My Suburban Escapes

“When light is in your heart,
You will find your way home.”

Rumi

It’s hard to admit, but I got lost hiking the Appalachian Trail one recent dreary day. It finally happened. I broke every cardinal rule, didn’t follow my own advice, and brought my hiking partner down to the lowest common denominator of friendship by stranding her on a mountaintop for 4 hours after an early winter sunset (HARD STOP!)

My only excuse – my reason more appropriately – is that I was distracted. It was the day of the absentee ballot count for the city council campaign which had been stalled for two weeks. 168 fortune cookies were being opened at City Hall in White Plains which would dictate my immediate future. I declined attendance, sticking to my plan of completing the last section of the New York AT, Section 13 on the NY/NJ border by Warwick. I’d been working on that goal for a year and was dead set on getting ‘er done before winter set in. But ambition without integrity is a dangerous thing. I planned our trip in haste and underestimated how long it would take. Rather than a straight path, this one took us up and over and down huge boulders and hills.  We were happily gabbing the whole strenuous way as usual, receiving text updates on the ballot count. When the race was finally called after noon, I had lost. We added this news to our repertoire of hiking chatter, made a fun concession speech on the mountain top then stopped for a late lunch where I looked at my watch for the first time. I realized there was no way in hell we were going to make it to our end point by 4:36pm sunset. I knew the distance to our takeout car from the “find my car” app thing, but the section I had mapped out and planned didn’t end where we had left the car. In the last dying rays of light, we had to hatch a plan.

I had packed no extra water or food, no warm clothing, no flashlight and no battery charger.

I had 5% left on my cell phone battery.  I had not “filed a hiking plan” (told anyone where I was going and when I should be back) or made a backup plan for the care and carpooling of my child. Rather I had lickety split without thought and with my husband out of town.  My hiking pal Lizanne had planned better, thank God, and had brought her hiking stick, cell phone charger and a cool disposition. We decided to backtrack to a feeder trail intersecting the AT about a half mile back, assuming it would be the quickest way out. We charged our phones then used our i-phone flashlights to slowly hike out. We stuck to our plan, even when we could see neighborhood lights seemingly nearby. It was endless and exhausting since we had already covered 10 miles that day. We shared our predicament with Lizanne’s husband and texted him our GPS coordinates. We knew that we had veered into Abraham Hewitt State Forest but weren’t sure if and where we would dump out. He confirmed we would eventually, but we had no idea the trail would take us up an elevation of 951 feet, up and down a mountain on the edge of the aptly named Surprise Lake. We traversed boulders and sloshed through Cooley Brook for 4 hours in the pitch black, finally dumping out miles from our car on a deserted black highway on the NY/NJ border by Greenwood Lake Marina. Then began the next chapter of finding a ride to our car. I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say it involved a ride from a very kind New Jersey State Trooper. And Lizanne still likes me.

We knew the worst-case scenario would be breaking an ankle or sleeping in the woods. It wasn’t dangerously cold, and the waxing moon shone brightly. We moved slowly with intention in our little circle of light while I tried to remember “Sleeping in the Forest” by Mary Oliver:

“I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.”

I was darn happy to fall into my own bed many hours later. In short, I lost (a campaign) then got lost – all in a day’s work.  Double Loser. But Hey Ho when it rains it pours. And in both cases that which didn’t kill me made me stronger. The Gentle State Trooper was surprised we had lasted so long in the dark, sharing that lost hikers usually call emergency services within 30 minutes of sunset. And that, yes, there were indeed bears in the area. The first news made us feel better.  

The moral of my story is ALWAYS be prepared. Those Boy Scouts know their motto. I had brought everything I needed…in my car. Pack your gear even if you don’t need it. Make it an unnecessary habit, like smoking. Don’t use your cell phone for anything other than navigation and pics.  And bring a walking stick if for nothing more than fending off imaginary bears. We later found out that November 17 was National Take a Hike Day, “a day for people to get together to walk through forests, parks, riversides and mountains in order to commune with nature and to bond with their fellow hikers.”  I guess we were just doing our patriotic duty.