On Being Lost

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 I realized that 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. 

But then I heard it. A shout off in the distance. A playful cry not intended to guide me to safety but one which 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 which 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 that I hadn’t known until I learned how to ride that bike, and now I thought with regret 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 the pavement of Meadowcrest on that 1990s day. 

I walked my bike through the Davidson’s garden and back down the familiar cul-de-sac. The recent rain on the hot Ohio summer day smelling like the way wet pavement does 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 in 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 and 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. 

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 kerosine stove that ached in the winter and caused the groundhogs to scratch at the floor. The attic which stirred in our imagination a time in which our ancestors and their kids lived in the house when it still in many ways felt like the frontier of the 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 in which those same ancestors’ kids ran and played in the same way 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. 

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 has always made me remember that time in Meadowcrest, in 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 I 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 that 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 the trees in a mystical scene which could have been out of 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 were the one from that far away 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. 

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 piece of me hates being lost, probably compounded by the fact that I am that person that 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 that are relying on you to get them quickly to a hotel, or their next snack, or a potty break. A three and seven year 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 time or potty break. Yet I fantasize about the idea of wondering and not exactly knowing where we will end up. Not knowing if that next small town down the road will have any place to stay for the night or you will 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 will 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. It’s 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 that are 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.