As Yogi Berra said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” I choose to interpret the Hall of Fame catcher and philosopher as meaning to forge on, to boldly go, without hesitation. But when you begin, it does help to have an idea of where you might end up.

In the winter, I lead groups of retirees on desert hikes in Arizona. They do not ask often about the important things—water and footwear and shade. They ask about snakes and getting lost. The snakes are in hibernation, I have never seen one between November and late March. That issue is taken care of easily. But the desert is a new environment, a foreign step outside the front door. The possibility of not finding one’s way back home is troubling.

Ever notice that on the drive to the airport people begin telling stories of the worst airline and traveling fiascos? I try not to do that when talking about hiking while hiking. The word lost is a bit severe. Turned around, confused, and disoriented are more descriptive, and less concerning. A positive attitude is good, but a positive attitude about being prepared is better.

Probably ninety percent of the hikes I embark upon are repeats. There are hikes I have made hundreds of times without any thought of boredom. There is always something new to see. But the route is memorized. There is no need to employ navigation techniques, which makes it essential that when I do try a new hike I follow the tips I am about to relate.

We will get to the tools: apps and maps, compass and contours. But first, I will relate the easiest and most essential tip: turn around. When one is on a new trail, every step forward opens up new views and possibilities. It is exciting. Yet, that very fact means that the ground just passed through is quickly forgotten. One has only seen that ground once. It is essential to stop and look back frequently. The perspective is completely different. Specifically, note landmarks to see what they look like from the backside. Also, notice bends or forks in the trail. Even signs will look altered with an opposite approach.

Recently, I was driving through the Judith Mountains near Lewistown and spotted a little peak I thought would be fun to hike. By myself with no group to watch over, I ran up through sections of woods and meadows with a sense of freedom. At the top, I turned around for the first time. Nothing looked familiar. Had to laugh. But on the descent, which was less than half a mile, deadfall and brush seemed to be pushing me to the right, so I worked back left—and became mired in the forest. I pulled out my phone and dialed up a navigation app. It showed me the road, and I bushwhacked to it. But the app did not know there were two roads. The one I made it to was not the one where I was parked. Easy to figure out… it was full daylight, in a well-traveled place. I was not lost, simply displaced and dumb. Pretty painless way to learn a lesson.

That experience illustrated to me that I had progressed to automatically using technology. That had been a long process, partly from the pain of learning the technology and partly from ego—a guy knows where he is at all times. Yet, tech showed that it cannot always be trusted.

I owe that learning curve to a friend who implicitly believed in the trail apps, and always used them. I have an image of him with his nose to his phone, stumbling around in a huge dry wash with a dozen paths leading out of it, finally pointing out the correct way. He was right. He taught a class in technology and most people in the hiking group began to use the app, including me.


Still, all of us had hiked for decades with paper maps, or nothing at all. So I use the trail app more as a confirmation than a guide. I like and use paper maps for the big picture that a phone screen cannot convey. There is also the image of a compass held over a paper map. I confess that although I carried a compass for years, I rarely used it. There is an advantage to hiking in mountainous terrain. The hills provide landmarks, and direction tends to be obvious. Now the phone apps have a built in compass. The comparisons between map and app make for alertness and concentration.

People seem to treat a sense of direction as an innate thing: you have it or you don’t. Our cities and towns, even farmland, are normally set up on a north-south grid. Some people learn to navigate by street and road signs alone; some add the directions. So, the inclination of direction could be natural. That is also why hiking can be confusing. In more broken country, directions are determined by the contours of hill and stream. The grid is not on the ground, it is imposed by the map. A built in sense of direction is helpful but not mandatory, nor infallible.

Like many things, sense of direction is most noticeable when it is gone. On a trip to New Zealand I was hopeless, even when walking at right angles on city streets. My son, an engineer, explained that being on the bottom of the world was disorienting to whatever internal compass we possess. I had to memorize landmarks and concentrate to get around.

Concentration, intentional or natural, is a good approach. So are landmarks. Maps and apps are exterior systems imposed on the land. Learning the actual ground is the best way to move outside. See the first tip above – turn around. The other aids are man-made signs and constructs—cairns, blazes, even pointing arrows.

When there are signs, put up by the Forest or Park Service, the BLM or the state parks, you feel on track. They are reassuring but sometimes not accurate. Signs are made and placed by those who already know the ground, but they are put there for people who do not. Sign makers should be like teachers (and writers) aware that they are communicating things that others do not yet know about. However, at times just a bare post or the remnants of a fence let you know that you must be on the right path; someone has been here before you.

Formal signs tend to be located in more traveled places. Nice to see but not usually vital. Farther up and out, people resort to blazes and cairns. A cairn is simply a pile of rocks. A blaze is a patch of paint or a bit of bark chipped off a tree. On official long trails, like the Appalachian and the Pacific Crest, little badges are substituted for the blaze. Racecourses are often marked temporarily with colored ribbons tied to bushes and branches.

I once flagged down a ranch woman on a remote dirt road in Wyoming to ask her about a turnoff. She shook her head and told me that I had passed it, and that there was a sign. She sped off in a cloud of dust, grumbling about clueless out-of-staters. I backtracked, found the road and the sign. The sign was lying in a ditch only partially covered with brush. Maybe she threw it there to cut down on traffic.

Cairns are useful waypoints, sometimes artistic creations. They range from one carefully placed stone to elaborate constructs many feet in height and diameter. For me, they are always welcome, providing either instruction or validation. Either I am on the right path or I can veer off and get there. There are people who dislike cairns or any man-made thing in the wilderness. This is too harsh. I can see their point, but the value of the peace of mind of a marker is greater than the marring of the scene.

Some cairns are built for informational or spiritual reasons. They are for the commemoration of an event, or to acknowledge unseen entities. They are called Doubengs in Tibet, Ovoos in Mongolia and, in northern North America, Inikshuks. Their purpose is both historic and ancestral. I would love to encounter one of these.

All of these aids—interior, exterior, technical, and natural, are available to give us a good outdoor experience. We should use a combination of them, become competent and confident. But let’s not lose sight of the reason we are out there in the first place. We are there to enjoy nature, to feel its calm and its grandeur. Have fun, be safe.  

We must go back and find a trail on the ground
back of the forest and mountain on the slow land...
If roads are unconnected we must make a path,
no matter how far it is, or how lowly we arrive.

~ William Stafford