Hiking on Vashon, II

    Because I have a poor sense of direction, getting lost has always been a nagging fear when I'm in the wilderness. If I have a hiking partner, I'll rely on that person's directions, no matter how strongly my body is telling me to go the other way, because my body is wrong about 98 percent of the time. If I hike alone, I stay on the trails, and if I'm in a place where a multitude of trails cross, I have a map. Hiking partners are always amazed at how easily I get confused. My internal compass is broken. 

    Last week, while I was on Vashon Island, Washington, visiting my son, Ela, and family, Ela was meeting a friend for a mountain bike ride in Dockton Forest and suggested I do a hike while they do a ride. I would have time to do a more extensive hike than I had done before. (See last week's post.) He pulled up a map of the trail system on my phone and drew a red line on it with his finger, indicating my route. We would meet again at the car in two hours.

    I set out well enough, but soon I found it difficult to figure out where I was in relation to the map. Not all the trails were marked on it, and the red line was imprecise. At one unclear intersection after staring at my phone, wondering if the trail before me was this trail on the map or that one, I finally made what seemed like a good guess and headed uphill. Shortly Ela and his friend rode past me. Ela said I had taken the wrong turn at the questionable intersection, but it didn't matter because I would get to the gravel pit the way I was going. Then he and Scott rode off one way, and I walked on up the trail.

A view of Mt. Rainier and the Puget Sound
just before the gravel pit.

    When I got to the gravel pit, which is large and open to the sea, I headed down into it. It was awesome to be so far below the rim, to look up at the forest, and then to walk to the sea. I contemplated taking my boots off and wading in the water, but when I looked at the time, I saw that I only had half an hour to get back to the car, so from the water's edge, I hiked fast up the hill, following Ela's red line and steaming past three hikers and their two dogs.

    I was not returning the way I had come, but I was following the map. There were another couple of dubious turns, but I was pretty sure I was where I was supposed to be when Ela texted me for an ETA. "About ten minutes," I texted back confidently. I would be back at the car at just about the agreed time.

    And then, suddenly, I was lost. Nothing looked on the ground the way it was supposed to on the map. The forest contained a warren of trails. At every intersection, I tried to make my surroundings match my map, but nothing was making sense. My trail was going parallel to the road, but I didn't know how to get to where the car was in relation to where I thought I was. Fifteen minutes, twenty. Ela texted to know where I was, but I could hardly tell. He suggested I send him the GPS of the map with the dot of my position on it. I texted back, "How do I do that?" He texted me directions. I sent him the map. He texted back: "You're going the wrong direction." I turned around and went the other way.

        I was genuinely lost, in that I didn't know where I was or how to get where I wanted to be, but I knew I wasn't far from the road and that I would eventually wind my way out of the forest onto the road, where I would be able to tell Ela where I was. Frequent texting with Ela kept me cheerful.

    It took me another hour to get to the road, and even then I wasn't at the car. But at least I could text Ela that I was at such and such an intersection. He said, "Wait there," and in five minutes he drove up in the car.

    It was an hour past our agreed meeting time, and I had added probably four extra miles to my hike. I was sorry to have made Ela wait. But he said he didn't mind. He had just kept making loops with his bicycle, and he loves to ride his bike, especially on the Dockton Forest trails.

    I love those trails, too. Next time, I think, I'll be able to find my way around.