Word(s) of the Day 27

Word of the Day: Trails

There is considerable overlap between what a deer or a dog considers to be a trail and what a human considers to be a trail. The deer, however, have a much higher tolerance for impenetrable thickets and low-hanging branches. I have a fairly high tolerance for bush-whacking, so I often follow deer trails. Probably as a consequence of being naturally oriented and having reasonably reliable internal maps, I also have a fondness for being slightly – but not completely and utterly – lost.

When I lived in Boston as a college student, I enjoyed rambling around various parts of town deliberately trying to get myself lost, which was almost possible as the streets did not quite meet at right angles and if you made enough turns while (deliberately) thinking about other things, you could get a little lost.

The woods are bit different, I admit. It’s possible to go around in circles (though I’ve decided that circles are probably less likely when there are well-defined slopes). There are no people to ask for directions. There are no landmark skyscrapers that suddenly appear when you round a corner and suddenly orient you back to reality. And if the brush is thick it can close around you in all directions.

A couple years ago I was up in Sleepy Creek, a WMA of about 23,000 acres. Instead of walking on one of the well-defined roads or trails, I had parked by the side of the road and followed a small stream for quite a long way as it meandered this way and that. I took pictures. I looked at reflections. Lucy tried to converse with a turtle. Sometimes the bank was very steep on one side. Sometimes it had too many briars. When I say “stream,” you have to imagine a little trickle maybe 1 foot across with an occasional deep spot where the water might be a whole 6 inches deep. If I could get close enough to the bank, Lucy walked along splashing in the water.

After an enchanted hour and a half or so, I followed the trickle back upstream. Instead of leading me back to my car, however, the stream quite suddenly disappeared into the ground. As I had been walking back for quite a while already, I thought back to the stream’s last branching and decided to trust that “naturally oriented” brain I proclaimed myself to have. I headed over a fold of land and kept going. But the terrain began to sprout a different kind of rock, then big boulders and before long I started going up a very steep slope. I adjusted my course slightly, but it didn’t take long before panic set in. I was completely and utterly lost. My brain started doing unhelpful things like repeating phrases: “23000 acres” and “won’t make it to pick up Terry after his practice” and “no one knows where we are” and “what will I do when it gets dark?” (It was only about 1:30 in the afternoon.) All the while I was stumbling around through terrain that now looked alien and hostile.

Somehow or other a rational plan separated itself from the ever-increasing panic. However endless the last stretch had seemed in my mind, I hadn’t really gone very far from the perfidious stream’s vanishing place. Rather than continue to stumble around into virgin territory, I retraced my steps back there and followed back downstream until I came to a place I was absolutely certain I recognized. About ½ an hour further downstream I had seen a path that led to a dirt road with a , so I knew that if I was extremely observant going upstream again, but still couldn’t find my car, I now had a secure fallback plan that would at least ensure that I emerged from the endless woods, even if Terry had to make a fallback plan of his own when I didn’t show up to fetch him. But the second time, I tried, I followed the stream straight back to my car, which sat way above the streambed. I gazed up at it as though I had been given a little glimpse of paradise.

[Lin]

A cool capture to illustrate the story (which was scary to me...I'm a "stick to the path" girl all the way - even a moment or two of being lost is a reason for me to go into panic mode!