Henry and I got lost at night in the forest for hours!

 

So I’m out walking Henry the other night, right? We had such a good time, I told him we’d go out again after momma went to bed, which we did. We were both excited. There's something about being out there, in the pitch-ass black, in the middle of a prairie forest at 5,200 feet, that resets things inside a guy. It’s a cleanse. There’s danger, real danger, and that keeps your head straight. But there is also beauty, real beauty, that keeps the dreamer, the lover of things, in me alive. I prefer to be out there after dark because then nobody can see you and it’s like you own the whole world. It’s Henry and I and we do whatever we want.

Anyhow, momma went to bed around nine-thirty and I ate something before we went for the walk, so I think we got out there around ten. We went all the normal ways, which at first, when we started, were scary and confusing, but are now comforting and familiar. Then we found a small offshoot in an area we hadn't explored yet, at the other end of my road. Henry dragged me through a small opening in between a couple of trees and it led us to a huge meadow that can’t be seen from the road. Wow! This was so cool! Except for, a turn or two after that, we were completely, hopelessly lost.

Once I was done cursing myself for going into unknown territory, especially on a night in which the moon hadn't risen yet, the ego/man side hates to admit it but panic began to set in; the more we walked and nothing at all was recognizable, the more I could hear the ole dread train chooglin’ down the tracks.

I’m not a beginner in the outdoors, and I’m not a beginner at being lost. In fact, friends have called me Direction Man for most my life, as I’ve just never been good with the damned things. But living out here has forced me to pay much more attention to my surroundings. It’s just, in this one particular case, on this one particular occasion, I made a couple of careless decisions and became irrevocably turned around. Lost. I was fucking lost and I wasn't but a football field from home. Which direction, though? All the “landmarks” I use as tools, such as a big bluff near my house, the lights of town, even certain sounds, were not present now. At all. And because I’d let Henry just jank me though those tree openings, I’d lost my sense of direction, as well. Vertigo without being dizzy. It sucked.

By the time I realized I might be in a spot of actual, real trouble, it was near eleven. We walked. And we walked, and we walked, and we walked. No direction produced anything—lot a light from a porch, not a road, not a single beacon of safety. And the trees were bigger there. They blotted out any hope of seeing familiar surroundings, even if the moon had been out. Which it wasn't yet. I was on the wrong side of it all, and I was facing some decisions.

By twelve-thirty I was shotgun-calling Kim, over and over, trying to wake her up. In the end, I called her over a hundred times, and probably much more. I didn’t count after a hundred. Turns out, she had simply turned her ringer off before sleep. Go, partner! That’s a bit of an lol, I guess, but still. Damn, bruh. She knew we were going out there.

About one-thirty, when the moon was just coming up, it showed me a thing or two and I was pretty damned convinced I knew my location at that point. But I couldn’t be sure, and every time we went the way I thought home was, we were greeted with barbed wire fences and now, finally, a few porch lights. But they weren’t comforting. Around here, you don’t knock on doors and ask for help. And you most certainly don’t ever get caught creeping around the back of a house near two in the morning with a dog and half a joint on ya. Know what I mean? You're just a victim at that point. Yes, I had my .45 on me, which was nice and provided some comfort, I suppose, but situations like that are best avoided. Like, at all cost.

I finally figured, though, where there are houses there must be a road, so we tried like hell to get around the houses, to the front sides, but we found only fence. Just fence after fence. It was more than irritating. My headlight died around eleven-thirty, so we were in the blind by this time for at least two hours. Yeah, my phone has a flashlight, but it also has a battery life. And it’s a phone. So I chose not to use that option unless it became absolutely necessary.

Then I found a road. Or, I should say, what was left of one. But it was still behind the houses, and I wasn't sure where it led. I had a good idea which road, but not being sure, and with a hundred dogs I heard barking ahead around the corner, I was very skeptical about taking Henry right down the middle of the thing, yanno? Not all folks around here care about fences, we’ll just say that. It was a risk.

Eventually, around two, I guess, I decided the best option was to lie down and see if I could sleep a little. I had work the next day, and 6:30 wasn't going to feel good. So I found a good-sized cover bush with a million prickly things all over it, cleared out a space underneath it, used the flashlight to inspect for large and dangerous bugs, and then had me a lie down. The problem? I felt like a bitch. Yeah, it’s still a little manly, I guess, just saying fuck it and going to bed when lost, but there was also an element of you gave up, fuckin' sissy boy whirling around in the old thought creator place.

I was hungry. My left foot had gotten a cramp. I’d picked a zillion stickers and rocks out of my moon boots. I’d gotten caught up in barbed wire so bad at one point when I didn’t see a fence because my light was dead that it took me several minutes to extract myself. Tore my jeans to shit but my amazing hoodie, which took the brunt of it, seems untouched. I don’t know how. I was bouncing in that shit so long I was sure a homeowner, somewhere, would have heard the clinging and clanging and swearing. But nope. Everything stayed dead silent. And through it all, Henry was just a peach, the poor guy. He's magical, I tell you.

Around two-thirty I decided I was a pussy and got my ass up. I looked at Henry, who was looking at me, and said we’re gonna fight, okay? You wanna fight with me? And he wagged his tail and we were off. Right then, and I mean right fucking then, a car comes down a road I hadn't seen yet. On the other side of the houses I’d been trying to get past but couldn’t. I watched it go by, and then make a right—the exact looking right that leads to my house. It had the same pitch, I mean, exactly the same. I welled up with excitement. We found it! I said to Henry, and we ran that way. Barbed wire. Discarded vehicles. More barbed wire. Bro.

So we turned the other way and went all the way around the houses at the top, instead of near the bottom, where the road actually was and where my instincts told me I should head. Sometimes, you have to go backward in order to go forward, a very wise and rich man once told me.

It worked. Twenty-five yards later we were on maintained, red-rock road. And I saw clearly that the right leading to my house was in fact, the right leading to my house. Now we had skips in our steps. Trust me. That was the second happiest I’d ever been to see the gate to my house. The first was when we moved in, and had to wander in that same forest for hours in order to find it because I gotten the U-Haul truck stuck in a ditch. We had arrived in a blizzard.

The prairie isn't easy. But it’s rewarding in ways I’d never have imagined possible. With every emergency, comes the knowledge and the capacity to fix or repair, replenish or find. Henry and I got home just before three somewhere. Kim got up about ten minutes later, having just noticed we were not there. Swell. I told her the story while drinking a lot of water, and then I ate something and went to bed. At 3:45 AM. The alarm went off at 6:25 and I got up and worked the next day, even though it was hard.

Imagine that.