AM I LOST?

“I’m not lost,” I kept saying to myself as I trudged across Uncle June’s field here at Gilbert. “I can see the neighbor’s shed. It’s right where it should be, so I’m not lost.”

Mike had a package to mail, so he set out for town on his dirt bike while Nellie and I stayed here. She never knows what to expect when Mike leaves on a motorcycle. He could be right back – or he could be gone for days. She laid down on the driveway to wait in dejection. After hanging the clothes, I invited her to go for a walk. She was glad to be distracted from her moroseness.

 

Down the lane we went, into the gulley and out the other side, then up Plank’s Pitch to the top. Nellie ran across to the neighbor’s pond, and when she rejoined me on the road, I suggested we cut across the CRP to see some new scenery. She liked the idea. (The CRP is the yellowish band between the brown and the green in the photo right.)

I headed south on the CRP on Uncle June’s old homestead. (This is our property, by the way. At no time did we trespass.) When I felt we had gone south far enough I turned west, with the expectation that the farm yard would be pretty much in a direct line from this point. But we came to a ditch, and again I headed south looking for a spot that would be safe to cross.

At that point I looked up and saw three whitetail doe watching us. They watched briefly and then loped in unison to the southwest. We would not see them again. I again took up my search for a crossing and the next time I looked up I spied a coyote some distance away along the same ditch watching me. He eyed me –and I eyed him, but he kept dancing a little farther away, which was reassuring. I finally found a crossing at a low point beyond some trees. Just then Nellie approached clutching a deer leg between her teeth.

“Let’s go home,” I said, and she didn’t need a second invitation. She was gone. I wasn’t worried about her. I knew that in her dog brain she could see herself enjoying her bone on the soft grass under the maple tree in our yard. Once I skirted around the trees, I couldn’t see her any more. Clearly it was every woman and every dog for herself.

My goal was to get up on the ridge that would carry me to the house, and I believed I could see where I needed to be. I could see the neighbor’s shed and thought I was walking parallel to the road, but it troubled me some that the shed seemed to be getting closer. A little sense of panic began to rise in me. There’s something eerie about this field with its bowls and ridges, and my fear wasn’t so much a feeling of being lost as it was of a “you can’t get there from here.” I could see myself wandering around in that field all afternoon, and I wondered if Nellie would ever think it strange if I didn't show up. 

When I came to my senses, I was indeed on the wrong side of the bowl – too far north -- but now I could see our lane and I coped by paralleling it.

 

Nellie, of course, had been home for 15 minutes when I arrived. I thought she would say, “What kept ya?” but she didn’t even look up from her work to do that. KW

[I should always have the camera in my pocket, but it didn't happen today, so I illustrated with recent pictures showing the general topography of the area. In the last picture you can see the top of the maple tree in the yard and the chimney of the house but you have to look for them.]