Most people think of being lost as not knowing where you are. That is a problem, but, you could, given the time, the right resources, and the right attitude, simply stop, relax, be curious and get familiar. You might even discover something wonderful.
The real problem with being lost is not knowing which way to go when you have a set destination in mind.
The outcome of not knowing which way to go, just about outlines all human predicaments that have consequences. Not knowing which way to go leads to huge amounts of relatively ineffective activity, absolutely dead wrong moves, debates, arguments, hostility, frustration, fear, and ultimately panic that give rise to lasting phobias.
Once panic sets in, all hope is lost, and only miracles will save you and whomever. Or perhaps it happens that hope dwindles away until only panic remains. Either way.
Once, when I was a young teen, hiking the Appalachian Trail with a church group, I got lost, really lost, and plunged into the darkness of a moonless night.
I’d been looking forward to backpacking for a very long time.
I had given Girl Scouts a good try. I had waited out the the interminably boring years required before you could do anything other than crafts — for example pinning red and green sequins on a styrofoam ball to give as a Christmas present your parents who felt obliged to thank you for it, and then “loose” while packing up the ornaments at the end of the season.
There was also the activity of earning badges in the domestic arts, and aesthetic appreciation, which was stupid because I grew up listening to my parent’s extensive record collection, and reading good fiction. Here they were teaching me the difference between Beethoven and Mozart and how to thread a needle and sew on a button. I had been part of the domestic labor team in my home for years. I had already sewn my own apron to wear while making cookies and pies.
Girl Scouts had nothing interesting for a feral child such as myself. I envied my brother who had badges in things like gem and mineral collecting, archery, trapping and hunting, fishing, and a hundred and one other things that made me resent being a girl and getting cheated out of the fun and interesting things.
The only badge both types of scouts had in common was cooking and first aid. Gerry learned to make fudge and pancakes. I was taught how to make overcooked spaghetti and heat up tomato sauce, with no spices, as per my father’s tastes.
The First Aid badge was also was a joke. In my family I had been patching myself up for years, or getting my siblings to do so when too injured myself, and vice versa. Aside from the basics of soap, peroxide, iodine, bandaids, gauze and medical tape, I had learned through experience at least four ways to use a square of muslin — to sling a sprained arm, to splint a wrist, or ankle, and to apply an ice compress to your neck. I did learn in Girl Scout’s First Aid to straighten and splint a broken toe to it’s not broken neighbor, which came in handy eventually.
My family was not ignorant, or poor. My parents were both college educated and we were solidly middle class. However we had inherited the traditions of poor working folks, farmers, photoengravers and bricklayers, who viewed children as part of the family work unit. When they were forced to seek medical care they could go broke paying for it, or bear the shame of charity. Thus, fix it yourself, suck it up, and don’t go to the doctor unless you are dying, or if the neighbors will notice an obvious serious affliction.
Eventually, after making it in Girl Scouts from second grade to fifth grade, I got ready for the eagerly anticipated camping trip. To get ready for the trip, we carefully folded newspapers into strips and wove them into a square called a sit-upon, the purpose of which was to avoid getting dirty when sitting on the ground.
Learning to weave was interesting enough but the entire concept of avoiding getting dirty eluded me. Getting dirty was a side effect of having fun with my gang of boys, such as chasing Mark Ford through the swamps behind our house, after he voluntarily took off all his clothes on a dare and Brian Thompson stole them. Getting dirty could also be the entire point of our planned activity, like have a mud ball fight.
I sat upon my sit-upon, which predictably soaked up the moisture in the ground and fell to pieces while we sang sappy campfire songs. We slept in a clean bunk house with electricity. I was disappointed and asked why we weren’t sleeping in tents.
After that I quit Girl Scouts. Though I yearned for Boy Scouts, which was where I truly belonged, it was not an option due to having the wrong parts down there. Transgendered children were not yet a thing.
The Southern New Jersey Methodist Conference Summer Camp was my best option. The camp was called Mount Misery. It lived up to its name. The camp also had stupid crafts, and even dumber activities like the scavenger hunt where you were supposed to find an acorn and some pine needles, as if those were mysterious things.
On the treasure hunt we also had to find and a rock that you could crumble in your hands. That intrigued me, until I realized that if I proved to myself that if I could crumble clod of sandy earth, it would no longer be a rock. I think the camp counselor had to dream up something impossible to find to keep me occupied.
