed by a shock of fall colors, unbelievably bright yellows and reds, down a steep craggy notch, and through some ranches filled with cows, horses, sheep, and … ducks.

These two goddamn ducks! But more on them in a second.

I was listening to a podcast about consciousness with Annaka Harris. She was describing her views about what this conscious experience we seem to be having is all about, whether it emerges or is somehow innate to the universe, and so forth. She was talking about the primitive consciousness that might attend to something as simple as a pea plant, because their tendrils grow straight unless they come across something to curl around and that experience of coming across something to wrap yourself around might seem like something, however dim. She used this example, by way of analogy, to explain the illusion of free will we all experience. If it is like something to be a pea plant, then it might feel to the pea plant that it is “choosing” to wrap its tendril around a stick though of course it couldn’t have chosen otherwise.

And perhaps because it was so beautiful outside, I found my appreciation of everything around me grow in an unusual way. I felt my awareness of the beautiful mystery of life grow large, like that pea tendril, seeking and aching to wrap itself around everything. And suddenly I was smiling at the cows I was riding past, and how there is an intrinsic experience of what it is like to be a cow. And the same with the horses, and how beautiful it is that, whatever it may be like, it is like something to be a horse.

And as I was riding my bike past these ranches, through the fall foliage amid the unspoiled Rockies, I felt profoundly awestruck of the miracle that any of this even exists! How is it possible to not spend every waking second of our days filled with sheer astonishment that all this life exists?

Yet at the same time I was also lamenting how hard it is for all these mundane miracles of existence to be salient in our daily lives. It’s so easy to dwell on problems to be solved—many of them intractable, hopeless, and even existential! In fact, we spend most of our days thinking about which problems need to be solved next, and in doing so, we’re often blind or inured to all that’s good and right and mysterious and downright astonishing about life itself, even though this stuff is everywhere!

These thoughts were also arising in another context. I had just heard the shocking news of a recent suicide in the climbing world, and I was struck by its apparent senselessness. This was a person I knew, interacted with at the crags, and liked quite a bit. And from the outside, based on her social media, everything seemed to be going well for her at the moment. Life seemed good. News of suicides always arrives like this. It’s shocking and just so abrupt.

Just then I passed these two ducks sitting in a yard—two ducks standing together, and staring at me. And for some reason I just burst into tears at their funny sight, and it was unclear whether I was laughing or crying, tears just streaming down my face as I continued to ride my bike. It was this extraordinary experience of feeling the profound reverence for the diversity of conscious experience—even these ducks were getting to experience what it means to have life—while also feeling sad about how easy it is to take all this for granted.

It was only when I got home from my bike ride and walked into my house that I realized, suddenly and strangely, it’s been exactly five years to the day since Hayden and Inge died.

My god, I couldn’t believe I had forgotten that till now! I hadn’t been thinking about their death anniversary until that very moment, after I had gotten home from my ride, after I had had this extraordinary and sublime tear-streaked experience. And then suddenly I was awash in emotions. Thinking about it more, it became very clear that Hayden and Inge had been with me on this ride, perhaps even appearing as ducks. I broke down and cried some more. Tears of sadness, but they were also tears born of a kind of euphoria at having been touched in this completely surprising way.

One of the saddest things about losing someone you love is that you realize that the memories you have with them is all you’re going to get. There are no new memories to be made. And what’s worse is that those memories fade. They get old and easy to wear out.

But I think that today I discovered that new experiences can be had in the company of your beloved dead. Their memory and presence can be carried forth, and even color our living experiences in an uncanny ways. Maybe I’m stretching here … but maybe not.

All I know is that when I set off on my normal bike ride today, my only expectation was to get some exercise. I definitely didn’t set out thinking I’d be split open wide by the weight of the universe, humbled by the mystery of consciousness, and arrive home feeling so awake to the beauty of this world.

This story was originally published on October 7, 2022.