June 30th. It was difficult to get motivated to begin my workout. I watched G.I. Jane....nothing. So I called my friend Katy in Charlotte, NC. She is an overly competent Navy officer and it is comforting to know people like her are defending our country. Anyway, when I called she was doing the same thing I was...procrastinating. She too was on the couch, dressed in her running clothes watching a bad TV show. Neither of us even likes TV. We talked for over an hour before hanging up and beginning the inevitable. So, I finally get my swim in and am preparing for my run. I was desparately trying to talk myself out of running. FINALLY, I decided to run to the Norris Museum and pick up a bandana that had a map of the trails printed on it. (The museum curator, Sue Smith, went to great pains to find one for me.) I picked up the bandana and picked out a course. It was a few miles of familiar trails and two new trails. Poison ivy was everywhere. The new trail I picked out was rugged and difficult to make out. Thorn bushes were almost as common as the poison ivy, and my legs were starting to look like road maps from the scratches. I was thankful I had purchased the bandana thinking it might come in handy to tie off my leg if a snake were to bite. I ran into a big thorn bush "branch" and stopped to pick a few thorns out of my knee. That when I realized what the thorn bushes were.....RASBERRY BUSHES! WILD RED RASBERRY BUSHES! I picked one and it released easily from the bush. They were ripe! Jeez, I hadn't seen wild rasberry bushes since I was six and at my grandmother's dairy farm in Seattle, Washington. I became oblivious to the poison ivy, mosquitos, and flies as I made my way down the trail stopping to pick handfuls of fresh, ripe rasberries. After about ten handfuls, I told myself to stop, but I just couldn't. Rasberries are my favorite fruit; they were delicious. And they were better than organic! I didn't have to worry about county roadside sprayings or overzealous neighbors that had extra chemicals to dump on the right-of-way or fertilizers that contained "legal" toxic waste. These rasberries were as pure as if they had come from the Garden of Eden. I walked a few steps, picked a handful, walked a few steps, picked two handfuls....eventually the bushes grew sparse, and I started to run again. How thankful I was that I hadn't talked myself out of running. Nature had once again fed me both literally and figuratively. How blessed I am. Of the 250 million people in the United States, how many do you think got to eat organic wild rasberries right off the bush? Just one? Sad, isn't it. Please remember- God so loved the World...take care of it. mimi