Leaving the Trail

I've run, hiked and photographed the woods at Hofma preserve enough to know its trails like a good friend. But I discovered a small trail I had not seen before and decided to make it the direction of today's run. Marked by trampled leaves, the cold trail wove between slender and bare trees through a hole in a fence and quickly merged into a wider double trail, the kind made by tire tracks. Pine forests lined either side of the sandy, needled floor and I turned left, off the trail and into the thick of the trees. I criss-crossed two trails and took one of them. Pine needles turned to sand, which turned to deep leaves, under which lay sticks, ready to twist underfoot and snap me in the shin. Before long,
the trail grew thinner and less distinguishable until it vanished before my eyes, leaving me in the quiet. The snow began to fall.

I can remember many times that I have decided to leave the trail and explore. One such time, Jono, my brother and I were hiking in the sierras and decided to traverse a fifteen hundred foot snow covered cliff with backpacks and rope. After a couple hours, we "made it" across, only to find that we still had a long way to go before we were where we wanted to be*.

Leaving the trail means not being able to answer normal questions. How will we get to where we want to go? How far have we hiked? How high up are we? Which way did we take? Where is the trail from here? Where are we on the map? We can't precisely answer questions for the same reason we decided to go off the trail in the first place. When we don't know which way we're going, our immediate surroundings become vivid and clear. When our feet are not on a trail, we watch every step closely.

I jumped a couple logs, ran around a fence and found myself in a familiar place on the trail and continued my run. Turning back in the direction of my car, the icy wind whipped fallen snow on my warm cheeks and nose. Life is full of little adventures and we are never alone.



*We finally found a place to camp. In the middle of the night my brother and I woke up, eyes stinging like we had rubbed soap in them. The next day, Jono had to lead us down the mountain, blind. Apparently when your retinas are exposed to that much sunlight, they burn.