On Sunday I did it again. I got lost.

We go to Fiske Pond, in adjoining Wendell, one of our favorite walks. As soon as I park the car and open the door, the dogs rush madly out and race to a small meadow past the sign that asks for dogs to be leashed. They know where we’re going, the trail that loops around the beautiful pond, with its crossable beaver dams and encircling woods; it takes about an hour to walk—as long as I stay on the trail.

But every once in a while, I decide to leave the trail and explore other, crisscrossing paths. Every single time I do that, I get lost.

I have learned to be very careful. Since there are almost no signs, I memorize landmarks and turns. This time I decide to follow a trail that meanders west and to always stay to my left. Don’t turn right, don’t turn left, stay on the trail and when it veers, veer left. That way, when you turn to go back, don’t turn right, don’t turn left, stay on the trail and veer right, and you can’t miss the way back.

I miss it once again.

Mind goes: *$%!*#%&! I did it again. I have to get back. I have to fix the garage door that won’t close (which means dogs can run out front), take Lori shopping, make split green pea soup for the week as well as dinner, prepare for my class on aging (part of a series I facilitate for Zen Peacemakers), write, and finish everything by 7 pm so that I could settle down this (Sunday) evening and stream a movie.

Instead, I’m lost, again and again. I seem to find something irresistible about leaving the beautiful pond loop trail, with its overhangs and benches looking across the water, and trying something else, something new. Traipsing into not-knowing—knowingly.

Not everybody does this. I run into folks going round and round that pond loop trail weekend after weekend. And why not? Why step off a trail that perimeters a small lake dotted by ducks and occasional herons, sunlight shimmering on the surface? So much to see, so much to closely examine.

But that’s what I do. I withdraw into the dense woods, knowing full well that I risk being plunged into uncertainty. I formulate new guidelines for how not to get lost this time, commit to memory how a spruce tree bends in an odd angle, pink moss at the side of a gully, a certain formation of old rocks. This time, this time, I’m sure I’ll find my way back.

I never do. An hour later I stand at the side of a surprising pool and wonder how we got here and what to do about it.

If that’s not bad enough, we wander and wander, Aussie thrilled at getting lost (see photo), till I espy a house in the very distance, and behind it, a road. Now I know where we are, and if I continue with the dogs to the road, put them on leash, and walk on it till the curve, go left and then, after a while, another left, and a third left after that, we’ll get to the car.

But I turn into Huckleberry Finn: Ugghh, civilization! Instead, I turn back and whistle to them. Following a road with houses on both sides and cars, feels like cheating. I need to go back into the jumble of maples and beech, moss and marsh, the hoot of a daytime owl and the cacophony of limbs torn down by the sharp, determined incisors of beavers. It’s from there that I want to find my way, not from street grids or roads.

Years ago, Bernie would be astonished by my sense of direction. “You could put Eve anywhere on the surface of Mars and she’ll find her way to the spaceship,” he’d tell people. He said it was almost supernatural.

No longer. In a way, I’m glad. Who needs to always find the way back? And, by the way, where is back?

Sometime during that long morning, I remembered words by the philosopher Noam Chomsky: The world is a very mysterious and confusing place; if you are not willing to get confused, you become a replica of someone else’s mind.