I spend a considerable amount of time pondering cycles. As a cyclist, I bike year round. I’m also a naturalist and place-based science educator. That means being under the weather is not a sickness, but a gift. On a bike, a cycle simply demands that you be in the moment, and in nature.

On my bike commute to work I watch and wonder without a windshield. Some months, I can watch with my eyes closed; in spring I can hear the chorus of frogs. I roll right up to the edge of the lake where I’ve collected water samples for my science students. The metamorphosis from the gelatinous eggs is a wondrous cycle.

From the saddle I see sunrise shift through the seasons, and I feel the sun on my face or the rain drops on my cheeks. I’m under the weather.

I’m also under the Bigleaf Maples. There are a few towering over the trail, at the edge of Lake Washington, that I look up to. For most of the year, they offer shade and the confirmation that we are members of the same carbon cutting crew. Those large leaves are factories of chloroplasts, converting carbon and sunlight into oxygen and sugars.

I breathe easier, smiling, knowing this marvel of science. By October, frequently in both directions of the commute, I’m bathed in the golden syrup of sunrises and sunsets; standing in my pedals, with my face to the cornucopia of lingering leaves high in broad branches. Those ocherous leaves, that turn pavement into paradise, might catch a fender, crinkle, and turn a spoke song.

For months now, damp bark is a conduit for rain running into the mat of moss below. Bare and bold branches boast the Bald Eagle, but by February I bike beneath buds, the air scented with nearby sarcococca. New leaves, and pendant flowers of spring are in the air. Samaras, the winged achene seeds, helicopter to the trail. I spin my wheels around with joy.

I began on the beaches in my own city of Seattle. Alki Beach in West Seattle sported a low tide as I rounded the point. I lifted my hand from the handlebars and waved to the sea stars in Constellation Park.

By Washington State Ferry, I made it over to the Kitsap Peninsula, riding to Manchester State Park. My route would include a number of ferries linking peninsulas and islands across the sound. From Port Orchard I took the Bremerton Foot ferry across the Sinclair Inlet, up along Viking Avenue to Poulsbo, a Scandinavian Heritage village on a bit of the Puget so similar to Norwegian fjords I could taste the brunost before I stopped for lunch. In the shade of a big leaf maple on Big Valley Road I met Mackenzie at the edge of her driveway on her pink bike. She asked me about snakes and mentioned the wild ones in her garbage bin. After my snack, I slithered away on my skinny tires.

If I was somewhat nervous crossing the Hood Canal bridge, even with the wide shoulders, the seal swimming alongside me, gave me peace of mind. Creatures of our Sound, like selkies of Scottish lore, always seem to look out for me. Or maybe I look out for them.

Cycling onto the Olympic Peninsula I was cornered when I stopped to triangulate my route along Highway 104 towards Route 19. My GPS wanted me to cut the hypotenuse, and so did Google Maps. So, I found myself on a quiet forest road along the Shine Quarry. I was alone among the silence, alders, and wildflowers. Thimbleberry’s bright red fruit, like an incessant tiny blinking traffic light, begged me to stop for a taste of the jam.

The Chimacum Valley is home to agricultural wonders, including the FinnRiver Cidery, where owner Chrystie Kinsler and I spoke about bioregionalism, food justice and the power of place, as I sipped cider in the sun. I turned off the Beaver Valley Road and onto the Larry Scott Memorial Trail — a 7.4 mile multi-use trail that winds into Port Townsend, through the trees, and then alongside the sound, near the Port Townsend Paper Mill. There is a scent of salt and sulfur — a stinging reminder of our economic interactions with our Northwest forests.

Artful homes along the back streets off Discovery Road rolled into Fort Worden and it was downhill from the officers quarters to the beautiful beach at this state park full of concrete batteries and bike friendly beauty.

One can peer from the pier at the sedimentary systems and snap a photo to document changes in the shoreline. We are all scientists when we share data. I wished the Marine Science Center was open so I could science teacher it up while looking more closely at the creatures beneath the surface.

