Today was a good day, in no small part because I survived it. The afternoon went from the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat in no time at all. So I can't ride a bike uphill in 97 degree heat for more than an hour. I made it to my destination, had a nice, long game of water frisbee in the lake, hung out on what passes for "beach" in Colorado, then nearly died on the way back. It happens.
I've had a few nearly died situations (or those perceived so at the time) and most all of them come while hiking. Why? Because I am a hard-headed individual and I will not turn around when I should. Two of these occurrences came in my youth: as a pre-teen I nearly slid over the edge at Stone Mountain in Georgia--I didn't understand what that was all about at the time...just thought the South had a Mount Rushmore-type attraction--and my parents and I were on some Smokey Mountains trail somewhere FAR off the beaten track when we, and by we I mean my mom and I (dad was busy laughing at us nearby), clung to life on a 70+ degree-angled hillside with only a tiny sapling between us and sure death below. Sapling? It was an overgrown weed really, maybe even a single stalk of grass as time finishes the story for us. Once we'd traversed that horror, we met with a stream or a snake or something--maybe mom would recall--that made my dad wonder if we should turn back. My mother told him no. Not in those words, but in many, many other words. We pressed on ahead, successfully.
Then there was the time I decided on an all-day hike at our local State Park here. All day, like nine, eleven hours all day. I could't tell the difference between the ground and my own face and folks, that's the definition of draggin' low! And there were several times when I said to hubby and the Bouvier, "just one more curve" at what used to be our local lake until last year's wildfire closed it. It takes a lot of miles to circumnavigate a reservoir by the way, when you've got land to build a big one, and one thing we got a lot of out here is land.
You'd think that last story, The Reservoir Episodes, would've stuck with me. They obviously eluded me today. Then again I'm fifteen years older today, too. (That's fifteen having-kids-writing-novels years, not normal time passages.) But I made it around a good 70% of this res today before the water play and the return trip. I even made the first twenty minutes or so of retracing our fat tire tracks okay, until I didn't.
Humility, in my experience, comes upon you quickly, like a sudden rogue lightning flash that precedes any thunder or storm. Your mind (and in my case, head and stomach) make decisions for you concerning matters you had no idea were "pressing" as it were. And if you're 51 and it's 97, well, the math doesn't add up after a certain point. In the interest of saving you from such a fate I will tell you here and now that this certain point I speak of is microscopic. You will never see it before it sees you. And you know what, it hates you. It wants to sneak up, smash your skull in with a pounding headache and force you to remove some bile from your digestive system without benefit of privacy. Call it Napoleon Complex if you will, but respect the little bastard, I'm warning you. Your day on the Road to Dumbass Cuss will come, mark my words.
But I live to tell the tale, and am entirely healed thanks to the magic of the Coca-Cola Company (you'll recall this has occurred for me before in the backseat of the car story...) and a good, long nap. Heatstroke? Nah, just hardheadedness again and a young girl with a deficient memory trapped inside a little old lady with too much gumption.
May your trails be happy...and healthy ones!
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