lost in plain sight

for your reading pleasure, a few tips on what NOT to do if you are lost in the woods:

1) if the park is hemmed in on 4 sides by main thoroughfares and a body of water, you are in fact, not really lost in the woods. a 577 acre park is hardly losing your way in some vast wilderness. after you've made the requisite phone calls to tell people that you are 'lost in the woods' they are allowed to tease you mercilessly once you are safely standing on the shoulder of a 4 lane highway and on the way back to your car. "you could get lost on the treadmill and have to call for help." sadly, yes. yes i could.

2) that whole adage about not panicking? well, it's true. maybe if i were calmer i would've stopped making about 3 dozen random turns, and stopped to look around, and read my map, and then tried to use the GPS watch i was WEARING to find my way back. if you are freaking out, you can't make a good choice because everything you think and do is driven by fear. i had a lot of brilliant ideas about what i should've done after i was out on a recognizable road.

3) don't assume that because the OTHER county parks are marked well, accurately, and that their trails all lead to somewhere that it is the same for all of them. i realized this after following green blazes for a mile that stopped dead in the middle of private land with waist high grasses and thorn bushes. if i hadn't made so many stupid turns, was able to read the sun... anything! - maybe i could've found my car. maybe if i wasn't clutching my sweaty shredded map like it was a security blanket and actually tried to decipher it i wouldn't have ended up with bloody itchy legs, dehydrated and emotionally exhausted.

the remains of my map

4) if you aren't loaded down with water and have all the dang time in the world (for example: if you have to go and pick up your children from summer camp at a specific time) then perhaps trying a new trail is an activity for another time. a tight time schedule, and very little fuel enhances the panic ten fold. at the very least - do some re-con before going to find out how the trails are laid out and if they are easy to navigate.

5) in fact it probably IS safer to hang out with the creepy leering homeless guys on the canal towpath than it is to go off in the woods alone. you can probably outrun the creeps, but you can't outrun lostness. i tried. running faster doesn't make it go away.

itchy, scratched up legs

6) finally: know your limitations. my husband can go someplace once and he knows how to get back out. he has an intrinsic sense of direction, i do not. the few times i have navigated a new trail on my own, i have always gotten off it, or very lost. i should not be exploring by myself.

i am alive. there are no bears in the greece canal park, and i didn't die of dehydration. someone else picked up my kids, my husband talked me off the ledge by asking me to stop moving and listen for the sound of traffic and to walk towards it. it took me over unfriendly posted land, but i got out... 4 miles from my car, but out i got. was all a good reminder to be vigilant and not to go alone ahead of an adirondack trip and all of our other future adventures. and it reaffirms my love for timed, short loop races... where the only direction to go is left. always left.