Dumb

In retrospect, it seems like a perfect metaphor for American foreign policy, or Napoleon’s catastrophic siege of Moscow, or maybe a co-dependent relationship with someone you just can’t quit: you know that the way forward is impassible, but you just keep going, becoming deeper and more deeply mired in the literal and metaphorical swamp; your mind—and a more reasonable colleague—tells you that you’ve got to turn back, but you neither take its advice nor their example, until finally, you just have to give up, as you should have almost right from the start, and return along the terrible way you came, only this time uphill.

Thank Heavens for taller and stronger comrades who lift you and machine up out of the mire and over the fallen barriers or else you would have found yourself trapped in the dark until someone else found you, who knows how long later, your rotting corpse eaten by maggots and worms, that last warm beer still in your bottle cage, dripping ever so slowly into the earth.

So, maybe it wasn’t quite all that dire, but it sure felt like it for much of the way back, until at last, asphalt re-appeared and there were only hills to contend with, no more slippery plank bridges or blackberry branches swatting and scratching your face.

Type 2 or Type 3 fun? Maybe some of both.  

In retrospect, the steeper-than-remembered mash up the back way to the Little League fields was swell; the Joseph Conrad-style descent into the heart of darkness, though, maybe you could have done without, although the starting trails that led one astray like that were impeccable.

But, anyway, it surely pays to do the dumb thing from time to time, if only to remind yourself how easily it is to be dumb and eventually, how dumb you can be.

And, perhaps, most importantly, how lucky you are for the chance to be dumb, and grateful you are, as well.