It is early morning in January 2008, and the GN is pedaling his bicycle through the Florida Everglades.

Back home in Vermont, a run of powder days not seen since, well, last season, is coming to a close.

In Florida, near-record cold has swept across the state, and the GN
shivers as he pedals, a cold breeze whipping through his shirt. One of
his great loves is deep powder skiing, and here he is, in Florida,
riding a bicycle with goose bumps on his ass. It is almost more irony
than he can bear.

He exits the park on Route 9633, now warm, turning over the big ring at
a pretty good clip. He’s not fit, but like all roads in Florida, this
one is flat, and now the wind is at his back. The knobby tires of his
mountain bike make a whirring noise on the tarmac.

Now the broad expanse of farm fields outside the town of Homestead. Row
upon row of black plastic spread across the thin, pallid soil. At the
edge of each field, row upon row of battered passenger vans to carry
the immigrant workers that tend the crops. Yesterday, he’d seen a
tractor-trailer carrying some strange fruit; it was round and green and
about the size of tomatoes and by god it was tomatoes and they were
green because of course that’s how they pick ‘em, green and hard so
they travel well. Later, they’ll be coaxed red with ethylene and sold
to a public that’s either disinterested, ignorant, or both.

It has been a good trip. On Christmas, they were the sole occupants of
a campground in the Ocala National Forest. They went kayaking, saw
otter and egrets and turtles. The boys opened their meager loot on the
bed he built into the back of the travelin’ van. Later, they cooked
chicken over a fire. It didn't feel lonely or bereft. It felt like life
lived on their terms.

And it has reaffirmed what he already thought about home, which is
this: The future of this once-great country is balanced on a precipice.
When and how it falls is unknown to most, and certainly to a simple man
pedaling his bicycle through a cold Florida morning. But of the
concrete truths he can count, the most obvious is that there will be no
better place to ride that tumble than the green hills of Vermont, where
we already have so much of what our countrymen and women will need.
Interconnectedness. Ingenuity. Modest expectations. Modesty. Florida,
like much of the U.S., is severely deficient in these qualities.

At some point in your life, if you are lucky, you feel connected to a
place and a place’s people. Does it choose you, or do you choose it? He
does not know, but he is grateful to feel that connection, even as the
first bead of sweat drops off his sun-burned nose and falls through the
cool Florida air.