The Christmas I Got Lost in The Woods

As I prepare for the upcoming holidays, I remember the Christmas Day I got lost in Peabody’s Woods – now known as Noanet Woods. No, this isn’t a memory dating back to my childhood. It is, unfortunately, a memory that goes back to a time when I was a younger but fully functioning, responsible adult, with a house, a husband,  two children, and a full time job. I considered myself to be in charge of my life.

I don’t remember what initially ticked me off.  Some slight, something said, or left un-said. Perhaps I had expected something to happen that didn’t. Who knows? At any rate, by 10 am I was feeling much put upon, so I resolved to take my unhappiness into the woods, to walk out my problem.

Members of my family often retreat to the great outdoors to deal with issues and cope with the vicissitudes of life. A good hike or kayak trip gets the blood flowing, gets you away from people, and allows you to ponder, to question, to indulge in feeling sorry for yourself, and then to invent a better plan of action to deal with what’s going on.

I had spent years walking the trails in these woods. What could be more familiar? It was as if I were in my own backyard. It was not until I had been walking for a good 25 minutes that I decided to leave the trail, and walk into the rough brush to sit down on a fallen tree. As I swept the snow off the tree, and settled down on it, I noticed how quiet the woods were, and quiet was what I wanted.

For a while I sat there, lost in my glum state, but after a bit, I began to feel better and that’s when I noticed it. I had no idea where I was. In the winter, with a lot of snow on the ground, I could not find the trail. Everything was white, no special trees, rocks, roots, etc. stood out in any way. I had been so angry when I walked into the woods that I hadn’t paid attention to markers. There weren’t even any footprints to follow out, the snow and dead leaves formed an irregular surface, and if I had left a footprint trail, it wasn’t readily apparent.

I slumped back down onto the fallen tree and thought to myself, well this serves me right. How stupid, and how embarrassing. Now what? Do I start yelling? No, too embarrassing. Do I wait for my family to come looking for me? No, too embarrassing, besides I hadn’t even told them where I was going. Do I just start crashing through the woods and hope that I come out somewhere? No, too stupid.  If I could find the trail, at least I could follow that, even if I came out in Westwood, I would be out of the woods. That’s all that mattered to me as I began to worry about being lost forever, starving and freezing in what had been to me, up until that moment, my own backyard!

The voices of others walkers, on the trail, wafted my way, and I dashed through the underbrush, in their direction, back to the trail, and from there, home.

Later, when I had time to think about what had happened, I realized that it wasn’t so much that I had been lost in the woods, I had been lost in my anger.  Something so minor, that today I can’t even remember what it was, had irritated me to the point that I dashed off without thinking, no hat, no ID, no money, and although the story did have a happy ending, there was no guarantee that it would. What if I had entered the woods at 4 p.m. instead of mid-morning? What if there had been no other hikers whose voices I could hear? It’s quite something how anger can take you over and entice you into doing foolish things.

I like to think that I learned a valuable lesson – maybe two. Don’t enter the snowy woods without thinking about what you’re doing; and stop, relax, slow down, and deal with frustration and anger in a thoughtful way. A third lesson, now that I think of it, is: I wish cell phones had been around then. I really could have used one that day. There’s also a fourth lesson, but this one I already knew: don’t get behind the wheel of a car when you are angry – WALK.