I may have found my trail again, but getting lost is an alien and uncomfortable feeling in this day and age of GPS mapping and Google search. Just one simple step onto a rock would have saved me 45 minutes of uncomfortable fear. So, I stepped up onto the rock to take a look around, and holy of holies, there was the trail. For a long time, I simply stared at the trail I had come from, and I knew that it had to continue somewhere. In my mind, I could either stay where I was and trust that my fiancé’ or someone would come find me, or start plotting a route to head down the mountain to either the highway or to the next campground before the sun set. I let my breath slow down, I drank some water and I just relaxed a bit. Out of options, I sat on a small rock overhang where the trail disappeared and just thought. I desperately searched for landmarks and stumbled back until I finally found the original trail that petered out. My main concern now wasn’t finding where the trail continued, but to go back to where the trail ended. How embarrassed would I be if I had to be rescued on a day hike? What would happen when the sun sank into pitch black night? What if I froze to death when the temperatures dropped below freezing? What if an errant black bear wandered along and ate my face off? Scenarios - all unpleasant and dramatic - filled my imagination. I wasn’t completely lost, but lost enough to feel frightened, angry and stupid. The thought of tromping through unfamiliar woods on a mountain that plummeted into hundred-foot cliffs while navigating the dark didn’t appeal to me, but I would’ve done it. I could see the highway that runs between Boxley and Ponca in Arkansas off in the distance, and I knew which direction I had to go. In all honesty, I wasn’t truly, deeply, no-hope lost. I tried hiking down and found only sheer bluffs.įor a few terrifying moments, I couldn’t even find my way back to where the trail petered out, and that’s when I knew I did the wrong thing. I tried hiking up the side of the mountain, thinking this particular stretch of trail was higher. That growing panicky voice in my head told me to keep moving. I walked until it was clear to even my foggy brain that the fallen logs and brambles that tore at me were not part of any kind of trail. I just couldn’t fathom that the trail wasn’t there, so I just started walking… randomly. I started to feel my breath quicken, my body temperature rise and a fog engulf my mind. No trail, no hint of a trail, nothing that even looked like a trail. I walked forward again until it disappeared. So I turned around and backtracked until I found the trail I had been on. I knew my fiancé’ was still over four miles away at a campground fishing, and if I wasn’t back by dark, he would worry. It’s an unnerving feeling to be lost alone on an unfamiliar mountain with the sun setting, especially for someone new to solo hiking for long distances. I had thought about how easy it would be to wander off the trail and into the primitive wild. I remember thinking just an hour before how the trail was only discernible by the flattened and tramped leaves from hikers before me. The Ozark Mountains and the Buffalo River Trail were smothered with the gold, red and browns of fallen carpet. On the weekend following Thanksgiving, most of the Ozark trees had surrendered their leaves. One moment, I’m trekking on it, the next moment, it had disappeared. PRIMAL FEAR - The Psychology of Being Lost By Heide Brandes I was hiking back on the stretch of the Buffalo River Trail in Arkansas I had spent most of the day exploring when unexplainably, unexpectedly and stunningly, I was lost.
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