by Warren A. Cornell

I was hiking up a mountain in the Adirondacks with my Father, my Brother and my Cousin, and as we were climbing a steep path I was describing how I had become unexpectedly fascinated with Japanese Haiku and briefly described the rule of 5-7-5 syllables.  Suddenly my Dad stopped dead in his tracks, looked down at a rock in the path at his feet and said:

A tripper-upper.
How do we climb this mountain?
On our feet, of course.