Friend or Foe

There is a trail that runs through downtown Bellingham.

It is beautiful and secluded and includes scenes like this

and this

and this.

This trail is one of the reasons I love the location of my new job.

Today, however, a weird thing happened and I haven’t been able to shake it. There is a flight of steps down to the trail at a couple different blocks, and as I was walking down one of these sets of stairs a woman a little younger than I stopped me and asked where the trail leads, she’d never seen it before. I told her with enthusiasm where it goes, and what it looks like along the way and she remarked she would come back on the weekend and explore with her son.

As she walked away and I turned to continue on my way, a man approached me. He appeared to be in his 60’s, well groomed, attractive, dressed very nice, and asked me in an accent I couldn’t place, “Is this trail a safe place for a woman to walk alone?” I laughed nervously and said, “well, I walk here most days…during the day, and there’s always plenty of people around…” My words and thoughts trailed off and I don’t remember finishing my sentence. The man began shaking his head and said to me, “Oooh…I read of things happening on this trail to women, robberies, muggings, even rapes. It is not safe.” He turned then and waved and as he left he said, “be careful, please be safe.” I continued on with a chuckle and a shake of my head, but at the next flight of stairs up to the street, at the bridge in the picture above, I left the trail and continued my walk on the sidewalks of Bellingham. I’ve thought about that man all afternoon.

I told Rick about it tonight while making dinner and his eyebrows went up. I told Rick that I got the sense that either this man was dangerous and was warning me, or that perhaps he was an angel and saved me. Rick said, “well, he was most likely one or the other.”

My mother taught me that we should be kind to all we meet for we might be entertaining angels, unaware.

I’m choosing to believe that was what I encountered today.

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