How to Lose Your Mind in the Forest
A close friend was free. Bingo. We decided to go. I pitched it to him as an adventure in the making. Time to relax in the middle of the…
It had been months, possibly almost a year, that I had been out for an overnight camping trip. Life had gotten too “busy”, but more realistic to say that I had not made it a priority. I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world: the Pacific Northwest. I’m surrounded by magnificent forests, glacier carved valley gorges, volcanic mountains, and a picturesque beach scene, all in under a couple hour radius. Spoiled does not begin to even describe it. Yet, like everyone else, I found myself too busy. Work had been allowed to creep in and overtake my life. Learning the in and outs of newlywed life was a learning curve. Excuses. Excuses. Excuses. The present was a more opportune time to be adventurous and savor the outdoors. Time to go to the forest.
A close friend was free. Bingo. We decided to go. I pitched it to him as an adventure in the making. Time to relax in the middle of the national forest. Entirely off the grid. The jeeps were packed. We were ready to go. Driving in separate cars the entire route was lonesome but I needed relief to what was expected to be a relaxing trip. After four or five hours taking the scenic route and getting to one of the most remote areas in the forest, we parked the cars at the end of a former logging road. The road was entirely overgrown that it began to shrink to the size of a trail.
The beautiful Pacific Northwest
My jeep was a newer model and I didn’t want to risk the pristine paint job, so I parked my car, jumping into my buddies ride. His was a little beat up, and he didn’t mind. We drove for ten minutes. Not much more.
The road was so overgrown that we decided to not risk it and not return in one piece. We parked the car. I wanted to explore, dang it, that’s why we came. The car door opened, I jumped out, and walked about 500 feet before deep mud ruts took over the path. I wasn’t prepared to navigate in the mud, so I turned around, shrugged to my friend, and returned to his car. I was a little disappointed that we weren’t able to explore more, but relished in the fact, we had more trails and roads to explore around the camping site we chose.
Minutes later we returned to my vehicle, ready to set up camp down the road we originally came a two miles back. A primitive site, one that had enough parking for two cars, right next to the creek. There were no other places cars could park or let alone people could camp for miles around it. Perfect set up. We were ready. I went to grab my car key on the car seat, but couldn’t find it.
O no. Where did it go?! I remember locking the car and being paranoid, even though we were in the middle of nowhere, as I got into his car. Could it have fallen out when I got out briefly at the end of the road? There was a ten-foot distance between where my car was parked and where I hopped into my friend’s car. Could I have dropped it there?! We scoured the forest floor in a thirty-foot radius around both jeeps and the distance between. Nearly two hours later and exhausted to the bone, we had lost our minds. I turned on my phone to try for phone service. I had one bar of service under ‘O’, not LTE or 5G. No idea what that means, but assume it is a speed of service thing. I couldn’t surf the internet, but could make calls. Well sorta. After many failed attempts, finally a call made it through to my wife. Thank goodness.
It rang. And rang. And rang. She picked up before the last ring, worried that something was wrong. I explained the predicament to her, unsure of what to do. She did have the only spare key for the car and said she would be off in a couple hours if that was a route we wanted to take. By the time she would’ve gotten to us, it would have been around four hours later, and in pitch black. After weighing the options and looking for another thirty minutes in the forest, we decided to drive all the way back in his ride to get the spare key.
The ride back was filled with defeat. My mind was thinking through the entire scenario. Every square inch of his car was looked over. This was not the trip we had planned. The beautiful winding roads and forest were not a comfort to us. If the forest could taunt us, I believe that was its intent that day.
Five hours later, we are back at the campsite with the spare key. Dusk was beginning to end as night was on the doorstep. What do we do, both of us are thinking. At this point we had spent about eight to nine hours driving crazy, bumpy, and dusty roads altogether. Neither one of us wanted to admit defeat but the mood was dead. Who was going to call it, we both wondered.
After what felt like an eternity (but was in reality five minutes) we decided to both go home. There was no relaxing left to be had. The adventure was over. As I returned to my ride, deep feelings of defeat and disappointment washed over me. Why had I been so reckless?! Attaching my key to me or putting it in a pocket would have been so easy. Thinking of all the areas I could have left it drove my mind insane on the way home.
Two hours. That’s right. Two hours of mind torture the entire way home. I had returned home a failure, unable to relax, covered in self-pity and defeat. What was the takeaway, I challenged myself before I entered my house that night. I needed a win, a reason for it. My mind was spinning out of control, lost on the fact I had lost an expensive chipped key for my new car in the middle of the forest.
I entered my house that evening ready for the fallback from my wife. Opening the door, I put my bags down, and walked into the living room. My wife sat on the couch with one of her best friends, drinking some wind and relaxing with some trash TV watching. She smiled lovingly and welcomed me home. There wasn’t any more wine to share, but they invited me to watch some TV with them.
This. This is all I needed. My mind at ease, I put my mind in park and enjoyed the moment. I didn’t need a trip hours and hours away to find refuge, it was right in front of me. I’ll never know what happened to that key. We searched every square inch of the cars and forest. I can tell you this, after that day I put Bluetooth pagers on all my devices so in case I lost one again, I would be able to find them. Period.