​Backtracking is the best way to find something you lost. I applied this technique repeatedly as our kids grew up, and over the years successfully found everything from books to backpacks.
 
Backtracking is simple. Trace your steps. Remember where you were. Work backwards from you most recent spot to find something you lost.
 
In today’s world, there’s a need with some degree of frequency to apply the backtracking tactic to finding our smart phones, wallets, car keys or reading glasses. Our phones seem to enjoy falling out of our pockets and go find places to rest that we don’t usually consider. We break routine, so backtracking becomes more important to lessening your anxiety during the moment you reach in your pocket and get that sinking feeling that you have no idea where your phone is.
 
After finishing a recent round of golf, I had that heart-jolting sensation of not being able to find my wallet in the pocket of my golf bag that I was 100 PERCENT SURE it was where I’d stored it. I rummaged and dug. I zipped open every receptacle in the bag. I went back to my car and checked on the seats and under them. Nada.
 
Went back to the golf back. Dug my hand in the pocket I KNEW I’d put it in by using the backtracking technique and WALA, there was a hole. I stuffed my arm through it to the bottom of the golf bag, KNOWING the wallet had to be at the bottom of the clubs. Nothing. My heart twinged a bit more – that cold sweat thing starting, as you wonder whether your wallet is laying back somewhere on an 18-hole golf course. Not a good thing.
 
I stuck with it though, using logic and tenacity. I thought it through. Backtracked. Had to be in there. Which meant asking, “Where was it lodged?” Aha. How about it fell through the hole, went to the bottom of the bag, but somehow slid up into the middle of the bag as I moved the clubs? Certainly.
 
I stuck my arm into the middle of the golf shafts, and there it was, just as suspected. Joy. Relief. Life returning to normal.
 
It’s good to remember the backtracking technique, as a good friend of mine can attest. As he puts it, “It is so strange how devices seem to try and escape and hide from us.”
 
He had a similar experience to mine, but with his cell phone. This occurred a few weeks back. Somehow it became lodged between the middle arm rest and the passenger side of the car seat (a well-known hiding place that cell phones deviously like to slide into).
 
He tore through the house, checking everywhere, with his wife calling him so they could identify its location by sound. He had previously checked his car visually, but it was not until his wife called him that he figured out its location.
 
Even then, he could hear the ringing, but not easily figure out it was coming from the car in the garage. Talk about a huge sigh of relief!
 
Remember those places to look where you place things: the bathroom counter; your office desk in the basement; the easy chair where you nap; the window shelf next to your TV chair; the valet box on your kitchen counter; the phone holder in your car.
 
And, of course, don’t forget that dastardly slot between the driver’s car seat and the cupholder in the front. Keep on backtracking on you’ll find what you’re looking for.

​The weatherperson can make you achieve paranoia status. When they hammer you for three days with an increasing level of intensity in their voice that “severe, violent storms, with cow-sized hail” will hit the area in which you live, they get your attention.

Typically, I take the weather report with a softball-sized piece of salt. “Mmmmmm, okay, sure, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
 
The TV weatherperson becomes hard to ignore though when they batter you relentlessly, as recently occurred for our area. The predictions with maps showed every color on the planet, huge masses of storms, lightning bolds etched across the screen. The announcer made me think of my car.
 
Over 10 years ago, we lived in Texas, and the place where I worked got hit by chunks of hail that destroyed windows of over half the cars in the parking lot. Insurance people and the car repair business were busy for months.
 
The psychological effect on the employees was what you’d expect. When a prediction of hail occurred, they asked their boss if they could go home for the day. This happened with a degree of consistency during the spring thunderstorm season. You found out who really didn’t want to be in the office that day. Or, you found out who had become paranoid about hail.

It was understandable. At some point, when an “expert” keeps telling you something, it seeps into your skin and consciousness. It becomes difficult to ignore.
 
During most of the year, I leave my car in the driveway because it’s easier to get in and out. Our garage is small and I have to angle the wheels into the corner to fit with my wife’s car in the space. Opening the door, you have to be careful. I do the lazy/easy thing and just leave it outside. Who cares if it gets rained on?
 
When heavy, large hail is predicted though, you take notice. You start to consider whether it makes sense to bring the car into the garage for the night.
 
Recently we got one of those incessant weather reports, expecting raging storms, with the big red exclamation point flashing on the screen. I gave in, sighing, heading outside, pulling my car into the garage. I think I said something to my wife about the predictions making me paranoid.
Amazingly, for once they were right. There was no hail, but we got almost 3 inches of pounding rain in less than two hours. I’d made a good decision. Branches littered our driveway and lawn. One easily could have tattooed the roof of my car.
 
The problem is that most of the time when you hear these reports, nothing happens. You wait, and the clouds disperse, heading south or north, and you’re left doubting any further predictions. Someway, we all need a barometer to rank the weatherperson’s barometer. When will their predictions come true?
 
We have to gather all the info we can and make our best-informed decision, weighing the combination of their expertise and the data presented. And, sometimes you have to let paranoia status take over and put that car away.

