I’ve always been a believer in the power of long walks to unravel hard problems and to even out sour moods. The problem is – I’m inclined to get lost. One of my favourite walking spots is a small area of forest with the apt name, Sudden Tract. I’m not sure if the name comes from the way that the park suddenly appears on the side of an ordinary stretch of Ontario county road, or if it is more because of the sudden events that seem to take place there. On my first visit there, some years ago, I suddenly became lost in Sudden Tract.
It was a cold, January afternoon. I
was a few weeks into my first sabbatical, casting about for ideas for a
long textbook on the evolution of the brain that I thought I wanted to
write. I went for a drive to liberate some thoughts. There’s
something about slipping along quiet highways with a rush of blurred
colour passing by the windows that always jogs free unexpected ideas
from my murky mental backwaters. On this
occasion, though, I saw the Sudden sign, let loose a squawk of delight,
and took a hard turn into the gravel parking lot. A
single, winding trail led from the lot into the woods, offering just
the right combination of mystery, expectation and promise to lure me
quickly out of my seat and in among the trees. I
wasn’t dressed for the cold, and my sneakers didn’t do well in the deep
snow, but I only planned to stay for a few minutes, just the first few
turns in the trail. I came quickly to a choice point with four criss-crossing pathways. I chose one, continued on for a minute to a crow’s foot intersection and then picked another path at random. The
twists and turns, the interesting bumps and hills, and the perfect mix
of softwood spruce and birch trees pulled me out of myself and made me
lose track completely of time and place. My mind wandered over the hills, around the next corner, and farther afield. I
imagined myself high above the forest, looking down at my path, trying
to imagine where I was in the bigger picture, a dot among the fallow,
snow-covered corn fields of southwestern Ontario. Then my mind flew home, in my basement study, making notes about peculiar arrangements of receptors in insect eyes. The
inevitable conclusion of this nimble mental voyage was the presence of
a flabby, out-of-shape psychologist, standing breathless in the middle
of a perfect quiet winter forest without a clue about where he was or
how he was going to get home. As the sun began
to set and the cloud of frosty breath around my head betrayed the drop
in temperature, I had my first thought that, absurd as it might seem, I
could be in some trouble here. The overcast sky blotted out the sun’s position, giving me very little clue as to direction in the deepening dusk. The woods looked equally inscrutable in all directions. All of that wonderful mystery had now converted to a growing unease and a quickening feeling of anxiety in my guts. In a way, this was crazy. I
knew from faint recollections of maps of the area that this must be a
tiny space, probably no bigger than a large shopping mall. I
knew I’d have to be ineffably stupid to freeze out here, but I sensed a
growing possibility that I’d emerge from the park at some other place
than the parking lot and then I’d have to beg a passing driver for help. What if no-one came by? I could wander the roads for hours trying to find the turn-off where I’d left my car. I
hurried off down the first trail I saw, picking paths through the
labyrinth by trying to guess whether I’d seen each vista before or not. Clinging
to a faint sense of the familiar to make my choices, I made mistake
after mistake, once even turning up in another empty parking lot that
looked so much like the one where I’d left my car that I entertained
fleetingly the idea that the car had been stolen. Eventually,
my remaining stamina, the mathematics of the random walk which always
eventually returns you to where you began, and probably a bit of luck
found me standing at my car door breathless, freezing, and soaked with
sweat. On the humbled drive home, I had found a new topic for my research and for a book. I wanted to know why we get lost.
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