Relaxing in Electric Pass, White River National Forest, Colorado
A couple of weeks ago, a friend posted a silly picture to social media (as many of us are wont to do from time to time, if for no other reason than to give our friends a good laugh). It was a photo of himself in a beautiful alpine meadow with the caption, “I walk around like everything is okay, but deep down inside my left boot, my sock is sliding off…”
Hiking the Badwater Flats, Death Valley National Park, California
I laughed and commented something about my left boot hoarding a tiny stone that sometimes bugged my little toe. He replied, “And all we have to do is stop, deal with it, and move on, but here is this crazy logic of not wanting to stop… go figure…”
Hiking on Skyline Divide, Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington
How many times on the trail is here something just a little bit wrong with our pack or our hiking boot or our attire and we think, “Well, I’ll just get to the next trail junction/mountaintop/waterfall and then take care of it.” We don’t see it as pressing enough to require a stop.
Hiking up the slopes of Mt. Agassiz, Uinta Mountains, Utah
I can’t say how many times I’ve done that with food. My body is telling me “Eat!” and I’m thinking, “It can’t be that much further to the next viewpoint!” So my body grumbles and waits, and I get to the next viewpoint because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. But it would have been better for me to eat then, and it certainly would have made that last quarter mile more enjoyable.
Mt. Hood from Lookout Mountain, Oregon
Too often, our goals and our sights are set on something and so we refuse to just slow down and deal with what is coming at us now. It’s a coping mechanism that gets us through to where we want to go. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But the time comes when we just need to deal with our issues and stop putting them off – eat a little, drink a little, pull up the sock, adjust the backpack, get the rock out of our shoe, etc.
Hiking south of Third Beach, Olympic National Park, Washington
In life, the same coping mechanism raises its head. We see little issues in our lives – sometimes moral, sometimes physical, sometimes spiritual – but like that left sock, we have a need to keep going. If we would just stop and deal with it, right then or at least very soon, the issue would be dealt with. But instead, we keep going. And down the road, we end up with a blister because that sock wasn’t there to protect our foot. Or in life, that little issue becomes bigger. Or it just keeps bugging us.
If I’d just put on my boots, my socks wouldn’t have been so dusty… Nampaweap Petroglyphs Trail, Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument, Arizona
Eventually, there are so many little issues or the one issue has bugged us for so long that it begins to drive us crazy. Only then do we stop long enough to take care of something that would have taken us less than five minutes if we’d just dealt with it in the moment.
So y’all, pull up your left sock today, ok?
