Wrong turns

Why do people take wrong turns?

I get lost in a literal sense relatively frequently. It isn't an indulgent getting-lost-to-see-what-happens. Being relatively organised in things of this sort there usually is a plan, a map, a destination.  No, I usually get lost in woods.  I make the plan and then circumstances conspire against me, so said hubris.  Rather than backtrack, I have a habit of pushing on.  Again, at the start, I might have told you it's the optimist in me whereas others might mutter foolhardy, pig-headed.  

I visited Cumbria recently.  The Solway Coast is beautiful and I had a morning to kill so I went for a walk. Camping, I had been awake long before the birds.  The night had been far too brief, but I sensibly chose a short walk of not quite six miles on the flat.  I had an attractive map.  I was starting early, plenty of time.  What could go wrong?

For starters, I left my mac in the car.  I hadn't gone far when I realised but decided not to go back.  Some wet weather was forecast but, great good fortune, the rain stayed off.

The walk is actually boring and poorly designed.  It is mostly on country roads and you could be anywhere.  The good bit is the southern stretch, Drumburgh  Moss, a national nature reserve but the walk spiel gives it barely a mention.  Reaching an interpretation board, I realised you could divert to see the moss, a 40 minute detour, which I did not feel inclined to do, apart from which, it wasn't clear where the detour began. 

I plugged on then stopped, seeing something oddly animal-like through the trees.  It was a horse, stuck, standing in green water. Much against my better judgement - and here, note, is a warning - I went to see.  If a horse had been stuck what could I possibly have done?  This  is no hindsight.  I realised it at the time.  Curiosity, though is the devil.  In English, it kills the cat.

But turning a corner, suddenly they appeared and I was transfixed, entranced at the fable-like beauty of them there.  

And then I spotted a gate, no signs, just a gate.  And again, against my better judgment - spot the pattern - I pushed open the gate and followed a faint and muddy grassy path. The path flooded.  

In trainers I was about to turn back when a young man appeared, as they do in stories.  He was pleasant and helpful, as they are and from his wellied vantage point said this was the worst part. Trusting, I pressed on and was indeed rewarded.  The last of the bog cotton:

So you might be forgiven for thinking: Ah, intrepid spirit rewarded.  If only things were so simple.

The walk, on a wooden pathway raised above the bog, was bleak but lovely, not another soul in sight which was unsurprising given the paucity of signage.  I had time to reflect on and process many things.  

There were plants I didn't know. Clockwise: ?lousewort; relatively rare ?European cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccus) and something unidentified.

Much later another gate spat me out derisively on to a signless patch of grass.  I hadn't the faintest idea where I was. But there, miraculously, were the horses.  I like horses and rode for years but generally am not keen on being near groups of large, untethered animals.  It is only their lack of interest or generosity that means I stay alive so I think it wise when they have their space and I have mine. But I had to pass them to return.  I was sorry to disturb them but I needed to get on.  

One horse lay on the ground.  With breath suspended in the ribcage my feet whispered towards them. I know horses sense fear, pretended to myself that all six feet of me was almost invisible.  One animal sidled up, wickedly, too close, far too close. I could leap for the fence, into the bog but it was not likely to go well. I ignored the horse, intensely, felt it pass, turn back towards me and I was trapped.  The prone horse ahead rolled to its feet.  I edged past the group, harassed by the horse behind, trying to keep a slow and steady pace that in no way matched my heartbeat.  Suddenly, ludicrously, from thirty five years back the passage from DH Lawrence's The Rainbow returned vividly: Ursula Brangwen surrounded by stampeding horses in a storm.  One of the real ones, behind snickered in victory and I jumped, precipitously.  Mischievously, it did it again, for fun, and because it could. I started, just as effectively so, encouraged, it did it again. I washed up on the far side of the green strait, feeling like Odysseus between Scylla and Charybdis, nerves in tatters and still at least five miles to go.

But with relief comes nonchalance, we can laugh these things off, grist to the mill and what-have-you.  A slight doubt about the the wisdom of my detour, at this early stage in the walk, peeked around a door in my head but it was still early and I wasn't particularly tired.

A quarter of a mile or so on I misread the map and took a wrong turn towards a house, but that didn't matter else I might have missed the orchids and flag irises.

And then came the mud, up to the ankles with every step. Glooping, sucking, impossible. The tourist map was singularly unhelpful about alternatives but my phone map showed another route.  Within three steps I took the gated path instead, seeing that the two soon joined up.

The new path stepped from a poem: 'The Way Through The Woods'.  All was still well.

... until the path ended, abruptly at a bog.  In fact I saw there was a faint path to the right but it was blocked by cows.  While I might, at a push, sidle past a horse, I give cows a very wide berth. This was where the real mistake happened.  In my perplexity, worry and probably fatigue I misread the map, thought I was following the line of another, path which would also join up to the main one, but was actually just traipsing across a bog.  This was unpleasant, added to which I had seen the tick warning and this area was prime tick-land.  All of us in my family, being adventurous, or led, when young, by an adventure-inclined mother have had tick bites.  All except my ever-prudent husband.  It is something to avoid or you have to see the GP and take two weeks of precautionary antibiotics which require you to shield from the sun, usually when the weather is perfect.  

  

Perhaps I should have believed the pathless evidence of my eyes but I had little choice. Perhaps being loathe to backtrack made me insist to myself that there was a path.  But since there was, in reality, no path and so of course it couldn't join up with the real path, I ended up in another, certainly tick-infested wood where the poisonous foxgloves unnecessarily screamed 'Danger!'

I headed towards a field, bordering the wood, which also contained cows.  I knew the real path could not be far away and it was merely a  - possibly long - process of elimination to find it.  Nevertheless, I began, silently to feel every so slightly depressed.  At this juncture the phone GPS suddenly made a great leap of realisation and moved me not to near the path, as it had been promising, but to the opposite end of the wood. Somehow, this time I believed it.

It was then a small matter of traversing the wood again to reach the path.  Thereafter the rest of the walk was dull, safe, predictable and long.

If I hadn't been alone, I might not have made the mistakes, but then if you don't do things just because you are alone you will miss a lot. 

Curiosity took me on to the bog walkway.  I saw a rare and wonderful habitat and it was a healing.  

An easy mistake took me towards the house, but I saw beautiful things, so why do we call it a mistake? German has the laborious, if accurate Fehltritt mit glücklichem Ausgang.   I hear mistake much more than I hear serendipity, which conveys more the idea of something unexpectedly good at the right time, rather than something good arising from misfortune or error. 

Several things combined to cause the wrong turn into the bog.  Fear (of cows), a mistake in map reading, probably fatigue, an unwillingness to believe the evidence of my eyes, an unwillingness to retreat and a polyannish optimism. These give much on which to reflect, much to compare too, with others' stories of wrong turnings in life. 

More than mistake I like Michael Caine's use the difficulty.  If it is going to be hard, at least make it useful, or learn something from it.