The camp was in the in the Pine Barrens, which is the well known haunt of The Jersey Devil, also scary generally up to no good people called “Pineys.” Adults told us these things, but nothing about the mafia using the Pine Barrens as a convenient final destination for their unfortunate victims.
Scary tales were told at night in the darkness of the bunkhouse. The Jersey Devil was red. He had goat’s legs and hooves. He had a bat’s wings. He had a long tail with a double pointed arrow at the end and he could kill you with a flick of his tail. He had the grimacing face of Satan and was yes, hell bent on tormenting you. He had a pitchfork just in case.
Each morning after breakfast we had a mandatory attendance at church, which a bunch of benches in a semi circle around a crude wooden cross. Prayers may have been a little more earnest due to the Jersey Devil menace.
The main point of going to camp, in my opinion, was swimming in the cold dark cedar water lake. There were a limited number of canoes, No archery. I laughed recently when my husband asked if we had tennis. I don’t recall paved surfaces of any kind. Other than swimming, and wandering off on my own and exploring, which drove the camp counselors mad, I was bored, sweaty and itchy from mosquito bites.
Eventually I was old enough to go on the Southern New Jersey Methodist Conference hiking trips on the Appalachian Trail. My first trip was in Pennsylvania, which had relatively flat hiking, suitable to beginners. I was psyched. I even broke in my boots properly. I practiced tying knots that my Dad taught me — the essential knots — square knot, bowline, overhand half-hitch, and double half-hitch. I needn’t have bothered.
A couple of days into the week long trip I got fed up with trudging along looking at the back pack of the person in front of me, so after lunch I went deliberately slow so I could get a change of scenery and enjoy the sights and sounds of the woods.
The morning hike had gone unremarkably. At lunch our group leader gave us instructions for the afternoon, “When you come to the flat trail that follows a small stream along your right, go 2 miles. So-and-so and I will hike ahead, and I’ll leave So-and-so at the turn off, a trail that turns off sharply to the left, and goes uphill a ways to our campground.
Since the age I first toddled about to now, when it would be fair to say I’m nearly toddling again, I’ve been curious, stopped, investigated, observed and enjoyed my surroundings, especially when in the woods.
Other people hike to get to the destination. I hike for the experience of the trail. Apparently that afternoon, after letting myself fall behind, I got curious about something, and my companions left me in the dust. No matter, I was at that time a cross country runner and knew I could catch up.
All along the trail, I listened to the birds in the
scrub and imitated their calls. I picked wild blackberries where I found them, careful to avoid the poison ivy. The air was warm and sticky. A mile or so up the sandy flat trail alongside the stream I found a very large oak with grass underneath, a perfect place to sit.
I love oak trees. I was adopted by one as a child, an ancient and enormous Red Oak that was a gentle kind Grandmother who listened and comforted me when I needed it.
On the other side of the stream was an open field. I stopped to drink some water, enjoy the shade, the view of the meadow, and rest my back up against the trunk.
Pack off. Plop down. Get out the canteen. Lean back on the trunk.
Uh-oh… creepy crawly tingles up the back of my neck.
Something fearful. Something sad.
Somebody on the other side of life, lurking about, feeling vengeful.
I stood up quickly, and stowed my canteen. As I pulled up my heavy pack up and got it on my back, I sensed a scene unfolding in my mind’s eye.
Someone had been lynched here, right there, from the exact branch I had been sitting underneath. There were vicious mean people, a helpless victim and an ominous tree that held the memory.
I was chilled to the bone and sick with fear. The lingering spirit was out for revenge, casting a web of darkness on any who tarried near this tree. I felt I could have been sucked into the darkness and not ever be able to find my way back.
I ran. I ran in boots, with a heavy pack, in the heat. But the trail was flat and sandy and I was motivated. Perhaps a little too motivated. I made tracks.
I never did see So-and-so who was supposed to be standing by the turn off, which as it turned out was more of a deer track than a trail. So-and-so had placed a stick horizontally across the trail, sure that the stick would clearly communicate the turn just as well as a real person would. I undoubtedly with fleet footed surety leapt right over it in my haste to escape menace.
After a mile, I slowed to a walk — the pack and all. How far had I gone? Not sure. Where was that turn off? I kept walking another mile or more, looking carefully and found nothing.
