Give Us This Day Our Daily Options

While drinking my morning coffee, I pondered trail options in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park for my morning hike. I opted for a trail I had walked, extensively, doing bird population census studies, yet had never hiked with a pack.
As I drove to the trailhead I turned on the news for about 30 seconds. More stuff I can do nothing about. You can only take a little news at a time. Too much and you are not portable; not enough and you’re making happy rhymes. An empty head filled with John Gorka’s words would play well this morning.
From the parking lot I looked out over a corn field picked not-quite-clean by human machines. The machine’s leftovers created a giant food dish for a flock of 25 Canada Geese. Or, were those Wild Turkeys?
Of the two packs in my car, I chose the heavier since I was only planning to do six miles—or maybe five.
By the time I hit the three-mile marker I had to make a choice; take the long, tough loop to the left, or the short, easy loop to the right. Being a leftist by nature, the choice was simple.
A light drizzle rattled the canopy above, not reaching the ground. I wondered why the little toad and snail I stopped to photograph were so well camouflaged, while the gaudy orange fungi, just to their right, stuck out like an abandoned hunter’s cap. In fact, that’s what I thought it was when I opted to venture off the trail.



Then I heard the noise. Back in the last century, while I was still in the journalism game, there was an adage: When you hear hoof beats, look for horses, not zebras. While I always thought seeing zebras would be more fun, I understood. So this morning, when I heard the hoof beats, I knew what to look for. Sure enough, two riders were approaching. I guess, on a “bridle” trail, you’d expect to see horses and not pretty ladies in white dresses—nor zebras.
The riders slowed as they approached this aberration in their path. “Oh, it’s a human,” said the first rider, probably more to her horse than her partner who seemed capable of coming to the same conclusion.
The first horse and rider passed with no other acknowledgement. The second horse was curious. It stopped and looked me over. It did a full body scan, like a guy sizing up a potential date in a bar on Saturday night. The horse made some snuffling sounds and inched closer. The 37 pounds on my back, now wedged against a tree, left me few options.
The rider decided to have some fun. She said to the horse, “Oh, does that hat look like something you’d like to eat?”
Not trying to get into personification here, but I’d swear the horse shook its head and did the eye-roll thing. It then inched a bit closer. Close enough for me to tell it had been eating oats for breakfast. My mind flashed: If this turns to shit, here was something the horse and I had in common. The rider spoke again. “Does that orange shirt make you think this is a giant carrot?”
Enough was enough. As the horse cocked its head and contemplated how it would get around the big blue thing on the carrot’s back, I realized I did have a small option of moving to my left. As I slipped away, the riders bid me a farewell and told me to have a good day—like it was optional.
When I got home around lunch time I considered choices in the fridge and opted to eat my dessert first. Life is too short to do otherwise.