𝐒𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞. | ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ ᴏɴᴇsʜᴏᴛs

𝐈 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐥𝐝. 𝐈'𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭.

I Got Lost In The Woods When I Was Nine Years Old. I'm Not Sure I Ever Left.

"Don't go playing in those woods alone."

That was my mother's advice any time I brought up doing something in the forest behind our house.

"There are things out far too scary for young boys like you."

She was right, of course. A nine year old child has no business running around the woods alone. Obviously, a nine year old child wouldn't understand that either.

There is nothing important to tell you about my life until that point, certainly not relevant to what would happen. My mother did the best she could. So, I'll stick to the part relevant to understanding the woods.

My family moved often for the first few years of my life. Something to do with my father's job, when that still mattered. Once that was no longer a factor, we needed somewhere affordable to settle down. The run-down house just on the edge of the middle of nowhere, along no desirable commute paths, was perfect. It was an affordable house, back when that was still a thing.

You can imagine those woods were a recipe for adventure for any young boy. At least, any young boy who'd never had the money to take electronic fun. My mother, sensibly, discouraged me from going in alone. There was far too much potential for me to be left lying hurt and alone in the woods, or to just get lost. It wasn't a colossal forest, but more than enough for a nine year old to get in trouble in.

Maybe it wouldn't have been a problem, and maybe none of this would have ever happened if I'd had more of a friend group. But that wasn't to be, I'd been moved around too many times and I think slipped a little bit too far in my own head. I always fit in poorly, the far out house no one wanted to visit sealed the deal.

Which is to say, it was a done deal that I was destined to be one of the great childhood explorers, finding burrows, creeks, and cliffs (holes left by upturned trees, if you must be pedantic) everywhere and christening them in the childhood manner. Little Creek, Big Creek, Far Out Cliff. I'll admit I was not a creative name-giver, but not for lack of spirit.

I did mostly follow my mother's advice though. The fields around the house were less scary anyway. So for a while, I explored those and only dipped into the fringes of the forest.

It wouldn't last. In time, I grew bored of the same fields. I needed new ground to discover. I needed to fill in the blanks on the useless child's "maps" I had drawn.

I needed the woods.

And so, I began to dip deeper and deeper in on each journey until one day I decided to break from my fears and go all in. I would set out with the formal intention to explore the forest.

Childhood logic prevailing, I brought the gear I thought explorers should have. A compass that I had no real idea how to use and a small Swiss Army knife. Confident that this level of preparation would keep me safe, I headed out.

The basic feel of the woods was nothing new to me. It was a fairly level pine forest. I know now that it was mostly cleared ground let to regrow out from just a few patches of actually old woods. As such, the ground was easy to traverse, with only a scattering of gorges and ponds where nature slowly began to properly reclaim the land over the decades.

So I went in like the little explorer I'd become. It was fun for a while. I tried to be sensible and left behind markers to help me find my way back. I think a few of them could have actually worked even. Most of them were made with a child's logic. I could totally see that one stick standing up when lost in the forest, or so a nine year old me would have insisted.