​Perspective is everything. Where you’re standing when you look at something, how far away you are from the object you view, whether you are above or below a scene all contribute to how your senses process what you see.
 
Is it small? Does it seem bigger than you thought? What are those little match box cars and ant-like people doing WAY DOWN THERE when you look from the top of a high hill back to a scene below?
 
Recently we visited Multnomah Falls outside Portland, Oregon. Arriving, you get off the bus and receive your first sensory input: the pounding sound of water.
 
Your second sensory input is feeling the mist blasting off the rocks, whipping into you as you wrap your rain slicker tight. Then you look up, and go “WHOA, am I really going to walk up there?”
 
Yes. That’s the goal. It’s 1.2 miles from the tourist house and parking lot down below.
 
When you look straight up at a massive waterfall, you think to yourself, “There is no way I can hike up there.” All you see is the verticality of the water. Straight up.
 
The path doesn’t go linearly, of course. It winds left, then turns back right, again and again, slowly weaving you towards the top. Like any road paved through mountainous terrain, the human must work their way upwards bit by bit rather than ascending directly (probably a lesson in that sentence somewhere).
 
Don’t look down or you’ll get scared. Or you’ll lose balance. You envision yourself toppling like a tall tree and pinwheeling through eternity to the bottom.
 
Looking up, all you see is more hard work. Huff, puff. Sweat. Breathe in, breathe out (a nod towards “Karate Kid” and Mr. Miyagi). Don’t think about how much more is left. There are 11 switchbacks. You’ve hit three. You want to turn back.
 
At some point, you cross a threshold in your heart/mind that tells you you’ll make the top. You’ll be able to say you did it, and LOOK DOWN on the world. Change your view. See things differently.
The water rushes like a freight train at the top. Whipping through the final gully and slashing its way, perhaps even leaping to its journey into nothingness and the rocks that rest below. You can barely hear the sound is so loud.
 
The view from above changes you in subtle ways. Objects move slower. Your eyes focus on the oddities that distance provides – two people playing with their dogs in slow motion; a bus moving like molasses to navigate a turn; a boat on the far side of the Columbia River edging its way against the current, whether fishing or exploring it doesn’t matter.
 
Time slows. Your mind stills. You breathe in the moment. Life is good.
 
The view from above affords you an opportunity to step away from the instantaneous world in which we live, and step back to consider nature, the formation of rocks, how water carves terrain over hundreds of years. You can’t stand there forever.
 
Walking down, 

​Sometimes you need to take a step back to be creative. It opens the brain flow.
 
If you haven’t started to play the Wordle game, I suggest you give it a try. It clears the pipes. Gets you to think. Forces you to use counter-intuitive impulses.
 
Typically, when we choose to solve problems, we work linearly. We follow the path that we used before. If it worked, it makes sense to try that again.

For the most part, this is successful. Otherwise, we wouldn’t choose to solve problems using past experience.
 
At the same time, we face obstacles. Sometimes what worked before DOESN’T work the next time. We’re stuck.
 
Many years ago, I lived in the attic in a group house with multiple roommates. The door to my room often got stuck. I’d yank it, twist it, curse, physically try to force it open. With no success. It took me thinking through the problem to address it differently.
 
At that time, I had recently read the book, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” I clearly remember applying a lesson from the book, which was to stretch yourself and try a unique way to solve a problem. What did I do?


Rather than using my right hand to turn the doorknob (which wasn’t effective), I switched to my left. BINGO! The door opened with ease.
 
This past week as I did my daily Wordle, I was stumped. No matter what I thought, I couldn’t come up with the correct letters to get the word right. For the uninitiated, Wordle has you create a five-letter word, then the game lets you know if a letter you selected is in the real word by a certain color and if the letter is in the word, whether it is placed properly in the word, as designated by another color. By the process of elimination, you place the letters and eliminate letters that don’t fit. You get six opportunities to come up with the proper word.
 
In this case, I’d gone through four iterations and had __AR_.  The remaining letters I could use were W, R, H, T, Y, I, A, F, J, Z, X, V, B. Whoa.

My head swam. Which was good because I was about to go for my Friday morning swim and I had absolutely no f..cking idea how to solve the puzzle. I was tortured.
 
Getting away from the intensity, my mind released itself as I paddled through my morning strokes. I left the blockage behind and opened up. Bam, I came up with WHARF as the word. I was tickled.
 
I got home and plugged it in. NOPE! I was so sure, so happy that I’d figured it out by stepping away, releasing my mind and relaxing. In the recesses of my brain, I thought TIARA might have been the word, but I didn’t think it was a real word.

Turns out, of course, that TIARA was the daily word. I wasn’t disappointed about not getting right.

I was pleased that I came up with WHARF after stepping away, daydreaming, letting go. It was a great choice. I didn’t trust myself that TIARA was a real word. I failed and succeeded at the same time. Couldn’t get the correct word, but chose one that fit, made sense and sounded right. Sometimes that’s enough. Go for a swim.