Faded Jeans Living

Sometimes.

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Yesterday, I was reminded it’s okay sometimes to be carried.  I’m down in the Southwest in my campervan with my dog Alice.

Alice has always had a hiking strategy: go left, go right, go forward… repeat. It’s an enthusiastic, zigzagging system that has worked pretty well for her over the years.

It does not, however, work well in the desert.

Down here, the ground is covered with tiny burs — sharp little hitchhikers just waiting for an unsuspecting paw. It took about ten different stops, ten different moments of me kneeling down to pull prickly reminders from her pads, before she finally started adjusting her method and staying on the path.

Chip off the old block.

But then we came to one particular stretch of trail that was especially thick with them. I stopped to remove another burr, and when I stood up, she just… stood there. No zigzag. No forward motion. Just a quiet refusal. She had decided she wasn’t chancing it.

So I bent down, picked her up, and carried her through.

On the way back, when we reached that same patch, she didn’t even try this time. She stopped, looked up at me, and waited. And again, I carried her across.

There was something so simple and profound in that moment.

On the other side of that rough stretch, she was fine — trotting along, tail wagging, back to her curious, joyful self. She just needed help getting through the hard part.

It struck me how often we’re the same way — most of the time moving forward on our own, but every now and then needing some help.

-Dwight