Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Walking The Hill... Again

Even though I've tried to reduce my ecological footprint, I've had to use my car for the past few shopping trips due to weather conditions.  I'd like to say that I have superhuman endurance, and can carry groceries through wind, hail, rain, or snow, but realistically...

I can be a big wimp.

It seemed that every time I had to go to the grocery store it was rainy.  This isn't enough to keep me from walking, though, because I actually enjoy the rain.

Unfortunately, I'm not very big on the cold, though, and each time it rained, it was freezing!  Well, ok.  Those people that are used to living in the upper Midwest probably don't consider forty degrees to be freezing cold, but I'm a desert rat!  To me, forty degrees is the equivalent of the ice age.

So I waited.

Finally, it was warm enough to walk to the grocery store again, and I raced for the stroller.  My daughter was just as happy to go to the store as I was.  So happy, in fact, that she insisted on pushing the stroller the whole way, rather than sitting in it!

We collected our groceries for the week, and I made her actually sit in the stroller on the way home.  The woman standing in line behind me at the cash register walked over to me while I was connecting the seat straps, and told me about how she was surprised I was actually able to fit everything inside the stroller's small cargo bin.  I laughed and told her it could carry a lot more than it looked like it could.

Inwardly, though, I agreed.  This was a lot of stuff.  Heavy stuff.  Things like a gallon of milk, a bag of oranges, a chicken...

A lot of stuff to push back home.  I was worried.  It had been a while since my last walking trip.  And then, of course, there was

"The Hill".

Ugh.  I was not looking forward to that.

Pushing the stroller, I reflected on how hard The Hill had always been to travel when pushing the stroller.  This was especially nerve-wracking when I thought about how long it's been since I last did it, and that I was pushing more weight than I had in the past.  I deeply sighed, and continued.

At last, I made it to The Hill.  I looked up at it with trepidation.



That's when I noticed how beautiful it had become with the arrival of spring.  The grass was green, the trees were filling with leaves, and there were wildflowers in various places along the way.  It was a gorgeous sight!

It was so gorgeous in fact, that my daughter and I became completely absorbed in staring at our surroundings.  Before I knew it, we had made it up The Hill...

And I was less tired from that climb than I had ever been before!

Perhaps much of the difficulty that appears in our lives has more to do with the way we see the things we encounter, rather than the obstacles themselves.  Indeed, the second photo of The Hill even looks flatter than the first.  Granted, much of this had to do with the exact spot I was at when I took the picture.  I can't help but wonder, though, if that location choice was made because I saw things a bit differently this time.

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