Your A Nation

There are a *few* things I'm obsessive about; gum, popcorn, vegetables and water. Lots and lots and lots of water. Every once in a while I’ll measure how much I drink, and it’s around four gallons a day. It’s excessive, I know, but I can’t help myself! I love the wet clear liquidity of it. I swear I can feel my blood cells plump up after a tall glass of water.

The down side to all this water consumption is the water expulsion. As noted in previous post, I love to go walking and hiking. Unfortunately, I can’t go hiking for more than two hours without needing to go to pee.

Most often I go hiking with my backpack, if nothing else to hold an extra pack of gum and my wallet incase I want to run an errand on the way home. Today, however, I wanted to be light and mobile, and left the pack at home. There was one errand on my way, and I tucked my Bank of America card into the little pocket on the inside of my running shorts.

It was a beautiful hike along a new rocky trail. I would climb to a little summit and look out on the view with the city in the distance and the Snoopy clouds in the sky. Down I would go, jumping from rock to tree root, swinging down the path, running with the red dragon flies. After an hour, the path forked. I could access the gravel road that would lead me out of the Fells and back home, or I could continue on for a while. I chose to continue on, but with each passing step and jump, I felt that it wasn’t the right choice and decided to turn around and take the shorter route.

As nature would have it, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it another hour back home with out visiting a nice big tree or boulder. I sat my walkman down and found a little place off the trail. The hike home would be much more comfortable now.

Two miles later, three blocks from my house, I realized that my Bank of America card was no longer in my short pocket. For an instance I thought “I’ll just call it in lost and have it replaced.” But I believe if you break it you fix it, lose it, find it. I had to at least attempt at retracing my steps to try to find it.

I casually scanned the mile long stretch of sidewalk but I knew it wouldn’t be there. I was confident that it had flipped out of my pocket during my haste in lowering and pulling back up my shorts, way back deep in the trail. While my bladder may fail me, the endurance of my legs walking, the earnestness of following my conviction, and pure faith led me to the very spot the card laid. I knew that I would find it, but it’s still a miracle. One little golden leaf colored 2 inch card in a 25,000 acre leaf covered land.

So the moral of the story is, drinking water will give you soft skin, and leave your bank card at home when going hiking.