Get lost

I got lost yesterday. Well, lost-ish. I went hiking up in Yakima River Canyon. It was my first time driving up there, and it's gorgeous! I'll be making many, many more trips up this season. But I got lost. I found the trailhead for the hike I wanted to go on, but I missed a junction. I knew it was the wrong trail, since it veered away from the canyon I wanted to hike and instead ascended up a ridge near a distinctly different valley. But I kept going.

This is a thing that is not unusual when I go hiking, though now that I live in a desert climate in a more rural area I have to be more careful about wandering. This time of year is cool though and the mystery trail was well-trodden and easy to follow, so I felt comfortable exploring something unplanned.

To give a bit of background into my decision to go off-route: I bought a new-to-me used car on Tuesday. Yesterday I woke up late, had to drive to the gas station to fill up the car, went into the gas station to buy a snack to see if I could get cashback for the $5 parking fee I would need at the trailhead, discovered this convenience store does not do cash back, find an ATM to get cash, find a store to break the $20 bill into appropriate bills, and then, as I headed into the canyon, my tire pressure light went on. So turn around, call the dealership to see if they can look at it, have the tire pressure light turn itself off mere blocks from the dealership, wait in their waiting room while they check tire pressures and sensors and ultimately find nothing wrong, and then I was able to start heading toward the trailhead. So when I finally started hiking and discovered I was on the wrong trail, I was out of fucks to give; I had found a trail so why not hike it? Also in hindsight, the reason I missed the junction for the trail I planned to take was because it was underwater, which I figured out after surveying Google Earth later to figure out where the fuck I went wrong.

Over on the west side, I got lost in the woods all the time. Usually, these were semi-rural hikes; I knew that if I did ultimately get lost, I could walk in any direction and eventually reach civilization again. I also have maps in my pack that I study before I go, but usually they stay in the pack unless I get really desperate. There's something about just reading the landscape and exploring the unknown that appeals to me.

The first time I got lost was in an area that would eventually become Lookout Mountain Preserve outside of Bellingham, but at the time it was just woods with zero designated trails. As a kid, I would bike up the active logging road to an old, overgrown road that served as the "trail", and hike up the hill. The further up you followed the old road, the more wild and less defined it became. Eventually, I hiked up it so far one day that the path simply faded into the forest. So I gave up and turned around to head back...only to discover I was unable to figure out which direction I had come from.

I knew I was not far from civilization and that worst-case scenario I could hack my own path downhill, and eventually I rediscovered the trail, but it was a bit unnerving for a moment. Since then, I've always stayed on clear paths that I could backtrack, but I have still gotten lost.

My first time hiking up Chuckanut Mountain south of Bellingham, I didn't pack a map that time but had a vague idea of where I wanted to go. Then I saw a sign that said "Waterfall", so I followed the arrow to what turned out to be the barest trickle of water creeping down the rock. Next I followed a sign that said "Lookout", so I followed the arrow to something a real estate agent would refer to as a "peekaboo view" that was disappointing. By the time I ended up on top of Raptor Ridge on a rocky cliff where the forest fell away and offered a real view, I was well off the original path I intended to hike, but discovering that final viewpoint was worth it.

The second time I hiked up to Raptor Ridge was with my ex. I packed a map, but stumbled across a newly-constructed trail that hadn't made it on the maps yet. It headed the general direction toward the ridge, so I was like "Let's just follow it and see where it goes!" My ex complained the whole way and kept asking to go back to the mapped trails. I persisted, and it turned out the new trail really was a shortcut to the ridge.

He also complained when we got lost on our honeymoon. We ended up on some random highway heading south. I was like "Oregon is south of Washington! It says we're going south! We're going the right way!" The ex wanted to turn around. I was the driver. I did not turn around. It was an adventure, and in the end we got to where we were going, so I don't know why he was freaking out so bad.

When I hike, I have basic survival skills, and I say on clear paths, but I'm open to exploring off my planned path. I accept the risks, and often get rewards. Adventure comes from stepping outside comfort zones. So I go out and wander unfamiliar areas, whether it's a scary dive bar or a wrong trail that becomes my new right. That's how I roll.