Anyone who has suffered at the hands of motion sickness knows its dual faces well. It is both annoyingly debilitating and enslavingly powerful. The slightest turn of one’s head or even an attempt to read a direction in a moving car could set it off. And once something has triggered it, the forceful nausea quickly ensues, followed on occasion by a cold and fierce sweat.

Lately, I have reverted back to my 7-year old self in the way of being a helpless victim of my motion sickness, but unlike the second-grade Sobrina, I cannot, I will not, throw up. The feelings of nausea are like waves that come in tides, slowly coming and going, ebbing and flowing. After the feelings of nausea recede, they build to frightening heights, they pause (for just a second) and then they crash back down on me. It takes all I have to concentrate on not throwing up. I find myself thinking of the following:

1) How fun it would not be to clean my throw up off of the car seat.
2) How much I don’t want to smell like throw up or have lingering throw up aftertaste

(After I think about number 2, I start really imagining the smell and taste, which inevitably makes me want to throw up even more, so I hastily move on to thinking about number 3)

3) Staring at the ocean from the beach. Although when you are on a boat you may feel the waves and get sick, while you are on the beach, the ocean appears forever in a straight horizontal direction. No zigging and zagging, no sharp corners to turn. None of that. But because the ocean can also remind me of throwing up, you can see how it is a very hard task to occupy my mind with anything else.
4) There is no four. It becomes hopeless.

Up, up and up seems to be how one gets to the best hikes offering the best views, so that is the drive I often find myself on when the need for a stroll in nature strikes. The hikes never disappoint with their beautiful splay of colors. Everytime it seems as though a new color scheme is presented, as if the woods and all its foliage change outfits for every occasion I visit. This last time they were wearing deep, aged greens, cerulean blues and hay-colored wood.

Hiking is one of my favored activities because it is so simple and requires nothing more than one’s own ability to walk (granted sometimes at an incline, although this can be avoided if care is taken when choosing a hiking route), shoes and an ability to remain calm if a mountain lion should appear. In fact, I don’t think I possess that ability, and I can still hike just fine.