Hey, Wrig, Someday You Should Ask Me About That Time I Almost Got Us Killed

Alternate Title #1: When Book Burning is Okay
Alternate Title #2: Why We Should Never Hike Without Women

Prologue: What Our Wives Could Have Figured Out The Easy Way
Do not go on a 3.4 mile hike when it is 34 degrees outside.
Do not leave without sufficient cold weather gear (you know, like gloves).
Do not leave without good snack.
Do not leave lunch in the car (seriously, four guys in the group and we leave lunch in the car?)
Do not take the hike in reverse order than the book suggests.
Do not leave before reading everything the book says about the hike.
Do not pick a hike from the book that's already let you down twice.
Do not ignore the only girl in the group, particularly when she is blessed with her mommy's GPS genes.

Let the story begin:

About two minutes into our hike, we hit a fork in the road: one side goes up, the other goes down. Jeff and I think about it for less than a second: why end your hike with an uphill climb? Let's go down now and do the hike in reverse. Yes, indeed. Why end your hike with an uphill climb?

About thirty minutes into this hike, I had this thought, pretty much verbatim: This has got to be the best hike I've ever taken. It's so beautiful - the hills and trees are covered with snow, but the path is in great shape. It's so cold that the mud is frozen solid, so it's not slippery at all. I don't usually like Forest Park because the trails aren't well marked [emphasis added], but this path has been great so far. I can't wait to get home and blog about it.

And for a long time, I remained quite enamored of the hike. It was long, sure, but mostly level. If Wrig hadn't underbreakfasted and I hadn't underpacked our snack, I would have classified it as an easy hike. Yes, for a long time, it was a pretty easy hike.

At one point in our hike, at about the 267th switchback I believe, Wrig points at what looks like a frozen waterfall to me and says, "I think that might be our path." I reply, "No, that's an 'unmarked trail.' It looks steep and 'narrow' and has too many 'twists and turns.'" Jeff chips in: "Let's stay on the Wildwood Trail. It's clear and well marked."

About a mile later (all distances, except for the big ones at the end, are guesstimates), I begin to get a little nervous. We should have hit the Trillium Trail by now. Every time it looks like we're headed in the right direction, we switchback to what feels like the very wrong direction. About half a mile after that, Jeff and I exchange significant glances. I am not alone in my thinking. Unfortunately, we are alone in the middle of Forest Park, a very large place indeed, filled with not very clearly marked paths.

So here's the situation: It's about three in the afternoon on January 4th. It was 34 degrees or so when the hike begin just before noon. Nobody's eaten lunch. We've shared our apple (three ways) and finished off the dozen crackers we've brought. One of us doesn't have gloves. Nobody has snowpants. We have some water, but not much. To my knowledge, nobody has a flashlight or matches. It's going to be dark before long and shortly after that it's going to snow or - worse, rain (at least snow doesn't soak your clothes immediately). We do have a cell phone with intermittent reception, but what are we going to say? "Hi, we're lost ... somewhere ... in the middle of the largest urban park in America. Come get us!" That's didn't seem like a viable rescue strategy.

I was never actually afraid for our lives (that may be a greater reflection of my well honed ignorance than on our actual safety) but I was very afraid of having one of the shittiest hikes ever. Oh, and being late for work on the first day after Winter Break. And, even though Jeff and I did our damnedest to keep it a secret from the kids, I think Wrig at least had some idea.

Exactly(ish) 1.9 miles later, we find a sign that tells us we are, in fact, on the wrong path. It doesn't tell us how far we are from the right path becuase that would break Forest Park's "poorly marked path" rule. In fact, the area that would normally say "You are here" has been totally whited out. What looks to be the shortest, safest route out of the park has also been wiped clean so we don't know if it would actually take us out of the park. By triangulating the map in our hiking book with the map on the sign and our deepest fears and hopes, we decided that the best thing to do was to come back the way we came and "always bear left."

Our first opportunity to bear left? It was at what our beloved hiking books described as an "unmarked trail ... narrow ... with ... many twists and turns." It is the spot that my daugther identified (3.8 miles ago!) as the way home. God, I love that girl. It turns out our hike ended with a quarter mile hike ... um, uphill. It was by far the steepest part of the trail. Why end your hike with an uphill climb indeed.

Our kids are amazing. Five hours. 7.24 miles (according to Jeff's calculations this evening, from the warmth of home). No lunch. Minimal snack. Dumb, dumb Daddies. And yet they survived. They complained, yes, but mostly before we discovered we were lost. They were total troopers on the last 2.25 miles.

So. The book. The book that sends in search of an unmarked path in a forest filled with unmarked paths. The book that has accompanied us on three failed hikes. I'm not sure that today's debacle is entirely the book's fault but, if it's not a badly written book, it surely is a jinx. Wrig and I are understandably very angry at the book. I say burn it. Literally. I want to use it for kindling on our next camping trip. Wrig, who's nicer than me, says recycle it. Christie thinks we should donate it to some other future victim - I mean Goodwill.

What's your opinion?