Lost & Found

It is hard to get lost on the Sycamore Greenway. A single, flat, paved trail wends its way from Grant Wood Elementary to Kickers Soccer Park with just a few branches leading to nearby neighborhoods. If you wander off the paved trail towards the wetlands, it still isn't difficult to make your way back to civilization.

Hickory Hill on the other hand....

Perhaps it is just me, but just about every time I visit there is a point at which I am bewildered and turned around. At first, I printed a map and carried it folded in my pocket, checking each branch to make sure I knew where I was headed. Inevitably, though, I would forget the map and think I knew the trails well enough to get by.

Nope. I am usually fine in the southern section of the park, but as soon as I head north of the dam I inevitably take a turn and end up in unfamiliar territory. Without a map, I am lost. I have resigned myself to it, and now simply make sure I have an extra hour or two for wandering until I find my way back to a landmark that can direct me out. It is exhausting, and exhilarating. How often do you have the opportunity to get utterly turned around in a beautiful wilderness (or as close to wilderness as you can find, confined on all sides by the city)?

On this occasion, I was playing a game of taking a photo every 100 steps (having resigned myself in advance to getting lost, so it wasn't terribly upsetting when wandered past the Conklin Street entrance after thinking I was a ways east of there). It was challenging in many spots, having walked past brightly colored leaves or interesting tree trunks, only to end up on my 100th step in a gloomy, weedy patch with nothing of interest. I often fell back on my friends the smartweeds when I could find nothing else worth shooting; their cheery, bright pink inflorescences popping up along the trail throughout the park.

Birds chattered teasingly near, just out of sight: cardinals, chickadees, a variety of woodpeckers, robins. A cluster of sparrows burst out of a grassy tussock like grasshoppers as I passed, taking cover in a nearby thicket. A weedy, quavering rendition of their normal song emanated from the underbrush; I imagine it being a young, insecure sparrow just trying out his voice in preparation for pitching some woo at the ladies next spring.

At one point, on step 46 of my assigned 100, I look up to find a deer nonchalantly browsing on the trail directly in front of me. She eyed me as I fumbled with the camera (after a brief internal struggle with my overzealous conscience telling me I had to finish the required steps) and continued on her way as I continued on mine.

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