You Are Either Going Uphill or Down

Today Russ and I are visiting our friends Michelle and Richard at their beautiful home over looking Hood Canal in Seabeck, Washington.  It seems nothing like any canal I have ever seen as I sit on the deck of their tree-house-like-home with a huge expanse of water in front of me surrounded by green covered mountains, wreaths of clouds encircling their tops.  I certainly understand why Washington is called the Evergreen state.

Michelle and Richard are marrying in a month.  So like me, they have been on their most healthy behavior in anticipation of the familiar historical record photographs that certainly will be taken as their friends and family celebrate their nuptials.  This makes visiting them a positive moment in the challenge of the weight-loss challenge while traveling.

Just like the view across the canal, Michelle and Richard’s house is set at the foot of a mountain that is accessed by a quarter mile driveway with a 14 degree decent.  I am taking Michelle’s word on the exact angle. She being a Doctor and scientist by training I would never doubt her on such a precise number as 14.

My personal assessment of the steepness of the drive came when Russ, Richard and I walked up it.   I had to bend at my waist quite a bit so as not to fall backwards as I took each forward, or rather upward step equivalent to two stair-treads.  I am not a steady climber, but one who goes in spurts, stopping to recover and then sprinting ahead.

As I sprint, I put my head down and motor forward as fast as I can until I realize I am a heavy middle-aged woman and I stop.  Only in that pause do I take time to talk to my companions or look around at the ancient trees, branches covered in velvet like moss with a carpet of ferns below them.

During our walk at the summit we visit a beautiful garden in the cool of the Washington summer and during that stroll I realize that I am in need of the bathroom.  Richard offers the entire great outdoors, but without paper; I decline.

So I depart my company and head back toward the steep driveway to their home, alone.  Having only just emerged from the driveway half an hour before I was certain I knew which one it was.  I started down the steep switch back drive alone and a good 80 feet down I stop.  Is this the right driveway?  This does not look familiar?  Are these 85 trees the same ones I passed on the way up?

Suddenly I have a flash back to my earliest childhood memory.  When I was three, my parents and I lived in a tiny house on a giant hill in Dayton, Ohio.  My best friend Johnny Schlemer lived behind us at the bottom of the huge hill.  One very snowy day my mother dressed me in my one-piece snowsuit that zipped from ankle to neck and sent me out of the tiny house to go visit him.

I started trudging through the snow, down the very steep hill.  At about the halfway point I realized that I had to go to the bathroom.  I looked up the hill; it was a long way back.  I looked down the hill, much too far.  So what did I do, but just sit right down in the snow in my giant zip-up snowsuit and pee right there.

After sobbing a while, the warmness of pee in my snowsuit started to cool down, I realized I was all-alone and no one was going to come save me.  I eventually stood up and headed back home each step more difficult in my very wet outfit.

So much of life is about going up or down hill and both can be hard.  But I learned a great lesson at three years old.  If you are not sure which way to go sitting right down and peeing is not the answer.  Go one-way or the other.  Just go.