That time I got lost in the woods...

At the start of this week I decided to start writing a short story. I discovered Reedsy (not sponsored) does a weekly short story contest. It's about $5 to enter, and they offer prompts. I'm not going to enter, but I thought it would be excellent writing practice to write a short story for this blog!

Ideally, I'd like to finish this story by the end of a week. However... My mind and fingers can't seem to connect. My mind is firing all sorts of ideas, but my fingers can't keep up. Am I the only one who does this?

I'm stuck in a loop of starting to type, deleting the idea because another idea has come up, and repeating. Then, I attempted to keep all ideas. I wanted to try and choose one that would work well... then, I hated them all. Writing is difficult, but I already knew that. If it were simple, more people would be writing and publishing. I'd already be published and on my fourth or fifth book!

Creating anything is a hard task, so why do people think it's easy? It takes so long to come up with ideas and execute them. I'm constantly struggling with my mind on creative decisions.

The Prompts...

This week's prompts are:

• Write a story that includes (or is inspired by) the phrase "Out of the woods.”

• Center your story around a character discovering a hidden door or path.

• Write a story from the POV of someone (or something) living in a forest.

• Center your story around a mysterious forest fire, disappearance, or other strange event.

• Write a story in which someone gets lost in the woods.

Looking over the prompts and pondering them, fragmented memories start to pool back into my mind after reading the quote, "Write a story in which someone gets lost in the woods."

I used to live in the northern woods of Canada. It was a small dusty town near a lake that translated to "muddy waters" or something like that. The whole town had only one convenience store and a single school located next to a major highway that ran through it. The population was so small the school had to combine its grades because of its lack of students.

I'm in grade 4 or 5 at this point; our teacher, being a Boy Scout-leader type, takes on the responsibility to teach us how to navigate the woods. In this little town of muddy waters, trees go on for miles, and the incentive to learn about navigation becomes appealing to every parent. They agree to let us go on a hike in the woods.

With our parents' permission, our teacher declares to the class that he will lead us all into the woods, separate us into groups, hand out compasses, and direct us to find our extraction point. In preparation for the hot day ahead, he has us sew together neck coolers, a type of neck bandana filled with some sort of jelly crystals. Everyone is hyped.

On hike day I'm grouped with my friends. The morning sun shines through the trees, but the woods look dark and ominous. Everyone is decked out in "hiking" gear, hats, backpacks filled with food, water, and first aid, our homemade neck coolers hanging around our necks, and a map our teacher made specifically for the hike. After we all receive our compasses, we head out.

We begin by walking along a path following pylons away from the school and explore the map as a class. The woods are thick and thriving with beauty. You can hear the birds chirping and smell the pine trees. The whistling wind carries with it the scent of a lake not too far away. With every step you take, you can hear how hollow the earth sounds underneath a bed of dead leaves. I can understand how easily someone could become lost.

Soon the teacher calls out to each group as we make our way back through the landmarks. Every group has a designated landmark. He tells everyone to find their way back to the pylon path from whence we started, and my nerves start to tingle.

This is it, I think, and I look to my friends. All of us have that same nervous look on our faces. When we reach our landmark, the look intensifies. We watch the rest of our classmates disappear into the foliage, and then we're on our own.

After some nervous chatter, we look around our surroundings. We're close to a water point located on top of a pile of large smooth rocks. When we look out over the vastness of the land, we notice a sizable lake, easy enough to mistake for a mountain from this distance. It is one of the many lakes of the north.

"Okay, we got this," we all agree. We pull out our compasses and start the hike back toward the pylon path. For the first half hour of our journey, everything seems to go well. The sun is past the noon mark, and the only clouds in the sky resemble soft pillowy marshmallows. It's the kind of day you want to spend at the beach.

When it's time to eat, I remember being excited to drink my orange soda that I took the time to freeze the night before. The cool liquid is welcoming against the heat of the sun. The fun part of our journey is sharing the moment with friends and chatting about our interests. We're laughing and tumbling about in the woods with as much care as children could give. Then, when our surroundings start to look a little too familiar, the questions arise.

"Is that moose poop?" One friend inquires.

Another one chimes in, "I've seen that already!"

And another adds, "Are we going in circles?"

That nervous tingle returns.

It quickly becomes apparent that we are travelling in circles. One friend begins to panic, but another calms them. I'm watching from the side and scanning the woods. We all refer to our compasses, but for some reason they're not making any sense.

