On Being Lost

Lost in the Woods

I can remember it as though it were yesterday: that fallen-down tree; the ditch to my right made muddy from the recent rain; my bike off in the distance that I had dropped after realizing I could ride it no further into the woods. I remember sitting down on that tree as if it were where I would die and sobbing into my hands. I remember picking my head up and looking around at the woods as if I were never going to see home again. The chirping birds and the breeze through the leaves all seemed unfamiliar, even though I was not more than a quarter mile from home. I cried and cried, knowing that finally, this was it. I was lost. Home was gone.

The Shout That Saved Me

But then I heard it – a shout off in the distance. A playful cry, not intended to guide me to safety, but one that turned out to be my saving grace. Tears clouded my eyes, and I stumbled off the log and picked up my bike, which I had daringly taken this far into the woods. I heard the voices and saw a path that I realized was probably the one that took me here. Just minutes before – bumping down that path, splashing through puddles and over small rocks and sticks quicker than I had ever done – was an escape and a freedom I hadn’t known until I learned how to ride that bike. And now I thought, with regret, about where this “freedom” had taken me. “Never again,” I thought. “Never again would I venture so far and so quickly as to get myself into such a situation as this.”

And so – slowly, courageously – I made my way back through the small thicket, and soon the shadows made by the unfamiliar trees became light, and the foliage became the bright sunlight that lit the backyards and pavement of Meadowcrest on that 1990s day.

Back to Meadowcrest

I walked my bike through the Davidsons’ garden and back down the familiar cul-de-sac, the recent rain on the hot Ohio summer day smelling like wet pavement in the Midwest, and the shouts of the neighborhood kids bringing the familiar sounds that helped release me from my newfound trauma. But my goal was not to join in on the fun anymore. It was Mom. I walked my bike home and reported, a slobbering mess, that I had lost myself in the woods and narrowly escaped what surely would have been a slow and agonizing death from starvation and thirst.

It’s funny now, the things you may recall from that long ago. Because as if it were yesterday, I remember, through my tears, saying how lost I was, and my mom hugging me with sympathy and a reassuring wisdom, saying to “just walk straight,” to “walk in one direction and don’t give up. And you will always find your way.” She was not trying to give me deep advice; she was telling me how to find my way out of the woods in a suburban neighborhood. But as with some things, this took on much more meaning as life went on.

The Farm and the Woods

My brother and I grew up close, you could say. Close as in we closely tormented each other, and now, as a father of two boys, I cannot imagine how my single mother bore it all. But our escape was the farm – that old house on the hill in southern Indiana. We got out of the little suburban home in Cincinnati with our dog, the clean sheets, and each other, and there was no other place in the world that mattered. That kerosene stove that ached in the winter and caused the groundhogs to scratch at the floor. The attic, which stirred in our imagination a time when our ancestors and their kids lived in the house when it still, in many ways, felt like the frontier of a young nation. But mostly it was the woods – 150 or so acres that surrounded the fields and formed the outline of our property. The woods were an oasis, and walking into them could make you imagine a time when those same ancestors’ kids ran and played just as we did. The sunken old roads, which a few hundred years ago would have conveyed horse and buggies from nearby Ferdinand into St. Anthony or Jasper, reminded us that this was not so long ago.

Getting Lost on Purpose

I remember my mom taking us into those woods. I remember her telling us how she loved getting lost in them. Getting lost? The terror of being lost had always made me remember that time in Meadowcrest, between those two suburban streets, having ridden too far on my bike. Getting lost was scary. I was not sure what to think of it – my brother and me tagging along with our mom, who was trying to get us lost in our own woods. That seemed downright insane. But I trusted her.

It was so hard, though – to get lost. Too many familiar landmarks would give away where we were. There was Vine City, where those woody vines crept up the trees, making a playground as they twisted around in a mystical scene that could have been out of The Lord of the Rings. The Initial Tree, where each year in the spring all the kids in the family would trek and mark how much we’d grown the previous year. The Blarney Stone, that big limestone rock that we’d all kiss to give us luck, imagining it was the one from that faraway castle in Ireland. Grandma and Grandpa McCready’s Grave, that cairn of rocks in the peaceful clearing in the pine woods by the creek. We just couldn’t get lost. We knew those woods all too well.

Finding My Way Home

I’ve found myself now thinking of that – of my mom telling me what a thrill it was to get lost in our own woods. That fear I had ingrained in me, that I’d never find my way home. “Be calm,” she said, “remember where you came from, and walk straight, and you will find your way.” I can still hear those words in my ears. Yet I can still feel just how much I hate it, in many ways – being lost. Even when I know exactly where I am going, I will often have Google Maps pulled up on my phone, giving me turn-by-turn directions to verify my route. I have a habit of obsessively checking and rechecking where my next turn will be, thinking that missing it will lead me into some irreversible blunder. A deep-seated part of me hates being lost, probably compounded by the fact that I am the kind of person who takes pride in always knowing where he is.

But who knows – maybe those words, in part, formed who I am now. Because I still find some romance in it. It’s hard when you have a family in tow who are relying on you to get them quickly to a hotel, or their next snack, or a potty break. A three- and seven-year-old sympathize slightly less with you taking in the view on an unfamiliar street or winding pathway through the woods when you are delaying their next nap or bathroom break. Yet I fantasize about the idea of wandering and not exactly knowing where we’ll end up – not knowing if that next small town down the road will have a place to stay for the night, or if you’ll have to hop back on your horse (OK, more likely a Volkswagen Polo) and keep on riding. If that next campsite will be taken or you’ll be able to pitch your tent there and stay.

“Walk straight,” she said, “and you will find your way home.” Twenty years ago, that home was the house of my childhood – its tacky brown siding and that steep driveway that was impossible to shovel in the winter. We all want it in the end, I think: the familiarity of being home, wherever that is. It’s been a long time since that house was my home, but I’ll always remember the security it offered – how it felt after a long trip, pulling back up that familiar driveway, sleeping in my own bed after being away. Taking that same advice from that summer day in 1994 has led me to places many thousands of miles from that house – which I know is not at all what my mother meant to imply when telling me how to find my way out of the woods in a suburban Ohio neighborhood – but I still have those moments. Coming out of the woods. Walking my bike down that street. The sun shining through the trees on the pavement. Home.