The lesson for today was obviously "Do the right thing". And now, at the end of the day, the right thing was obviously hunting. But earlier in the day, if I had been superstitious, I might have wondered if I was being set up for a different lesson about priorites or tempting fate.

My first decision was whether to hunt at all, or whether to spend 2 nights on a chartered bus and a day in DC with my mother and nephew, and about 50 other local peaceniks, trying to make GW realize the insanity of his Iraq war escalation. As hunting this month has been pretty sparse due to weather and other complications, and more bad weather is moving in, today looked like the first and last good chance for a long time. So I figured world peace would just have to happen without me, despite the nagging in the back of my mind that if I had any mishaps today, it would have been fate's disapproval of my spoiling the possiblity of a 3-generation protest participation.

Friday morning, the weather forecast for Saturday looked marginal, but far better than Sunday's. If there was to be any hunting at all this weekend, Saturday was the day. And my brother shared the same opinion when he called Friday morning. Since he usuallly doesn't hunt on weekends, this seemed like a good omen.

That omen started to look questionable when he started to waffle Friday night, and finally wimped out Saturday morning. He had some lame story about rain in the forecast, but either he was listening to a forecast for a different state, or he just made it up. But I didn't really care, because I had a backup copilot this time. A loyal Pack member is in the unfortunate situation of having to beg trailer rides since a couple of morons smashed into her trailer last month. (Fortunately, the horse was not seriously hurt). But when I called her this morning, she had babysitter problems and was housebound.

At that point, I could have wondered whether there was a message in having two potential trailer buddies backing out, and whether fate was trying to tell me I should have gone to DC. But instead I just looked at the beautiful weather and was glad I wasn't missing out on a day of fun.

At this point, I have to mention a somewhat tragic incident that happened last month. It was so tragic that I couldn't bear to write about it at the time, and can only mention it now because it's an important part of today's story.

Loyal readers will remember that last month, I inherited a saddle flask from my brother. I thought I was being smart, and attached clips to the straps so I could attach/remove it from the saddle without the hassle of buckling/unbuckling the straps. But the flips were too flimsy, and at some point on a hard run, the flask case fell off. I didn't notice it at the time, and when I did notice, we had covered too much territory to try to backtrack and find it.

Today, at a check, a hound was spotted carrying a strange object in his mouth. When we realized it was a flask, I immediately knew it was mine, since we were in the same vicinity where I lost it.

So obviously fate was rewarding me for doing what I knew was right today, and ignoring any pressure or hints to the contrary.