I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a fox run as fast for as far as I did today. Seemingly startled by a loud, but innocuous, truck engine, this normally confident neighbor made a beeline accelerated by its trajectory down a steep residential slope and off safe into a nearby gorge.

After having seen with my own eyes how feared this beautiful but opportunistic this species can be, it was interesting to observe a retreat that, as analogy, felt encouraging.

Everyone needs an exit ramp when feeling threatened or cornered, and I got to thinking – yet again – about how quickly conflicts can sometimes be dissipated with an eye toward the seeming stranglehold Wall Street, through its domination of so many prominent media outlets today, seems to have on the country. The problem seems simultaneously so severe and, yet, so easy to solve – and quickly. I realize I could be incorrect about this, but it continues to feel as though just articulating the arguably clearly problematic nature of the merger of the stock market and news sectors in a national-scale dialogue, such as a debate, could be a turning point for the nation. But why has such a moment not yet occurred?

I’ve thought further about the roles of hills and not only as symbols of resolution or closure but as the kinds of proving grounds most of us need for training purposes.

I love this visual of the counterintuitively relative speediness of a marble traveling down a hilly, rather than a flat, ramp and what it implies about challenges. For runners at least, even though they can feel like hindrances in the moment, hills are where we get strong and where we can open up and test our footwork sprinting at top speed.

There’s so much talk during difficult times about choosing so-called “hills to die on,” but I think the framing is wrong. When experiences are difficult and do not seem to offer the benefit of a view of what may lay over the horizon, they are still opportunities to employ lessons learned on the last climb. And its actually during times when we need to persist most faithfully absent a great deal of external feedback that we can sometimes listen most deeply to our own hearts.

That’s how I’m choosing to view current challenges anyway. And I’m grateful for the heartening reminder of how quickly things can change as witness my fox friend who, being reminded he was a little far away from his own territory, scurried back to where he belonged.