Trail trial

Daily writing prompt

Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

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Several years ago at work, I was struggling with a solution for a project I was managing. I was usually pretty good at this sort of thing; I got a sense of what was needed and potential approaches began to come to mind. If they didn’t, I’d mentally put it aside and the answer would suddenly pop into my head hours or days later.

On this particular day, my thoughts had become jumbled, people were talking, the email was chiming. Way too much distraction. I thought a 30-minute walk on our site nature trail might kick a few ideas loose.

It was a beautiful Fall day. A front had come through, bringing rain, then cloudless Carolina skies. It was in the upper 60s and the woods had a rich, loamy smell.

I was walking at a good clip and most of the leaves were off the trees. Here and there, patches of sunlight lit up the trail. An idea came to mind and I took my eyes off the trail, and looked up at the indigo Autumn sky without stopping. “Whaddya think, Lord?” I asked like the crazy Irishman in Braveheart. “I was thinking that if–“

It was as though an invisible hand suddenly pushed me in the center of the chest, forcefully. I stopped so abruptly that my sunglasses slid down my nose. What…?

I looked around and didn’t see it at first because it blended in so perfectly with the fallen leaves and the sun-mottled trail. But directly in front of me, curled up in a striking position, was a fat copperhead. Its triangle-shaped head was easily two inches across and its body was the the size of my forearm. I was wearing my business-casual tennis shoes and one more step would have been disastrous. It was motionless except for its tongue flipping in and out.

I breathed a silent prayer of thanks, took a few pix at a safe distance and continued on with caution. Later, I wrote a blog about my experience for the company intranet, urging people to tread carefully.

I don’t have those shoes anymore, they wore out as I “got my steps in.” They were downgraded to shoes for outdoor yard work, then water shoes, then eventually tossed. But they were a mute testimony to the day my guardian angel blocked my path.

“For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” ~ Ps 91:11-12