On Sunday after Zoom church (which was amazing, as usual) we took the kids to the start of the Provo River Trail. It was gorgeous, but unfortunately there was a duck hunter there shooting ducks right next to us, and when we turned to go he turned to go too. When we went back because he appeared to be leaving, he turned around also. I was already on high, high alert and very stressed at the sight of a man in camo smoking, wielding an oversize gun, and eyeing my children and me (he looked like every picture of a stereotypical Trump supporter I’ve ever seen), but when he turned around as we did for the second time, I about lost it. We went straight back to the car.

Abe was not alarmed at all and thought he was just a friendly duck hunter and suggested calling out to him (with Clarissa on his shoulders) to ask him politely not to shoot us while we walked. I don’t know if Abe was crazy or I was crazy, but we had vastly different ideas about what was safe in that moment.

After coming home Abe and I talked it out and figured out we have no idea what the right thing to do was, but since we still wanted a walk we took the kids to one of our favorite river walks near the Qualtrics building. We walked for over an hour and the kids had a great time while I slowly felt my heart go from code red back to green.