Often the best experiences come when you don’t plan them. They can sometimes even come from stressful or painful situations.
This past weekend, while backpacking in Wyoming, I was attempting to lead 3 others on a trail to a lake 4 miles away. Unfortunately, the maps I had gotten had no detail, and when we came to a fork in the trail, I had to guess which way we were supposed to go. I picked. Almost a mile down the trail, we had looped around and were going in the complete opposite direction from where I knew the lake was. The option was to continue the trail and see if it would eventually loop back in the correct direction or turn around and see if the other direction was correct.
I hated this because I felt so helpless. Here three people, who thought I knew, at least to some extent, what I was doing, could no longer have that confidence. We decided to turn around and head back towards where the trail split. Another 20 minutes and we were back and started in the other direction. This way seemed much more promising at first because it led us to the lake we were supposed to start at. I felt much more confident and was happy we had found it.
Problem was there wasn’t a clear trail marked from where we were. We started following around the edge of the lake, but what looked like somewhat of a trail soon turned into nothing. There was no path and nowhere to go.
I once again felt rather helpless. The map didn’t have enough detail and there was no trail to follow. I told them the lake we needs to go to was due south, so we could just cut straight to it and head south, but I felt uncertain of this because I knew the further we strayed off the path, the more dangerous it would be.
We decided to go for it and call it an adventure. I was nervous but excited about the adventure. We started heading south and I knew we were making progress, but not as quick of progress as I would have liked.
We had probably hiked less than a mile when we decided to set up camp for the night since it was getting dark. It was a beautiful area, and I was happy that we had the whole day the next day to get back towards the path we were going to.
We camped under the stars and had a great time talking and eating.
The next day, we headed out and after bushwhacking probably 3 miles through some pretty thick forest and marshy meadows, we found the lake we were looking for and at the same time found the original trail we were supposed to take.
I was beyond happy to have found the trail, and we all made sure not to lose sight of it again.
Losing the trail and having to find our way was hard and more strenuous, but it was also a great experience that we wouldn’t have had if we stayed on the trail. We didn’t run into anyone, we stumbled upon a beautiful meadow, and had lots of conversation about being lost in the woods.
I know we’ll look back on the time being lost fondly. Not my greatest moment, but thankfully, it doesn’t have to be our greatest moment to have a great moment.