Getting lost in the forest.... it's not hard

Since this blog is mainly focused on my field experiences and outings, I thought I would write about this very humbling experience, that happened to me back in the spring of 2001.
I was at an all time low, concerning my home life and first marriage situation, and really needed to get away for the weekend. In fact, I decided to leave a day early and head for the Adirondacks, after throwing together (hastily) some food and belongings, and my outdoor gear. I took a quick look at a topo map, and decided I would backpack from the Moose River Plains recreation area, and take a foot trail into the depths of the West Canada Wilderness. This would certainly get me away from it all, for a couple days. I was somewhat prepared... gear wise, and wasn't in bad physical shape. Mentally though, I was kind of a mess at that time in my life, due to the stress of a marriage gone bad and an unbearable home life. I can say this with all seriousness... that your mental state should be normal and clear, before deciding to venture into any unfamiliar wilderness, alone. It effects everything you do, including your attitude, common sense, and decision making process.
When I arrived, late that Friday morning, I crammed everything I thought necessary into my large Kelty backpack...accept for the means to spend the night...the first bad decision. I actually thought more of packing my film camera, bulky lenses and minidisc sound recorder.. over a sleeping bag, thermarest mat, and little bivy tent (which I forgot to bring, and left at home)... a terrible decision. I actually thought I could make it back before dark, and be sleeping at a campsite, where my vehicle was parked. I only packed one flashlight, an old headlamp... another bad decision. I packed enough food for a day, but enough water for several...well, only half bad.
I was taught better while out in the field.. training, in my youth.. but didn't seem to heed that knowledge at all, and thought that I would have no problem sleeping anywhere, and would certainly come across a lean-to, to crash, if I really needed to... you know, it was the Adirondacks. I fancied myself as a pretty good outdoorsman, ready for any of it... or so I thought.
I had my trusty Garmin Emap GPS unit with fresh batteries...so, how could I get lost, or go down the wrong path ?
Leaving too late in the morning, was my first mistake. I thought I was going to walk a ways in, and walk back out.. and get out by dark. About seven miles into the hike, I realized I had better turn around, if I was going to make it out by dark. I had a headlamp and a flashlight for backup, but this trail was quite overgrown, being it still the spring and before Memorial Day, and it didn't look like there was much maintenance done at all. The deeper I walked in, the more narrow and hard to navigate, the trail was. The trail markers became harder to spot, and the forest became very thick, with many more mature trees that blotted out the sky.
I could see there was a pond through a clearing in the trees, and decided.. I would walk around it, and do some exploring, grab a quick bite to eat out of the pack, and then head back to the vehicle. The walking was slow and difficult, and I had to stop frequently to drink. It was somewhere on the far side of the pond.. while blazing, that I got turned around. Not only could I not backtrack, but I couldn't even find the damn pond. I must have stomped around for an hour looking for the reference marks I thought I had down pat, until the fear first came over me. I could not get a reading through the forest canopy with the GPS, to head me back toward the waypoint I recorded.. where I started to blaze off the trail, near the clearing. I spent the next hour or two, trying to get a GPS reading (in a bit of a hurry up panic), and find a decent clear spot to do it.. but it just didn't happen. It got thicker and thicker, and harder to navigate through. I was really pissed at myself at that time, and my emotions went from being mad, to feeling sorry for myself.. to the realization that I was losing the daylight behind the trees, and I was ... lost. Yes, me.. lost. It was really hard to admit that to myself, and I wasted a lot of valuable daylight time, not admitting it.
Finally, I dropped my gear in a clear spot near some pines, and started to gather some dry wood. I was going to be spending the night there, and should have accepted that fact, hours ago. I had no sleeping bag, but did have several emergency reflective cheapo blanket packets. I got a poor, smokey fire going, with some kindling, but the larger wood was quite wet, and did not burn at all. I had to keep gathering what smaller dry stuff, I could, and gathered a good pile of it. As darkness set in, the temps dropped. It was a day in the high 60s, but the temps were soon in the 40s, and falling, as it was the Adirondacks. I assessed what I had in my pack, for food and water. Enough water for several days, and enough food for a day. My headlamp crapped out in about 4 hours, and was down to the mag lite. I looked at the map and found my compass, and asked myself.. why I didn't use it sooner, and just walk east, to intersect the trail. I thought, that I might have been doing this, and thought I was.. by memory, and might have walked right by the poorly groomed trail, and maybe in between the trail markers. All kinds of awful thoughts popped into my head that night. Finally, I decided to save the flashlight, and had a little snack and drink, took a pee.. and then unwrapped the thin emergency blanket, and wrapped it around me. I took my pistol, flashlight, GPS, and water bottle, and crawled under the pine with the lowest branches. I said a prayer to God, for the first time in many months, and asked him to guide me out, somehow. If he did, I would do things different, next time out.. and share my experience and mistakes, with others.
