You can learn a lot by getting your hands dirty With humor, humility, and insight, John and Kip Sherbondy share moments of their lives in Navigating the Plum Thicket. "Life is kind of like that," John quips, "You reach for the juiciest, wildest fruits of life, and get poked by thorns along the way." How you navigate through the thorns provides the lessons one learns from those thorns.