To begin with, I wasn’t even wearing my hiking shoes.  My friend had prevailed on me to  meet her at 8:30 a.m. to help sort recently moved boxes for a yard sale. Friends shouldn’t have to prevail, but Thursday morning begins my so-called weekend and I keep my mornings free to write and create. Late getting out of the shower, I headed to my phone to request an additional 15 minutes.  There was a message waiting for me:  Let’s make it 9 o’clock. At 10 after nine, I pulled in her driveway.  I was wearing my denim work shorts and a T-shirt, and my Chucks. She was sitting in a sunny living room window in baggy capris, with a cup of coffee, reading. She groaned, “I don’t really want to pull boxes down from the garage attic.  My head hurts.  My body is already aching.”

“Well, we could just go out of town instead,”  I quipped. “What I really wanted to do was go to Ft. Collins this weekend.”  Her face perked up. We discussed this novel idea for a few minutes as we have mutual friends in Ft. Collins, in addition to two of my children.  “But I don’t think we can get out of town before 10:00 and we would have to leave for home by 3:00 tomorrow afternoon -that’s hardly enough.”

She had a full tank of gas. In the end, we pooled our lunch, grabbed the first aid pack and an extra water bottle from my car and headed for Arches National Park in Utah. We didn’t take time to change clothes or run by my house.  I was wearing Converse low cuts and my last pair of clean white socks. That is why my toes hurt. We hiked 5 miles and decimated several bottles of water.  I was gone from home 12 1/2 hours.  And to think, I was going to do my laundry after I helped sort boxes.

If you had determined to live each day as though you have been given 365 days to live, would you have gone hiking – or finished the laundry?