It's an era of challenge, isn't it? I feel challenged to sort out the palpable differences between the unrest in Egypt, continents of culture away and the unrest right here at home in my own state of Wisconsin over budget battles. I feel the challenge of people just trying to make ends meet so they can rest assured that some unforeseen or already diagnosed health condition won't change their circumstances so dramatically that they won't even be able to recognize their lives. Then there are the more attractive and substantive challenges: keep a disciplined gratitude journal; or like my new American idol Patty Digh challenges me, take the 37 days challenge (find out more at www.37days.com.) I feel up for the challenges, my tennies are laced up, I'm halfway there, right?

So I've considered jumping on the pose-a-challenge-band-wagon, and at the risk of being a modern era cliche, here goes: take the scavenger hunt challenge. Consider starting realistically, instead of squeezing one more to-do in your already challenging day, try the week. Choose 5 things for your week's scavenger hunt, list them for yourself wherever you always look, post-it note on the bathroom mirror, notes in your iPhone, whatever works for you, but put it where it will help you notice it. That will be important because if your life is anything like mine, you will need all the help you can to stay focused on things not already worn into the ruts of your life.

I suggest your list of 5 things be a balance of the silly with the meaningful. And I'm admittedly prone to the color red (ask a neighbor for a red sock, find a co-worker eating a red velvet cupcake, mark the serendipity of your favorite key-note speaker taking the stage in blue jeans with red cowboy boots peeking out from her pant cuffs). As far as the meaningful goes, in this era of challenge, I find the simpler, the better: notice someone holding a warm cup of tea, string of the teabag trailing (hopefully this images still evokes the slow-down-and-curl-up- with-a-book imagery and not the rally-funded-by-scary- unknown-conspirists-on-the-Capitol- steps-imagery, or, who am I to define meaningful for you?) Another meaningful item I recently listed was to learn some tidbit about two of my fellows which I had not previously known; or there's the good 'ole gratitude inducing full moon on a starry night.

You might find all 5 things on your list, and you might not. The house rules on scavenger hunts at my house include the honorable mention prize. This is the special victory of what you found along the way which was not an item on the list. You will know it when you see it. It will be the thing so precious and unexpected that you list it and check it off without even needing a ruling on whether it will count.

John and I recently embarked on a home improvement project journey (do it yourselfers- you know what I mean) which was to replace our bathroom vinyl floor with ceramic tile. We picked out the tile weeks ago and planned after the holidays to get busy. We peeled away the vinyl floor which wasn't so hard as you might think, since one of the dogs had given us a good start after accidentally locking himself in the bathroom one day and spending it entertaining himself literally shadow-boxing with the floor. The result was a giant shredded hole in the vinyl accompanied by a deep welt in the plywood subfloor all of which was just barely covered by the throw rug for the holiday season, thank you very much.

So we peeled away the vinyl, then the damp and somewhat rotting subfloor, which exposed the linoleum floor installed by the kindly fellow who built our hosuse 45 years ago. We peeled away the linoleum to find another layer of damp and somewhat rotting subfloor, at which point I said to John, "honey, pretty soon I think we might hit the floor joists". He carefully carved out a circle around that ring where the toilet goes ( now, after having peeled away 3 inches of floor, that ring protruding from the floor, re-affirming the term "throne") to expose a perfectly weathered, halo of tongue and groove hard wood floor. It was like finding buried treasure! We carefully exposed the remaining square footage of our treasure. The tile went back to home depot. John miraculously, but not surprisingly figured out how to lower the throne's platform ring, and the bathroom is almost all put back together better than we hoped for. A tongue and groove hard wood bathroom floor was NOT on my re-do- the-bathroom scavenger hunt list, but it sure tops the honorable mention prize category now!

I'm finding that with every scavenger hunt, every day or challenge I can bother to meet mindfully, albeit with a little focus trick, the list of items, whether they are my list of silly blended with meaningful or merely the day's to-do list, is a far more satisfying day when I start with a list of looking fors. It keeps me aware of what treasures actually emerge, whether they were on the list or not. Those treasures seem to be topping my gratitude list at night, and I'm coming to know things about the people and places on my daily route which are far more interesting and vibrant than the tired perspectives I used to face the day with.

When I was young, I embarked on scavenger hunts at birthday parties or field trips to the school forest. Those lists included things like a root beer bottle top or a rock with a fossil on it. Either one of those items, once plucked by my fat little fingers from the Earth's floor ( urban or forest) was likely to land in my bucket accompanied by some crushed leaves, which, though not on the list, would wind up in the inventory of my bounty at the hunt's conclusion anyway. The leaves were unavoidable, like when you scoop a quarter or a cough drop out of your pants pocket, along comes the pocket lint. So, welcome the "crushed leaves" in your bucket at the end of your day or your week as the honorable mention of your scavenger hunt list, won't you? Please share with me how you did on your hunt, and what the leaves in your bucket look like. Have fun!

There's something irresistible, isn't there about a clean slate, a fresh sheet on your tablet, or an empty chalkboard? Such a warm welcome is posed: "fill me up, spend your idea on me, your heart longs to speak, what is it?" I've been welcomed to share by so many and so warmly, that my my heart's longing is to say thank you so kindly to all of you cherished trusteds, don't mind if I do.

Take a scavenger hunt is meant to serve as that kind of warm welcome to you, if you please.

I find myself too often on a familiar, ordinary route I've been down before. Too busy have I been to follow any of side paths which have offered me a different destination. Recently I had the magical experience of my own scavenger hunt. It began as a notion about how to spend a holiday. There was, in fact, a scavenger hunt list. On the Thursday before Christmas, we set out, some loved ones and I, to find and do a long list of things. We were encouraged and allowed by other loved ones who lent an importance to it all. We didn't get through the entire list. We didn't end up where we thought we might. We found, though, in our willingness to seek, treasures we hadn't imagined. So take a scavenger hunt was born as a welcome I find worth making.

In it's purest form, isn't the scavenger hunt really just a list of mostly ordinary things, some useful, some useless, which you are invited to discover or ask for inside the neighborhood or community you are positioned in? And you often set about the hunt teamed up with whomever is present,right? And you may be called upon to seek those ordinary things partnered with those around you from the neighbors who have lived across the street for twenty years, but whom you have never before asked "may we borrow a red sock, if you have one?" There's nothing quite like the scavenger hunt from which you truly get out of it as much fun as you put into it.

Our first scavenger hunt list included treasures which were more doings and viewings than collectings, but that was just as much fun. We set out to put dollars in all the red salvation army buckets we could find; our list included caroling in a nursing home lobby; leaving snow angels; taking a picture under the Christmas tree in the capital building rotunda, finding real snowmen in people's yards; having Chinese fire drills; and giving away comforts of warmth (socks and gloves, mostly) to people who needed them. There was more on the list. Like I said, we didn't get through it all. But we did have an absolute gas! Our hearts were never more full with the magic of the spirit of the season. So much so that as the year turned new, this reminder sang out from my heart: so there was this magic, and the night was cold, and we were inspired to offer kindnesses we intended to make last...so I invite you to start fresh with me, start what you intended; stop what you meant to; dance in the magic of the new with me because we can have the magic every day if we choose it.

I'd love to hear about your scavenger hunt. Welcome, as warmly as I know how, to the hunt.