Lost in the woods

Can a woodsman actually get lost? Sounds like a simple question, but it isn't. It's a matter of perspective, but the seasoned woodsman is always at home in the woods. He may not know exactly where he is, or which way he needs to go, but he is comfortable enough being where he is that he is not really lost. He is in the woods. The same thing probably holds true for the sailor, or at least some. Again like the woodsman, the sailor is at home on the sea, and like the woodsman, he knows the signs and features that guide him.

To understand this, take it in another direction. Leon Russell has a song named "Out in the Woods." In a recording of a live performance he tells the audience the source of the chorus words, which as best as I can spell them phonetically are "dola koo tanga, dola koo tada." How an Oklahoma rocker met a Zulu would a be story in itself, but he said he did and as he was looking for words for the song he asked the man what were the words in Zulu for "lost in the woods." As Russell put it, the man looked puzzled for a moment and then said, "Zulus don't get lost in the woods. There are no words for that." In the ensuing conversation they decided on those words above which translated from the Zulu words mean "a man gone crazy." That was the best they could come up with as a metaphor for lost in the woods.

Think about this. Can you get lost in your own house, over even your yard? Most likely not. It has to do with comfort zone and knowledge. A woodsman might not recognize where he is at the moment. But he knows he is in the woods and most likely how he got there and where he needs to go if he needs to go anywhere.

Here's what one skookum Alaskan did in that circumstance. I have been talking about woodsmen, that's generic and not meant to exclude woman. This happened to a woman. During the Iditarod race she was moving along the south coast of the Seward Peninsula, which is the last 150 or so miles before Nome. Sometimes on that coast there are very few landmarks to position yourself. At one point she realized she had missed the trail and been going for some time in a wrong direction. Now, is that lost? She knew she had done it and she knew she had to get back to the trail. What did she do? I love this phrase and have used it a time or two when it fits. "I sat down and wrote it out in the snow." What she did is stop and with a finger retraced her movements drawing in the snow, where she had taken turns, that sort of thing, and eventually she figured out what she had to do and in short order found the correct trail. That's not lost, that's simply not being where you want to be at the moment. Even for someone like me who has never run that race, I know in that area the ocean is to the south of me and mountains are to the north. And to get to Nome I want the ocean on my left and the mountains on my right. That gets you heading west. You are either going to hit Nome, or if the ice is right, Kamchatka.

Obviously there is no definitive answer to the question. At the point of feeling lost, it is not time to panic, it is time to "sit down and write it out in the snow."

Stranger in a strange land: Recalling Leon Russell