Muddy Waters! (Not the Cafe in Dowtown Wooster) and commitment

I finally have a topic for my first post! Today was my friend JC's birthday and he and I both love to hike and are currently planning a first ever men's hiking trip for our Adult Bible Fellowship Cords of 3 at Wooster Grace church. We're going down to Wildcat Hollow south of Columbus and he had the day off because of his birthday and I had the day off from work (Thanks dead President's of the past) so we took off to Wooster Memorial Park (aka Spangler) to hike the outer loop red trail. Check it out here http://www.wooster.edu/geology/wmp/WMP%20map.pdf

The trail compared to others JC and I have hiked in our lives is relatively easy, but it is definately a challenging little jaunt compared to the flat farmlands of Wayne County Ohio. JC brought along his dog Paisley who is a pup that hadn't gone hiking before. This added a little fun to the trip as the dog had a mind of his own and reminded me a lot of my 4 year old who goes with me on hikes sometimes and just decides at random points to sit down and not go any further on the trail and needs encouragement and prodding.

There are 2 points along the red trail where it crosses Rathburn Run, (the creek that flows through the park) that don't have bridges and with all the rain/snow we have had this winter lets just say the water levels were pretty high compared to summer and left us with no good points to cross. At the first one, we were able to find a log that had fallen down across the creek that was about 3-4 feet off the water. It was wet, slippery and not the ideal choice, but provided the only opportunity to cross that didn't guarantee us getting wet. I got up and crossed and waited for JC who came across without incident as well. Paisley had to swim. When we got across, we talked about the idea of commitment. When you get up on the log, you are commited to that course of action to the end, whether that be falling in and getting wet or safely crossing. Life is a series of commitments and it seems like in today's world people don't consider commitment all that important and are constanly looking for ways to get out of them when they "get wet" or difficulty comes their way. When I commited to my wife, it was for better or worse, till death do us part. When we decided to have children, we commited to raising them. Marriage and raising children aren't always easy, but they are things I wouldn't trade for the world. Maybe if we thought about what the word commitment means, we wouldn't be so quick to make them if we were not ready to stay on the log till the end.

FYI, the second crossing we came too was less inviting than the first and we had to hunt for a long time before we found a place that even looked possible. It was another log, but this time it was about 8-9 feet off the water with a bunch of other logs laying across the middle of it and the first half of it was over some very deep, fast moving water. JC decided to stay back and watch me on this one before he chose his course of action: I got up on the log and did the first half no problem, I came to the middle and started to try and maneuver through the logs in the middle. I was pushing off another log trying to leverage myself and was doing well and coming to the end of the log I was pushing against and had to try and move from using it for balance back to an upright position without any leverage. At this point, I was away from the deep rushing water and over a fairly shallow part of the creek, I felt myself starting to slip and decided that at that point, I was going to fall off the log so I decided to try to have as much control over that process as possible and leapt forward into the creek and ran as quickly to the bank as possible. Thanks to my wonderful waterproof boots, I managed to keep my feet dry and escaped with a few wet spots up the back of my legs. JC decided he didn't want to risk the log pulled up his pant legs and decided to basically high step it through the shallowest part of the creek he could find. I wish I would have had a video camera.

Overall, it was a great day and JC and I are looking forward to some more hikes this spring and summer