Following Intuitions

Sometimes out of the blue after blotting the door and while walking down the staircase, the heart perturbs and quips "Have you switched off the lights in the Living Room?" Ok, here I go to check it out and everytime it would have been properly switched off. But sometimes one tend to fight against this intuition and go forward but end up regretting later.

With a huge plan in the mind for the weekend, I got myself ready on Saturday morning and was about to leave for the Eleven Mile State Park. As usual the intuition told me to take a pen along with me. I laughed at my Intuition thinking, 'why would anyone need a pen in the Isolated Prairie grassland, when there is a Frozen Lake to play with and the snow clad rocky mountains in the horizon to look at.' Probably taking some water with you makes sense and having woolen gloves is prudent enough in case the temperature dips. As I traveled the distance, the last 15 miles was indeed on a isolated gravel road with scenic spots on either side. Through the green grasses here and there have started showing their finger to winter, the overall outback was still yellowish brown. After a bumpy 15 mile drive the Eleven mile lake started unraveling itself.

The board at a distance beckoned us to the state park and some instructions that were listed there. "Pay the Park Entrance Fee here" caught my eye, and a careful reading told that we had to fill-up a Entry form and pay the fee in the "Hundial" kind of a box, stick part of the entry form on the vehicle and only then we could enter the park. Sounds simple, no queues, no manned hazzles etc. Ok, Out I go to fill-up the form, and checked my shirt & pant pockets. Nope, Nobody had a pen. Probably in the car, no luck there too. Probably we could wait for another 5 - 15 minutes, Nobody in sight, As the Spring hadn't fully set in, nobody really cared to pitch in their tents in the midst of a frozen lake. And so after a 20 minute wait, we drove back disappointed (Pona machan thirumbi vanthaan). For the next 20 miles or so there wasn't a shop to get a pen and after covering that distance, we weren't in a mood to go through the bumpy gravel road again.

Pay heed to the intuition it helps. While coming back was thinking about what my father used to say everytime I went somewhere outside "Enga ponaalum oru penna (Read Penn as ezhuthukol :) ) eduthundu po"