Then I convinced myself that I had overestimated time and or distance. Time is a weak suit for me and my speed was notoriously variable, at least in those days. Now I’m mostly slow and slower.
I backtracked, walking, looking and found nothing. At a certain point I could feel the energy of the tree looming out in front of me. I knew I wasn’t going any further in that direction. No way!
I swiftly re-walked the back tracked few miles and then walked another mile and a half, and came, quite to my dismay to a fork in the trail that no one had mentioned.
It was then that I knew I was lost, and noticed that the afternoon was getting late.
I sat down and pondered what to do. Where did I go wrong? Had I been on the wrong trail all together? The group leader mentioned our camp for the night was slightly uphill.
Should I take this, the not at right angles trail up the hill to the left, or continue on the downhill trail to the right and look for a cut off? Neither was flat and there would be no right angle turn offs to the left, up a hill.
My extra walking to and fro had added up 2 or 3 hours and it’s likely an extra 5 miles. Earlier in the day I had walked 8. I was tired. I would soon be hungry. I had water. I had some good old peanuts and raisins, aka gorp, a flash light, a rain poncho, a sleeping bag and some warmer clothes. It would soon be dark. Nevertheless I was feeling panicky.
I had four choices.
— One, retrace my steps yet again and go back towards the menacing tree. Nope!
— Two, stay put and what? Wait for rescue? Not my style.
— Three, go downhill to the right, clearly the wrong move.
— Four, go up the hill and hope to find my group.
I chose to go up the hill. After a ½ mile, I realized it wasn’t a short hill, as described. But now it was twilight. I kept going, stopping and listening, and then continuing, now looking for a flat place to spend the night. My flashlight was loosing power. Stopping, listening again, standing very still, up ahead I heard, at a distance, voices. Hallelujah, a miracle! I continued.
By the time I arrived to the camp it was dark, my flashlight was done, and I took the group by surprise. They were gathered around a campfire, eating from mess kits. Their backs turned to me were simply silhouettes. I broke into the circle of light unexpectedly. Suddenly I heard declarations of “What’s this? Who is that?” And finally, “Who are you and what are you doing here?
I looked around and asked myself pretty much the same questions. What’s this? Who is that? Who are these people? Where am I?
I had happened upon a troop of Boy Scouts, who gladly rescued me, fed me an excellent dinner of canned baked beans and hotdogs, which was much finer fare than my church group. They marveled at me, a girl, out here in the woods by herself. I marveled at my good fortune, and I imagine at least one or two of them were falling in love with the idea of rescuing a damsel in distress.
I was a bit uneasy, having had some experience with unreliable adults, so I took my time to tune into the vibe of the troop leaders. I felt satisfied that I would spend a safe dry warm night with them, even if it was weird. I wondered where I would sleep, but tried to put it out of my mind.
An hour or so later, after chowing down and cleaning up, the scouts got out the marshmallows and pre-whittled green sticks. Marshmallows! Man, the Boy Scouts were the best!
As I was trying to expertly brown but not burn my marshmallow, and everybody else was silently concentrating on this same task, we suddenly heard a bellowing voice down the hill, a man’s voice, “Holler if you can hear me!”
I hollered back, but was unheard. Then together, we all hollered together, “Up here!”
Up the hill came a zig zagging flash light, and then the same group leader who had promised that So-and-so would be there at the turn off. He proceeded to chew me out, for missing the obvious sign of the stick on the trail, which was apparently a universal form of communication for all hikers.
I did point out that I had been looking for So-and-so, not a stick. I was told that So-and-so got tired of waiting for me. It was not the first or last time someone got tired of waiting for me, so I dropped my defense.
Back at camp So-and-so gave a repeat chewing out and a pointed explanation of the universally understood meaning of stick laid horizontally across a trail.
The next day the group leader led a trust exercise in which I was the last one being led around with hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. I had a blindfold on. Later I found out I was the only one who had a blindfold on the whole time. I did not feel more trusting.
Though I continued to backpack with the Conference, I planned things out a bit differently. For Christmas I asked for a pedometer and compass and got them. Then I stole my brother’s trail guide to the AT, which he had long since been done with, and studied terrain maps and trails. I never got lost again, and thank-goodness I never again happened upon another haunted tree.
providenceferal 