Ruhiyyih and I went for a long walk through the woods yesterday - a walk much longer than we had planned...we got lost!
Point Defiance Park is an old growth forest on Puget Sound, right here in Tacoma. I walk through the trails here at least three times a week, but I stay close to the road. It is easy to get lost on all the little trails, as they all interconnect.
Now, if you have to get lost in a beautiful forest, this is the one! As you can see from the photo, the trails are wide, soft with pine needles and leaves, and it invites a journey. George gets lost here all the time when he is running or bird-watching, and he loves it. But, Ruhiyyih had to go to late afternoon services at her church, and we had our Baha'i Friends coming over for the study circle at 5:00. We were loosing time, and it was getting dark.
So we short-cutted through the woods over to the road, and followed it. We must have walked a circle taking that shortcut, or gotten over onto a fork in the road, because the road became miles! We watched a storm roll in off the water, blowing the top branches of the cedars, and the sky turned very dismal. Pretty soon we picked up our step, a little apprehensive about the weather. Cars drove along the road with their headlights on, and a few runners passed us by. We just kept walking - we knew the road would take us back to our car, as it was only a one way route.
We watched a deer, and I almost petted a big black lop-eared rabbit that obviously was tame, someone's discarded pet. (We even watched a herd of caribou, about 8 of them, with big antlers - they were by the zoo boundary). So, it felt like lions, tigers, and bears, oh my, and getting dark, and will my car get towed, and my purse is in the car, and what will we do.... we finally considered called George, to let him know we were lost, couldn't find the car. We'd walked about three and a half miles, and no end in sight. Just as we were thinking about doing that, we rounded a bend, and...... there....... was.......my............... car! We just laughed so hard, more from relief than from our foolishness.
