The internet is so cool sometimes.
bfx: say more. Why did this interest you? What is it about the author's getting or being lost that caught your attention?
Remember the first line of Dante's Inferno
- Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Having lost the pathway, the poet says, "I found myself within the forest dark."
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I've also always liked this poem:
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
-- David Wagoner
(1999)
Part of it was neither the getting or being lost, but the archival nature of the internet. This is a thread from 1991, which somehow still exists on the internet. Imagine all the stories, the catalogs of life as it is, that could be available for an unprecedented period of time. I'd like to think I came across a rather interesting small section of the internet with that find.
The getting and being lost is, of course, interesting. And terrifying. It's mostly terrifying, really. People regularly die because they have got lost, or ventured off into the wilderness without the proper skills to get around. As I progress to more and more difficult or lengthy trips, being as safe as possible starts to become more of a priority. Reading how people get into and (hopefully) get out of these situations is an interesting read into their physical, but more importantly, mental condition.
Every trip has a goal of being a round-trip.
- Every trip has a goal of being a round-trip.
I suppose. Even so:
- All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware. - Martin Buber
But in the end:
- We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T. S. Eliot
1991 is pretty old in internet time. My first freenet account was in 1995. It was so amazing - and so slow. We waited and waited for our dial-up connections to bring back data. But it still was faster than going to a library and finding an encyclopedia. :-)
That's a beautiful quote from T. S. Eliot, is that an excerpt from a larger work?
I should work on my compass skills.
I've made minor navigation errors but no major ones. The most notable was missing a junction that cost me like a tenth of a mile and a couple hundred feet elevation, so not bad. I had to stop and look at a map, because there should not have been a trail junction there. It didn't make sense in my head at all. Brains get fuzzy when fatigued. I feel it in myself running, too.
Maybe my proudest moment was turning back when I wasn't sure I could navigate above the tree line on one summit. I knew my limit. It was hard, but it was right. Two people spent two unplanned nights on that summit last winter.
I just took a 3 hour basic map and compass navigation course through REI, it was actually really well done. Went through map and field bearings and some useful rules of thumb for triangulation. I know exactly what you're talking about with that fuzzy feeling, if you're on a long hike or run in unfamiliar territory it's probably good to have a compass just in case.