While I learned this lesson in a very practical way in the woods, the concept applies in life, business, and in the backcountry.
My recent trip to the Queen Elizabeth Wildlands really brought home a concept taught early on in any formal survival or wilderness education program. When you find yourself lost. S.T.O.P!
- Literally Stop!
- Think about your situation
- Observe your surroundings
- Make a Plan!
When something doesn’t look right and doesn’t feel right, it’s probably a good time to pause, level set, and figure out what the hell you’re doing. There’s no use aimlessly heading in a direction you’re totally unsure of especially when there is a true risk of becoming lost.
Saturday was rainy so we decided to take a hike and try to circumnavigate the “T” shaped lake in the middle of the image below. The QEW is mostly a wetland, so we invariably encountered obstacles that required us to push the waterproofing of our gear to the max or find a way around. The hike started at base came (the northernmost point of the path below) and we almost made it to the far east end of the lake before we hit an impassable obstacle and decided to turn around.
Now, we’d encountered some mighty unpleasant terrain getting to the east side, so we decided to take an easier path to get back. But, being a wetland, the easier path presented additional challenges which forced us to make a number of corrections. For one, our map did not shot the small lake just south of the “T” lake which we quickly encountered, and it did not show in detail how much marsh we would encounter.
We knew for a good bit of time that we were not completely certain where we were going but we were completely confident that we were heading in the direction of camp (all while traveling south west to our camp in the north!). This continued until we hit a 50-75 foot stretch of swamp that was easily knee deep right at the southernmost point of the trail in the image.
We were certain that camp was straight across this marsh and that crossing it was the right thing to do. It was rainy, cold, and going down to near freezing at night. There was little chance we’d be drying out all our gear if we got soaked and for me personally i would have been hiking back to the truck after making a river crossing.
So we stopped, figured out where on the map we were. determined we needed to travel north, stared straight at the marsh, pointed the compass right at it. Then something strange happened, the compass needle pointed straight back at us. Despite our confidence, we were traveling in the opposite direction we needed to, about to get soaked crossing a marsh that would only take us further away from camp.
A quick 180 and we were back in no time. But our day (mine for sure) was saved by Stopping, Thinking, Observing and making a Plan.