[selamo]

Hello travelers, My most remembered trips were those in which I was getting lost, not in the city or the internet, I mean a real "where the hell am I" places where it take 1-3 days hiking to the nearest populated spot and I'm not sure how to get there...no map, no GPS or compass, no cell phone… It's so happened that I even did it once deliberately (this particular event was a big mistake by the way). So, I decided to ask you for your little or big Getting-Lost stories in order to find out some insight, because besides being scared to some degree I felt good and really excited, a sense very seldom experienced in the "normally framed" life (without bad-chemicals aid). I suspect it's like visiting the "culturally forbidden" side of life, getting out of the "plan-target-program-drive-achieve" frame of Western world having its defined set of meaning for "road, path" concepts, etc., I guess you follow this line if you were experiencing it once. My plan is to gather your stories and with your permission to pass it on to those interested or to put it in my website, or to just keep it as a gift from you. Thanks for joining me to this little trip. Please email me to: selamo@rion.com Best regards, Sela

[Backpacker Joe]

Well I sure don't mean to burst your bubble, or sound at all elitist, but I've never been lost! Guess I plan to damn much as to when and where I'm going. Never just decided to *go* someplace without planning. Mostly because I didn't want to get, uh, lost! Sorry. TB

[christy_E]

We were a group of teens back then.. the days before GPS. There were about 8 girls..and 8 guys. We had this brilliant idea to do a "trans-Sierra" crossing. The girls would start out in Yosemite and the guys would start out in Mammoth. The idea would be to meet in the middle.. switch van keys and continue on. Sounds easy huh? This little trip proved to be much more challenging than our initial thoughts and plans. We never did meet in the middle. And we slightly got of course. But.. we did eventually find the guys sitting and fishing in their nice little camp at Thousand Island lake. We were a few days behind schedule and came strolling into camp with a bunch of bumps, bruises, and one broken arm. The highlight of this trip was the company. A great mix of people. Even had Gene Hackman's daughter Terry with us. It's the little things that I remember.. like skinning dipping out in the middle of no where and.. having Mr. Ranger ride up on a horse or.. all the puking that went on when we had pushed ourselves pretty hard or.. Running into a lone hiker in the boonies.. and trying to seduce him out of an orange he had. (I even remember the little bimbo that won that orange) But lost? We would never admit to ourselves on that trip that we were actually lost.. just a little turned around.. and.. The ridge is just ahead.. ya... we will find the crossing any mile now.

[McPilchuck]

Those who wander in long-lost-wild country are not always lost... McPil

[polarbear]

The first time I was lost: Me and some neighborhood friends ( all of us in early grade school) were in the large woods searching for beer bottles so we could earn our fortune. There were always bottles in the woods left there by hippies who would build small fires and drink beer. We wandered off the trail and started thrashing through stickers, nettles, a real jungle. Finally we reached a stream that ran throught he woods. This was good as we knew it might take us back to civilization. I rember one of us saying that if we rubbed mud on our nettles wounds, it might draw out the itch. It sure was itchy. At one point I remeber seeing a wide open sunny grassland area that I figured was Spokane (honest). Finally we saw the backside of someone's house that we determined was somone we knew. Found! What a feeling!