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Leo Babauta tells this story of father and son:

A father and his son went fishing on a small boat, hungry.

The father helped his son reel in his first fish, and it was a beauty. “Great catch, son,” the father said.

“Yes, but I’m worried I’m missing out on better fish,” the son said. “What if I could catch a bigger, tastier fish?”

“Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching an even bigger fish an hour later. “A real beaut,” the father said.

“But what if there are better fish out there?” the son asked.

“Maybe you should try,” the father said.

And the son did, catching a bigger fish, then wondering if there were better fish, catching another, and so on.

At the end of the day, the son was exhausted. The father asked, “How did the fish taste?”

The son hesitated. “I’m not sure. I was so busy looking for better fish that I didn’t taste any of them.”

The father smiled contentedly, patted his belly. “Don’t worry. They were delicious.”

Training for the Pittsburgh Marathon, sometimes the playlist or podcast I was listening to would run out with 4-5 miles to go. I listen to the podcasts because they make it easier to run. They give me something else to think about. Something besides the pain. The fatigue. The sweat. The thirst. They take me away.

On one such occasion I was running up from the bridge over what used to be Johnson Mill (I don't know what was milled there, but I'm guessing it was named for Robert and Jemima Johnson who established the first permanent white settling in what is now Scott County at what is now Great Crossing - who wouldn't want to settle near someone named Jemima?!). One side of the road is lined with trees, the other holds a grazing pasture for some cows next to a tobacco field. The spring wind wooshed into my face waking me up a bit, and I realized that I'd never felt it before, much less heard it - even though I run this piece of road dozens of times a month.

I glanced around, wondering what else I'd missed and was struck by the various shades of the color green. I like green. It was one of the colors in our wedding, although Denise insists that wasteal. I saw that there were several shades of green on single leaves. That dandelions, one of my favorite flowers, are the same way.

I'm a counter. I count when I slice mushrooms. I count the number of strokes it takes to clean the bathroom mirror. Running, I count footsteps per breath (usually it goes something like, '1, 2, 3, 4 in. 1, 2, 3, 4, out). It's weird, I know.

But, it makes sense to me to count shades of green. So I did.

A google search tells me that there are 40 different shades of green. Another google search tells me that there are 9,142,857. Another says 'it depends.'

I'm not sure how many there are, but I'm inclined to agree with this last.

I counted 36.

In a space of about 1/4 mile, before I reached the top of the hill where i was distracted by some horses playing in the spacious field that now opened on my left...there were 42 of them.