At low tide, one can walk around the point and stare into the Strait and across to Fort Ebbey and further north to the San Juan Islands.

We danced on boulders shaped like shoulders of elephants, while the kelp forest danced in the rough and tumble of the surf. The pneumatocyst bobbed it’s buoyant head and waved bronze blades beckoning me closer to the edge. I was barefoot and longing, looking deep. Deep down, I always long for whales. Down deep, the hold fast of the bull kelp clings tightly to rocks.

“When the tide is out the table is set.” This adage from our coast Salish elders is true not just for us humans, but for other marine foragers like the otter and eagle.

The Port Townsend-Coupeville ferry brings cyclists to Whidbey Island, where the aptly named Madrona Way hugs along the crescent of Penn Cove. Bronze-barked beauties lean strongly over the road and reach thick dark green leaves towards the water. Dozens of mussel rafts dot, or square rather, the surface of the Cove. According to Penn Cove Shellfish, mussel farming enhances the habitat and health of the marine ecosystem. Each raft supports between 900 and 2500 mussel lines and can yield up to 50 pounds of mussels per line.

I muscled up the Zylstra Road hill waving bye-bye to the bivalves by bicycle. I continued up the northern half of the island where Navy planes occasionally buzzed overhead. From the Deception Pass bridge I looked over at the waters and wondered again: What color is the Puget? Such a diverse palette of place.

From Fidalgo Island, I ventured to the San Juan Islands where, for most of a week, I cycled the scenic byways, looping the islands served by lapping the interisland ferry system. There are ample opportunities in state and county parks with first-come-first-served bike camping. Beaches, books, bonfires, sunsets, and surf. I know owl be back.

Returning to the mainland on the loop home, I meandered out of Anacortes to find the Tommy Thompson Trail across the Fidalgo Bay Aquatic Reserve. The trail is named for two Tommy Thompsons — a father and son. The son was a train enthusiast. The father, a renowned chemist, and oceanographer began research in the 1920s at what was the San Juan Island Puget Sound Biological Station (now the University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs where he was a director from 1931–1951). According to the Annacortes Now website, one of the goals of the station at the time was to “instruct grade school teachers in the fundamentals of biology so that they in turn may create and foster interest in biology in the children under them.”

Talk about full circle.

I soared along the trail with herons; their long legs, like a kite tail from wide wings. We soared together over the Swinomish Channel which cuts the island from the mainland of Skagit County. It’s the confluence and flood plains of the Skagit and Swinomish Rivers that makes rich alluvial soils for our region’s productive agriculture. I biked on Best Road by crop names in fence rows remembering spring tulip tours. Green melons, red peppers, chartreuse and tasseled corn, and other colorful produce, filled sturdy wooden hip-height displays at Snowgoose Produce, on Fir Island–the result of the split of the North Fork and South Fork of the Skagit River. I treated myself to a cold ice cream.

Seeking shade from the hot summer’s day, the dappled light of the forests of Snohomish County’s Centennial trail was a respite. The rail trail goes over the Stillaguamish River, and I pondered poems by Robert Sund, or at least the title of his collection– Ish River Country.

Along the I-5 corridor heading south, I began, not only the physical journey, but the mental journey home. My bike helps me find balance, fight climate change, and connect with cultural and natural communities while exploring life the two wheeled way. Seeing the Salish Sea in this loop, in this cycle, by bicycle, shifted my views. Without windshields, without reservations, and with wide wonder, by Pedaling the Puget, and pedaling through a pandemic, I gained a new appreciation, new questions, and new connections to my place on the Puget.

Puget Sound is a wondrous ecosystem, linked by ferries and rivers, and roads, and trails. From the broad leaves, the thimbleberry, the bull kelp, the eagle, the otter, the salt, the sulfur, the shade, the mussels, and the chorus of the frogs, I am here on the Salish. I am home.

Ride on, write on, right on.

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