The bull

I'm reading Cheryl Strayed's book "Wild."  If I were still a bookseller I would have read it a long time ago or, conversely, never read it because I don't have to convince anyone to buy it.  They already are. In any case, I am no longer a bookseller and I read what I feel like when I feel like, if I can remember   which books I am wanting to read on any given trip to library or bookstore.

I digress.  It's a compelling book, and there is a passage that really spoke to me last night, stretching a metaphor I'm sure, but whatever....  Here is is:

The thing about hiking the Pacfic Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer - and yet also, like most things, so very simple - was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do.  How there was no escape or denial.  No numbing it down...  I considered my options.  There were only two and they were essentially the same.  I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.  The bull, I acknowledged grimly, could be in either direction, since I hadn't seen where he'd run once I closed my eyes.  I could only choose between the bull that would take me back and the bull that would take me forward.
And so I walked on.