I Thought of Cheryl and Pushed On

Have you read the memoir, "Wild," by Cheryl Strayed? It's about her quest to hike the Pacific Coast Trail - by herself - when she was in her 20s. She planned the trip pretty well. She had packed resupply boxes and left them with a friend to mail to towns along the way. She packed PLENTY of gear in her monster backpack. But in reality, she wasn't prepared for such a daunting task. Challenges pursued her relentlessly, yet she kept putting one foot in front of the other as she tried to reach her goal.

I haven't done anything quite that challenging, but I did have to pull from the book last Sunday when my husband and I went kayaking on a lake. Silly me did not wear sunscreen; I thought the chance of rain would keep the sky cloudy. And while we had a little head wind on our way to the other side of the lake, the tail wind I was expecting wasn't there when we made our return trip back to the dock. 

It was a big lake.
And I was hot.
And my arms were tired as I paddled my way across the lake.

That was when I thought about Cheryl Strayed and how she tackled that trail. Sometimes you have to dig deep and sometimes you have to dig even deeper to get where you're going. You have to quiet the voice in your head - you know, the negative one that tries to tell you that something is too hard or difficult to accomplish. Instead, you have to tell yourself that this, too, can be done.

My challenge was rowing across a lake. I got sunburned. Nothing else. But it still helped to think about Cheryl and how she propelled herself forward day after day.

If you haven't read 'Wild,' you might want to give it a look. You won't want the journey to end. I promise.

Here are a few photographs I took on my little kayaking adventure. (Oh, and while kayaking in a lake keeps the whole put-in, take-out car puzzle simple, I will never again take the flow of a river for granted!)

He was taking a photograph, too

His view:

I think he's developing quite an eye for this!


 

Sometimes It Takes More Than Willpower.

Sometimes it takes common sense.

I say that because today I was super stubborn and wasn't going to go down without a fight. I had big plans. I was going to take the kayak out to the lake by myself. I managed to haul it up to the top of the Escape and connect one of the straps to secure it. I was feeling pretty good by then. But the other strap just would not work even though I messed with it and fussed with it and fussed at it.

In the shade or in the house. Click. It worked.
In the hot sun where the Escape was parked. Nada. Zip. 

Early on, my husband called and suggested that I just put the kayak in the back of the SUV and let it hang out of the back window. No. I was not going to give up. I liked those jazzy straps, and I didn't want those straps to get the best of me. I wanted to win.

So I kept at it. For two.long.hours.

I finally texted my husband and told him I had five more minutes of patience. After that, I was through. And that's when he pulled into the driveway.

I showed him what a great job I had done on that first strap. It was perfect. It had clicked into place and the back of the kayak was secure. And then I showed him the other one. Slack. Listless. Not performing adequately at all.

And then I watched common sense take over. He moved the back seats out of the way, took the kayak off the roof of the car and slid it through the back window. 

Just like that. Within minutes. My battle was won. Not by sheer willpower and stubborn determination. Nope. By common sense.

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos summed it up pretty well for me....

"If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve." 

I met that wall today, so thanks, Jeff (and hubby). I'll try to remember that.