Lost in the Bush for 30 Minutes

Today, I vacuumed.

Oh, and swept, mopped and un-cluttered the entire lodge from top to bottom, cleaned 4 bathrooms, cleaned my apartment and filled the furnace fire-box with chunks of wood the size of a violin case (the only thing I could think of to compare it to, it took 3 trips with a pick-up filled way above the rim to fill the fire-box up). And dealt with staff drama.

I am not complaining, I would just like to point out that if you want to go to a clean camp, Mini-Yo-We is the place. We even washed the walls in the bathrooms today.

The fall colours are beautiful right now, even though it has been pouring since 3am this morning. On Saturday, because it was my day off, I went for a jog/walk in the afternoon. It was gorgeous! I started to jog the treehouse trail, which I have done before, when I noticed, not for the first time, the sign for another trail branching off from the treehouse trail, "Wild Thing". Cool stuff! I heard it was an advanced mountain-bike trail, so I decided to run it first, before embarrassing myself in front of the 12year old biking freaks.

Everything was fine and dandy, until I realized that the trail was disappearing, with me on it. Instead of turning around, I kept going, because I couldn't see the trail behind me. After bush-whacking for about 5 minutes (I knew the general direction I should go, away from the highway), I found myself at the end of the treehouse trail. Hallelujah!

Then I tried the "Back Woods" trail. Not strenuous at all. Extremely peaceful and gorgeous. I kept walking, even past the place where the "Back to MYW ->" and "Private Property. No hunting or trespassing" signs started to appear. Even worse was when the signs started to disappear. Finally, I decided to turn back, I followed a "Back to MYW ->" sign onto a smaller trail, thinking it was a more direct way back to camp. No.

After 5-10min of following the same zig-zagging trail, I found myself walking alongside someone's house. That gave me a foggy idea of where I was. Not on camp property any more, that was for sure!

The only thing that helped me to know that this was a trail that was actually supposed to be walked on was the orienteering triangles stapled onto random trees (apparently, it's not a biking trail, it's a learn-how-to-read-a-map trail) every 25'. After 30min of being stuck in the bush alone, no cell, no walkie, no flare-gun, I managed to find my way back to Edgewoods. I almost missed dinner!

Moral: When you go out in the forest alone, remember your bread-crumbs and twine.

-Sarah
The person who can get lost twice in 1 day.