I have been twisted around twice, both times for making assumptions about topography, instead of following my instincts... I had partners both times, and they were very interesting case studies on what happens to the human mind when control is lost.
The first time was in college. Two buddies and I headed into the Northern Ontario bush for the weekend to hunt small game and live off the land (
). We set up a bush camp and then compassed into a little lake... we all had packs with fishing rods, and we were all carrying 10/22's... the original all steel/walnut 10/22's... this was in the late 70's. Coming back in the afternoon we decided to head west to a river that we knew ran North & South and would lead us back to the area of our camp... it should have been a trek of about 1 km to hit the river. I only used my compass to get a general westerly bearing and then followed the lay of the land. After hiking for two kilometers and not hitting the river we were confused, after another kilometer we were thoroughly baffled, and night was approaching. The weather was cool and we had only the clothes on our backs with a spare pair of socks and sweaters in our packs. This is when Chris, completely lost it... he started running full tilt, 50 yards to the right and then charging back 50 yards to the left and he was crying out; "which way do we go, which way do we go!" We tried calming him down and talking him through it, but we could not get him to stop, and he was carrying a loaded gun... so on one of his passes Jim and I jumped on him and disarmed him and then we sat on him and gave him a good slap and talked him through the process... when he regained his senses, he had little recollection of the event, but had some lingering embarrassment. As it turned out, unbeknownst to us, the river made a big wide bend to the west and we were on a line inside that elbow. We made a cold (snuggly) camp that night and hit the river over the next ridge in the morning and had a leisurely, LONG walk out.
The second time was in the late 80's and I got twisted around on my own land while hunting moose with a coworker. This fella (now deceased due to a tragic car accident), was an experienced hunter. We head into the woods following the east ridge, we walked for a couple kilometers into a swamp were I knew there was a cow that was in, or ready to go in to estrous, we called for a couple hours with no luck, so I decided to cross the valley and simply follow the western ridge back out. We walked for what seemed like more than two kilometers, and then came out to a cane swamp, which was baffling because I was certain there was only one cane swamp in the area and that was where we had started from, I gave a shrug and said, let's continue down this ridge... note; neither of us brought a compass, because I knew this land like the "back of my hand..." lol. After walking and walking, what do you suppose we came out to??? You guessed it... a cane swamp. This time I found our tracks, we had made a full circle following the ridge TWICE. I was confused, so we sat down on a rock ledge to do some deciphering. This is when my partner decided to have conversational pep talks with himself, out loud, while clearly being unaware that he was speaking, he though he was thinking... he was saying things like; we are going to be ok, we will find our way out, it is ok if we have to spend a night in the bush, we have rifles so don't worry about the bears (note; there are ALOT of bears in that area). When I spoke to him, he replied to himself like he was just thinking a thought... I said, this west ridge must split off somewhere, to which he replied with a snort; "He thinks, he knows where he is going!" I said let's start out again, but this time we will follow the lower drainage instead of the ridge... to which he replied; "He is just going to go in a full circle again, we are lost." During these dialogues he never made eye contact or acted like it was a conversation. I should note that we were in DEEP timber through all of this episode. on the third attempt at lower elevation and with darkness fast approaching I noticed an unknown saddle that split off the ridge and worked around the mountain back to the swamp... on the first two attempts we had been sucked into the saddle and made a full circle. By the time full darkness fell we were safely out of the bush. My friend had no recollection of the dialogues that had occurred in the bush.
