Tag: mistakes

Surprising Myself

Multiple times in the past few months, I dropped my car key while running. My new Amphipod water bottle has a smaller pocket on the hand strap than the old one did, so I couldn’t fit the key with its great big head in the pocket anymore. It was either poking half-way out or dangling from my little finger. When I shifted the bottle from one hand to the other, it was easy to drop the key. After each drop, I told myself I would pay more attention. But I don’t run to pay attention to my key. I’m either brainstorming a scene in a book, admiring nature, or doing both.

I sometimes a route that doesn’t go in laps of a circular trail but along a stretch of sand above Elephant Butte Lake and back. I’ve never measured it, but it takes as long as five miles did on another trail. Not a great distance for marathoners, but it’s my usual. I changed the bottle from right hand to left at the turnaround point and didn’t notice my key was missing until I got back to my car. My phone and spare key were locked in the trunk.

No point in fretting or in objecting to reality. I had no choice but to run back. After a windstorm, the sand was freshly rearranged, and my tracks were easy to retrace. But the sand was soft in places where the key could have vanished. I could have dropped it into a lizard hole. Or a well-meaning person could have picked it up.

Seeing a park ranger’s truck on the dirt road above the beach, I pulled up my mask, waved, and ran to him. He loaned me his phone to call my roadside assistance club, and then I ran on, in case I could find the key.

It lay exactly where I’d turned around and switched hands on the water bottle. I ran back to my car, speeding up so I could get to my phone and cancel the lock-out service.

I did it! Success!

Almost. I was in the middle of the call when the ranger showed up, escorting the wrecker to my car.

Insights from this adventure:

  • I can make the same mistake five times before I learn from it.
  • I can be creative with what I have on hand: I crafted the world’s smallest fanny pack using the pocket from my old Amphipod bottle. My key will go in it.
  • And I can run double my usual miles.

You never know what you’re capable of until you do it.

Making Mistakes

I’m at a point in my work in progress (Mae Martin Mysteries book eight) where my protagonist feels compelled to both help and confront the antagonist—a person who has wronged her and done even greater wrongs to people she cares about. Then the antagonist, through actions that karmically earned a disaster, is in crisis. Perhaps there’s an ideal path Mae could take, but can she see it? As the author, do I want her to?

In this book, Mae is taking a college course on Eastern Philosophy. She’s doing her best as a beginner to explore the wisdom of the Buddha. The antagonist’s brother and his roommate are dedicated yogis, not just in asana practice but in attempting to live the philosophy. Mae’s summer house guest is an Apache teenager who is training to become a medicine man. In the scene I’m working on, these well meaning, spiritually aware young people are in a situation where the right action is hard to find. Hard to agree on. Is there room for compassion and outrage at the same time in the same heart? At thirty, Mae is the oldest of the group. She’s likely to mess up. I was not very wise at thirty, myself. Wiser than I was in my teens or twenties, but I’d be making a mistake to portray her with the wisdom of an elder.

I’d also be making a mistake if my characters’ errors are unsympathetic. I have to write this so the reader can feel the struggle. It’s not easy to love your enemies.

Orange and Blue Evening, or a Perfect Mistake

It was the wrong Tuesday for the event in Hillsboro I meant to attend. Not realizing I was a full week early, I drove through rolling desert hills to the historic town and arrived at the community center to find no cars in the parking lot. Only a man out for a walk who told me it was ping-pong night at six-thirty, and that the off-leash dog with him was not his. I decided not to stay for ping-pong, but moved my car down to the main street and took my own walk in light rain. After all, I couldn’t come all the way there and not enjoy the place.

The old buildings are solid and well-kept, the houses as well as the art galleries, antique stores, and the museum. The former county seat and former mining boom town is now small, serene and beautiful, with a population of a little over a hundred.

I spied a large, handsome cat on a stone wall around a yard and went to greet him. He was one of those extremely friendly cats who not only allows petting but demands more. He had blue eyes and brilliant orange markings in the Siamese pattern which made his eyes look even bluer, but he didn’t otherwise resemble a Siamese cat. More like a very attractive knock-off, a variation on the theme. He jumped down to follow me a short way but decided to stay home.

As I was about to get in my car, I turned back to look at the view just in time to see a mule deer and her spotted fawn crossing the street and ducking into a ruined building near the park, where a few fragments of wall stand around weeds and a table full of objects that may have survived a fire. The doe and fawn ambled through the underbrush, taking occasional glances over their shoulders to observe me while I observed them.

I read the historic marker commemorating the colorful life of Sadie Orchard, then the rain grew heavier, and I started driving home. When I was about half-way there, the sunset appeared, not in the west at first but in the north, a glowing pink aura with a flame-like sword of rainbow in it.  Then a double rainbow arched across the gray sky, so the road east seemed to drive under it, and the root of the rainbow in the south grew as vibrant and intense as the end in the north. I pulled over to get out and admire it. It’s not safe to drive under the influence of too much beauty. In the west, the rainstorm had broken up enough to let in orange light that coated the bottoms of the clouds. On the horizon, streaks of rain caught the color against a blue backdrop, while brushstrokes of gray floated across the orange overhead.

In the middle of empty land, nothing but sky and earth and colors. I actually went to Hillsboro on the right night.