I Was Lost For Nine Hours And Something Kept Me On The Path

I got lost the way people actually get lost: not dramatically, but through a series of small, confident mistakes.

By four in the afternoon I did not know where I was. By six I was on something that was probably a game trail. By eight it was dark and the temperature was going the way temperatures go up there.

Then the stones started.

Every time I stepped off the trail — and in the dark you step off constantly, you drift — a stone would hit a tree. Not near me. Ahead of me. A crack, and then quiet.

I would correct my line, and there would be no stone.

I want to be very clear about the geometry, because it is the whole story: the stones were always ahead, in the direction I needed to go. Never behind me. Never at me. Never once did one hit me, and I could have been hit, easily, and I was a slow target.

It went on for nine hours.

Around three in the morning I came out onto a forest road and I sat down on the gravel and I cried in a way I have not cried since I was a child, and then I walked four miles to a gate, and then I got a lift from a man delivering bread.