(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who swore it never would happen again, but recently it did; he got lost.
(LANGE) If you get L.L. Bean catalogs, you’ve seen unnaturally smiling and impeccably clad folks from away bounding across the snow on little snowshoes. What fun it is! they seem to be saying, to flit like birds over the surface of the snow. But if you know snow, you notice they’re leaping over a surface packed hard as concrete, and would do almost as well without the dinky little snowshoes. If you know snowshoeing, you notice that none of them is even threatening to break a sweat, and not even one of the kids is complaining.
The Saami, the Norse, Iranians, and Siberians devised skis about 4500 years ago. The technology migrated east with the Inuit and other native Americans; but in the New World they used strips of hide and wood to devise what we know as snowshoes. The Europeans stuck with skis, and they’re still beating us at cross-country racing.
I prefer skis, but for safety reasons don’t ski alone in the woods anymore. So a few weeks ago I dug out my Adirondack bearpaws and clomped across the yard to the edge of the unplowed snow. I would follow our property line north, continue straight ahead for half an hour, make a 180-degree turn about 100 yards in diameter, and follow a line parallel to the first, back to the house. It was a foolproof plan.
Fifteen years ago I set off on a similar jaunt that nearly ended in a night in a frozen swamp. The sky turned to oatmeal and my sense of direction to mush. Some lucky guesses got me home by dark. But I swore never again to enter unfamiliar woods under cloudy skies without a compass. Later I added a Bic lighter, a space blanket, and a flashlight. But often I’ve left them behind. As I did this time.
There were deer tracks and beds everywhere. I trudged north, sinking in deeply. After half an hour, bathed in sweat, I swung to the right and headed back toward the house – and came to a stream running north in a place I knew they all flow south.
The most important thing to appreciate in that situation is your assumptions are false and that your head needs to be screwed around before you can make any decisions. Well, I thought, I’ve been trending to the right; so I’ll just turn sharply right till I cross my own track. But twenty minutes later, that hadn’t happened. So I turned tail and followed my winding back track home.
When I was young, I often came out miles from where I’d intended. But I could walk home, even if it took till midnight. Things get dicier when you’re older, and it makes sense to begin taking things you might need to spend the night out, if you have to. The greatest danger is the feeling, "This is a piece of cake. What possibly could go wrong?"
The compass, space blanket, and Bic lighter are by the door again.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier (I think), and I gotta get back to work.