Up ahead the other riders, John Sutherland and his wife, Sylvia, have pulled into a roadside picnic area. It's time to stretch. As I pull my machine beside them Sylvia is taking her helmet off and shaking her hair loose, while John puts his BMW up on the stand. Nothing is said. We have been on so many trips together we know from a glance how one another feels. Right now we are just quiet and looking around.

The picnic benches are abandoned at this hour of the morning. We have the whole place to ourselves. John goes across the grass to a cast-iron pump and starts pumping water to drink. Chris wanders down through some trees beyond a grassy knoll to a small stream. I am just staring around.

After a while Sylvia sits down on the wooden picnic bench and straightens out her legs, lifting one at a time slowly without looking up. Long silences mean gloom for her, and I comment on it. She looks up and then looks down again.

"It was all those people in the cars coming the other way,'' she says. "The first one looked so sad. And then the next one looked exactly the same way, and then the next one and the next one, they were all the same.''

"They were just commuting to work.''

She perceives well but there was nothing unnatural about it. "Well, you know, work,'' I repeat. "Monday morning. Half asleep. Who goes to work Monday morning with a grin?''

"It's just that they looked so lost,'' she says. "Like they were all dead. Like a funeral procession.'' Then she puts both feet down and leaves them there.

I see what she is saying, but logically it doesn't go anywhere. You work to live and that's what they are doing. "I was watching swamps,'' I say.

After a while she looks up and says, "What did you see?''

"There was a whole flock of red-winged blackbirds. They rose up suddenly when we went by.''