Everyone is into extreme sports these days.  Even people in iron lungs are wheeling down single-track mountain trails in their custom designed off-road ventilators.  At least that’s the impression I get by looking at outdoor magazines and television shows.

You can’t turn a page or flip the channel without seeing a bunch of people parachuting off the New River Gorge Bridge, then using scuba equipment to run the class 5 rapids underwater.  These adventurers are always festooned with the latest in sophisticated gear, including a high-tech assortment of sponsor logos.

While such stunts are challenging, I dare say that I have been an active participant in what must certainly be the ultimate extreme sport.  In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you, the reader, have also participated.   This sport is incredibly exhilarating, frightening and difficult but is rarely covered by the media.  Of course, I am talking about getting lost.

If you are now snorting in derision, I say that you have never been truly lost.   I am not referring to a simple case of driving around in a notoriously dangerous neighborhood at midnight because you can’t find the expressway and the gas gauge is past empty and the people standing on the corner look at your car as a big clam to be opened and fried on the spot.   This is interesting but I am referring to the “OHMYGOSHWEAREGONNADIE!!”-type of lost.

Right now there are several navigation-based reality television programs based upon the premise of people being lost and winning prizes by being the first to return to a given location, such as network headquarters or Venus.  Two examples would be The Great Race and Women in Thin Cotton Shirts But No Support Garments Sauntering Across The Countryside.  I believe the latter program is on the Fox network.

While these shows play up the drama of participants not knowing exactly where they are located, they capture a mere fraction of the tension generated when a hiker realizes that the sun seems to be setting in the north.   If you doubt this statement, look into your partner’s eyes the instant he announces “I don’t think this is the trail back to the car”.  Don’t look too long or the night screams can last for years.

Being really seriously lost takes monumental miscalculation and lack of preparation.  On the television shows, the people at least know they are going someplace wild.  In real life, you leave the tent for a quick trip to the privy and end up an hour later in triple-canopy rain forest, even though you were originally camped on a shortgrass prairie.  This lack of foresight sets the proper tone for a real adventure, not to mention a case of goosebumps that could migrate to Canada.

As being lost offers such thrills and chills, it is only a matter of time before someone develops a National Getting Lost Championship.  As this sport requires little in terms of fitness or skill, it is perhaps the ideal athletic endeavor for the 21^st century.  On the chance that it might become as popular as street luge or competitive eating, I will offer a few hand-hewn tips that have personally been field tested too many times.

If you want to become very good at getting lost, work to develop a tremendous sense of preoccupation and a strong streak of haste.   This allows you to stumble blindly toward your goal, be it birding or prime fishing spot, then realize that you have no clue as how to return.   Once this realization sets in, panic rears it’s familiar head, causing you to begin hiking back toward the car at speeds approaching 15 miles per hour.  Of course the odds are only one in 1000 that you are walking the correct direction.  There might be only 360 points on the compass but somehow the possibilities expand to infinity whenever lost.  Further scientific study of this phenomenon is long overdue.

The use of darkness is a wonderful technique for getting lost.   As an example, I was recently camping on an island off the Georgia coast with a tent site only about 50 yards into the palmetto scrub from a beach parking lot.

Taking an afternoon hike, I arrived back at the parking lot well past dark and blindly plunged into the brush where I believed the trail began.   A few years later, I eventually found my campsite, but only after scaring another camper to death twice and nearly knocking myself unconscious on a low branch before realizing that tiny Anole lizards scampering across dry palm leaves sound exactly like the locally-abundant rattlesnakes.  In terms of adventure and excitement, this 10-minute ramble was highly successful.

In fact, it was so successful that I am going to retire while at the peak of my game.  Wanna buy some camping gear cheap?

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