"Did you guys pay any attention in class? How do we read these things?" My small group of friends stare at our compasses. Another realization hits. Some of the compasses are giving us different readings.

"What do we do?" the panicky friend exclaims. She's holding onto herself and looking around as if at any moment a bear will jump out at us. Everyone is getting nervous, but we all decide to try and backtrack toward our starting point.

It takes us some time; the sun is beating down on us, but we've returned to our starting point. The neck coolers prove to be beneficial in our current situation, and they give us comfort from the humidity. I think about all of our other classmates and wonder if their compasses are working properly. Are we the only ones with a defective product?

"One of these things has to be right," says my highly assertive friend. People sometimes mistake her as mean, and sometimes she is, but right now, we welcome it because her confidence raises ours.

"We can't just choose one! What if we end up lost forever? We'll end up in one of those survival movies Teach shows us, only we'll be dead." Our imaginative friend is the youngest of the group and the most talkative.

"Shut up, you're scaring me!" whines my panicky friend. She continues to hold her arms, shaking. Seeing her so nervous makes me feel like we're not getting out of the woods, and all of the what-if questions start running through my head.

"No, we can do this. We can find our way back. We just need to follow this map." My calm friend brings her map up to her face and studies it. "You see? If we can follow this path here, we can find an abandoned house. We will find a creek nearby, and we can wet these neck coolers."

We stare down at our maps and then back again at our compasses. We must've been in the woods for half a day by now. As the sun gets hotter and hotter, it becomes increasingly harder to keep cool. All of the ice in my soda has melted, and our neck coolers are drying out. It's a decent enough idea.

"Let's make lots of noise," someone suggests. "If there are any animals around, we'll scare them away, and if our class is close, maybe they'll hear us."

"Guys, I'm scared. There's moose poop here. What if we run into a moose?"

I look over at my panicked friend, and her eyes are wide. Her whole body shakes. My reliable friend, the pillar of calm, and the one who is always there for you wraps her arms around my panicked friend. The shaking stops. "We're going to be fine. Let's just follow this path. It's fine, really!" she says in her most soothing voice.

We decide it's a good idea, even if it isn't, to walk down a specific path. In actuality, the paths in the woods are nothing more than spaces with enough room to walk. Animals could've easily made these paths on their way to find water, but we aren't thinking about that. With sticks we've picked up along our travels, we attempt to make noise as we call out. Someone starts marking up the trees, and another one builds little rock towers to help with navigation. If anyone is looking for us, they'll be able to follow our markings, at least.

It's a long trek, and the sun is high in the sky. I estimate it's somewhere past school hours, but we keep moving, never knowing if we're trekking further into the woods or back to safety.

"Look! It's a landmark! Let's check the compasses."

 We've been checking our compasses against the map in a feeble attempt to find out if any of them are correct.

"This one! If we head this way, I think we can reach the landmark closest to the path!"

Everyone is excited. For once things are looking up, and in response, the sun seems to brighten up the forest a little bit.

"We're getting out!" and everyone fills the gentle silence around us with shouts of glee. We start following the compass with hopeful anticipation. Fatigue is starting to overcome us. Judging by the golden glow of the sun, it's getting closer to dinner time, and we are hungry.

"We're getting out," I repeat in a whisper. The hope of seeing my home again fills my head. A soft warm bed and food on the table wait for me. I'm filled with the strength to keep going.

I imagine our classmates as we make our way following the compass. Are they looking for us? Did they make it out safely? As I'm questioning these things, I also imagine hearing our teacher call out our names, and there is a rustle of noise next to us. Only, it's not my imagination. I hear them. I see them. Everyone from our class is waiting along the pylon path. We had made it.

We tumble out of the woods onto the pylon path and join our class; the teacher looks relieved, and our classmates are cheering us on. We were the last to make it out of the woods and the only ones to have defective compasses. We learned a valuable lesson that day. Pay more attention in class. Nah, I'm kidding. That might have been part of the lesson, but I think we learned more about ourselves. We learned that the woods are far bigger than us, and if we neglect to respect them, then it can easily swallow us up.

Well, that about sums up this week. This particular post took longer to write. Reminiscing about the past was hard, and turning the images in my head into words was even harder. It was fun practising turning a memory into a narrative, but did I ever struggle. I'm looking forward to the day when writing gets easier.

Tune in next week when this memory turns into a fictionalized story. Eep… will I make the deadline?