…probably just look different. In the dense bush it’s easy to change your bearings without knowing it, but how could we go wrong…we’re just following the stream. It really was a no–brainer. Well now the bush started to show signs that we did not recognize. The stream with its’ grassy, swaying bluff ran off on a ninety-degree turn. We would have noticed this. Nothing looked right…but how could we have gone wrong? Finally Kim pulled out the GPS.
“Why don’t we just keep walking? Our camp must be just ahead.” I’m not sure why I said this.
“Dad. This is not the way. Somehow we got turned around or something. I’ll just plug in our base and we can just follow it home. It is starting to get a little dark.”
Kim was getting nervous and rightly so.
We were in a clearing and the GPS showed us the way. Kim pointed to the left and said, “It’s 300 meters that way.”
“That’s straight into the bush. I know that we didn’t go through anything like that but let’s go”
Well, we followed it in and trekked for a while then suddenly the arrow pointed off to the right.
“Ok lets go this way.” Kim said with an honest nervousness. “It says to go to the right.”
Well I know that when you get into the thick dense forest these things sometimes lie to you.
“No. Hang on. When we were in the clearing it pointed us North-West so we have to take the same bearing. We need to use my compass from here on.”
“Oh! Right,” came Kims’ reply.
The compass pointed straight up a steep hill. When we went in every inch of the terrain was as flat as a pancake, so you can just sense our anticipation. Up the hill we went anyway. What else could we do? We had to go by something. Once over the top we had no idea where we were and the sun hiding behind the trees and mountainous terrain helped only to fuel our panic. It would have been a long night without any shelter, water, bear spray…or any of the other luxuries. We figured to just keep going and follow the compass. We hiked for a little while longer and happened onto a trail. We couldn’t believe it…out in the middle of nowhere a trail. It’s better than nothing so we followed it.
“White! We’re on the Bruce Trail. There’s a hash mark…Look!” Kim was so excited.
“Yeah but where on the trail are we?” I queried. “Lets just keep walking. What else can we do?” We continued down the path feeling a little better about the whole situation when I said, “Hey wait a minute, I recognize that twin fallen tree. It must have been blocking the path and the caretaker sawed it through. There is no mistaking this. We came up this path when we first came in. Look there is where we stashed our packs when we went bushwhacking to find our site!”
“Yes!” Kim was so relieved
We ended up back at our site before dark, as it was only a short distance from this spot. There is a logical explanation as to what happened…how we got lost.

This is already a little too long so I’ll explain next week. Have a nice week.

Jim Bondy

Author of: Friday on the Trail
A book about our backpacking adventures in Ontario Canada
http://jimbondy.webs.com
effexus3@yahoo.com