WHAT'S YOUR COMPASS?

This past season was a rough one for me.  Lame dog, bad weather, the list goes on.  I was even AWOL from the blog.  Then, I finally realized that I had simply lost my way for a while.  Frustrating as losing one's way is, it is easily corrected--provided one is willing to accept the fact that mistakes were made.


I was reminded of a short hike.


On a fair spring day not terribly long ago, the dog and I took a hike to visit a swamp that I had not seen  for about three decades.  After marking the truck with my little GPS, we started out. As we entered the woods, I checked to make sure the GPS was tracking our direction walk.  It was.

The forest looked different--often not a bad thing--after all, life goes on. I made my way more than a half mile under the dark overgrown canopy of overly mature hemlocks and found the swamp. It was still about 15 acres in size, surrounded by a mix of conifers and bushes.  The stagnant water was too shallow to swim and too deep for walking.  Cat tails, grasses and shrubs  were scattered throughout.   Coarse, stick-built Heron nests rode high in dead trees that rose from the primeval waters. The sight  made me think of Pterodactyls.  (Google Earth reveals 4 to 5  active nests in June 2018.)

Just to confirm my "bearings" for the way back, I pulled out my GPS.  It said the truck was about 3/4 of a mile due east.  I knew better!  Why was the GPS was giving me a bad reading!  Tree canopy perhaps?  Had I entered the location of the truck correctly?

The forest that held the swamp was surrounded by roads.  So, I was pretty confident that I'd be able to come out on a highway.  Trusting my "gut" and not the GPS, I started back the way I came in.  Soon, I came to a field that had heavy equipment in it.  Now I knew that the only field with heavy equipment was  to the south, and  I just couldn't be there because I knew that I was going east!  So I checked the GPS again.  It said I was farther from the truck which was now northeast of me.  I considered the possibility of some sort of phase shift in the earth's magnetic field that may have affected me, but the simple truth was that I was off-course and had not paid attention.  I should not have ignored the proven practice of carrying a compass along with the GPS.

I guess that's where we all get off-course at one time or another, by ignoring simple things and not relying on established truths.

In the beginning...
That's where most of life's errors are made aren't they?  

What's your "compass"?