Daily Divine: High Water. Road Closed.

By now most of you have come to recognize me as a connoisseur of the small, simple pleasures.
 
No rowdy, raucous adventures for me.
 
It’s very likely you’re NOT going to read about my bungee jumping exploits, or my climbs up Mt. Everest, or how I survived the Baja.
 
Small and simple is plenty for a person like me. 

And from what I hear from so many of you sensitives, empaths and introverts, the small and simple pleasures are indeed, what many of us enjoy the most.
 
So it was with a frisson of thrill that on a recent winter's bike ride at Minto Brown, an 800-acre wildlife reserve near my home, that I pushed past the cautionary sign “High Water. Road Closed” and biked on.
 
Of course the Universe is always sending us signs.
But from experience, I knew that this was not one of them.
 
The "High Water" sign goes up like clockwork every fall, when the river along the park starts to rise. And it's true: there are days when the lower paths will be submerged in several feet of water. But other days, instead of a submerged path, you'll come across nothing more than a big puddle just an inch or two deep—certainly, something a person on a bike can handle.

Today especially... that puddle was two inches, three tops! 

Everything was going great as I coasted through nice and easy, until suddenly those three inches turned out to be 12, and my frisson of thrill turned to panic and of course the bike slid and I plunged my left foot down deep in the, and then my right foot followed and within seconds I was mired to my knees.
 
I wasn’t upset. In fact… I was exhilarated. Something about that surprising muddy moment woke me up. I took it all in: the pale sky, the fields, my squelching shoes. 
 
“Now it’s getting interesting,” I shouted, as we pressed on through more puddles toward the river.

When we reached the bend, I finally understood the reason we'd snuck past the sign in the first place: a gigantic American Bald Eagle, so close we could see the white of his head and his tail, swooping in the air currents above.
 
Glorious. Even in very muddy shoes. 

Much love, 
SARA

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