During the night, I woke up many times.. only to realize where I was, and relive how a got there. I could hear a pack of coyotes howling and yipping, and it seemed like they were getting closer. My mouth was very dry, and it was really cold now. I guessed it was near freezing, and I could see a few stars though a gap in the pine, looking straight out from my forest floor bed of pine needles. I woke up, to hear something moving around me on the ground, and the hoots of a Great Horned.. that seemed to be mocking me, in my tired and unpleasant state of mind. The movement was an animal, but not something too big. After I didn't hear it anymore, I went back to sleep.. with my hand on the loaded pistol, for that false sense.. of some kind of security.
I awoke to the sounds of birds, with dew dripping down through the trees around me. The pine kept me dry, and probably prevented me (along with the reflective emergency blanket, and my chamois flannel shirt.. from getting hypothermia).
I crawled out, got the fire going, and looked at the map again.. and got a bearing with the compass, to head east - northeast. I felt a little better, but still knew my situation was dire, and that I had to make the right choices today, and stick to the compass heading.. keep moving slow and steady, conserve my food and water, and hope I could intersect the trail, and find it.
I felt like I was walking in circles, and would swear (literally) that I came upon the same trees, and rocks, and small creeks and markers.. I had before in the day, or yesterday. I felt like it was a scene from the Blair Witch Project movie, but nothing was after me.. accept the forest.. would not let me out. A haunting song by a band that I love, took over my thoughts, at this time.. while persisting to blaze through thick pines and dense thicket tangles, at the same compass heading I had promised myself, I would not vary away from :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGT4V6JmINA

Finally, after becoming very discouraged (but not letting myself sink into panic and dispair... like the late afternoon before)... I found a decent sized clearing where I would try the GPS again, and hope the batteries were still ok, after the very cold night. I was smart enough, to keep it inside the blanket, wrapped against my body.
I cryed out, in happiness.. when I got a position reading, right after the Garmin fired up. I had the area topo on the Garmin, and I was still in the area of the pond, and about a half mile east of the trail, and not far from the main intersection of the Northville - Placid main trail. Not more than a half hour of hard hiking later, I had the pond in view, and than came upon what I thought was the trail.. nope, not yet. It turned out to be a game trail, that finally lead me to the narrow foot trail, and I saw a very relieving site.. a trail marker on a tree. God did listen to me, and must have felt it was not my time yet, and gave me the inspiration to walk myself out of.. being .. good and damn lost. It was 2 PM, the next day from the morning I started out. I let out more breaths of relief, mumbling stuff to myself, and ate my last meal.. left, and drank up. It took another six hours to walk out, and back to my waiting vehicle.. just as dusk was settling in, again. Was never so glad.. to see that Ford F-150. I took a nap in the back of the truck, laying on the pad, and in the sleeping bag I didn't bring. I left.. well after dark, and had no bad feeling about going home to the ugly marriage I ran away from.. because I was alive, and unharmed. Just freaked out, and a little scratched up from ducking through briers and thickets, and as sore as I'd been in years, from the long hike.
I never told anyone where I was going, and knew that was dumb, and thought about how long I would have been gone and lost, before my soon to be ex-wife or teenage son, would have reported me missing, and / or someone found my vehicle near the trail head.
Years later, I read an article in Adirondack Life magazine.. about how the area I was in, had swallowed up many a hiker. Some were found, and others were never found. All of them in the "lost hikers" article, did not live to tell the tale I'm telling.. and the others like me, probably held off on telling it, until a moment like now came along.. and they decided to share their experience with others, about what they did wrong, and most important.. what they did right.. to be able to walk out, and not become one of the names in that article.