Most days, I ride my bike to Cohoes Falls. I try to ride other places, but I am drawn by St. Agnes' spire.
My dad grew up across the street from the church, where he was an altar boy. Each day, I don't linger at the top of the hill, but I study the gingerbread duplex that held his first years.
I don't always pause at the falls, either. Some days I just whiz past, taking in how much bare rock I can see. Lately, it is all water, and a lot of people are coming to look.
The Iroquois appreciated these falls long before people like me put this on our witness list. Until the train made Niagara relatively easy to get to, this was the falls that travelers found.
Riding my bike, I think about spectacle and spirituality. Me on my wheels, checking in with a push of water over rocks. As I go over the Hudson at the 112th Street Bridge, I note its stillness and color.
As I cross the Mohawk on Van Schaick Island, I marvel at its muddiness and the way it races. I check for geese fighting the current.
All four of my grandparents had a daily stitch to religion, at home or at Mass. I got confirmed, but I never went to church on my own. These rides are the closest I get to that kind of attentiveness.
I love what I get to see: a fence section propped on the bridge, a broken game of Scrabble. A man sitting on the stoop, belly pink with sunburn.
I mean no disrespect when I say that cataloging these details, finding the beauty in the everyday, feels like prayer.
Amy Halloran is a Troy writer. Her website is at http://amyhalloran.net