A Spiritual Reflection On Getting Lost In the Woods

Accidents and adventure are sometimes the best part of life

Photo by author.

Over the Christmas holiday my eldest son and I set out on an adventure. We were going to hike about 11 miles one day, and I had cleverly done a map recon and decided we would drop a car at one end, drive down a bit, and use a tributary trail to inject ourselves into the trail at a midpoint. Then we’d hike backwards to the main trailhead. Multiple maps from various sources confirmed these trails and supported the reality of this unconventional, but perfectly reasonable route.

We dropped a car at the main trailhead and then ventured down a dirt backroad to find our starting point. On first pass, we missed the road marker, due to its perfect position… behind a tree. No amount of rubber-necking would’ve discovered it from our route of approach. A minor inconvenience requiring a bit of backtracking. Nothing major, but a harbinger of things to come.

Once discovered, we drove down the access road until it became impassable. Then we dismounted and began our journey. It was a smooth and predictable (though steep) 2.5 miles until we reached a small outcropping with no discernible outlet. Every map suggested that from roughly this point there should be a short northerly jog dropping us onto the main trail. We would…