The Great Grocery Store Expedition
We set out at 0900 hours under a marine layer, provisions low, morale cautiously high. The objective was simple on paper: acquire groceries and return alive. Seasoned explorers know the simple objectives are the ones that get you.
Base Camp · The Cart
The cart is base camp. I find one with four working wheels, which is its own small miracle, and I grip the handle the way other people grip trekking poles. This cart is not for the groceries. The groceries are incidental. The cart is for me, a rolling support structure I will lean on with increasing honesty as the expedition wears on. We move out.
The Return
The walk to the car is the part no one writes home about. The supplies have somehow gained the weight of the entire trip, the cart wants to roll toward every other car but mine, and base camp, the actual car, looks much farther away than it did on the way in. I load the trunk like I am summiting in reverse. I sit in the driver's seat before I start the engine, just for a minute, the way you sit down at the top of a hard climb and let the view be the reward.
I made it. Expedition complete. Provisions secured. And somewhere in the unpacking I will discover the one thing I actually went in for is still on the shelf, back at the summit, waiting for the next expedition.