Think of This Post as a Test of the Emergency Broadcast System

Earlier this week, I alerted readers to be on the lookout for an upcoming numerical post in a Running With Letters preview trailer. We’re still waiting on that. In the meantime, I wanted to issue an alert concerning a post I hope never appears in this forum. However, considering that life is a fragile web of circumstances, luck, and providence, I thought it best to inform readers about a risky new pastime in which I am engaging, and to set up a clear system of communication in the unlikely event of my upcoming disappearance.

See, I recently got an inflatable kayak as a gift from my husband. It was originally purchased as an enhancement to our camping gear, but it quickly occurred to me that I am literally surrounded by water at every turn. In fact, a quick bit of afternoon research revealed that a brand spanking new launch dock for canoes and kayaks has been erected yards from my door step. Although the waters I’d be putting in are technically river waters, they are brackish, flowing as they do into the Chesapeake Bay, and eventually, the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, literature included with my new toy encourages the use of actual ocean waters, which I can easily access within five minutes of my front door.

Oh the possibilities! Morning coffee on the river! Sunsets on the high seas! The adventurer in me can not wait to embark.

My enthusiasm is tempered only by a certain nemesis of which I have been afflicted my entire life: I have no sense of direction. Readers, I couldn’t find my way out of a wet paper bag—and we’re talking land conditions here, with landmarks: signs, buildings, roads and the like. How will I fare should ill winds carry my craft off what I’ll metaphorically call the beaten path? What resources will I employ should I float adrift, with a 360 degree view of nothing but water?

I do not know. But adventure calls none the less.

Knowing that I am prone to disappear from this forum for days, even a week or more at a time, I did not want this news to cause a mass panic should my blogging schedule—prolific as it has been—experience what Wall Street would call a “correction,” or in layman’s terms, a sudden, downward plunge.

It is only a matter of time before routine eventualities will cause me to be absent, here, for a few days. Don’t let this make you uneasy. If you return to this page for two or even three consecutive days, you need not fear the worst. Under no circumstances should you imagine me adrift and clinging to the deflated remains of my craft.

Here’s why: before my maiden voyage, I will leave instructions for my husband to post the following message here in the event that I go missing: LOST AT SEA.

If these words do not appear, then you can rest easy, and assume that my absence signals only that I am reveling in the joys of a seafarer’s life.

Anchors away!