The smell of damp pine needles always takes me…

The smell of damp pine needles always takes me back to that October afternoon in the Cascade foothills. I was twenty-two, working a seasonal gig for the park service, and convinced I knew the trails well enough to ignore my failing headlamp.

The mist had rolled in fast around four o’clock, swallowing the peaks and turning the Douglas firs into towering shadows. By five, the twilight was gone, replaced by a dense, suffocating blackness. I reached into my pack for my flashlight, only to watch its beam flicker twice and die completely. A cold knot tightened in my stomach.

Instead of staying put, ego drove me forward. I stepped off the main path,mistaking a deer trail for the switchback leading down to the ranger station. Within ten minutes, I was completely turned around. Every direction looked identical. The forest wasn’t roaring; it was dead silent, save for the rhythmic thud of my own racing pulse and the squelch of my boots in the mud.

I stumbled over a rotten log, scraping my palms raw against the bark. Sitting there in the dirt, breathing in the sharp scent of wet earth, the panic peaked and then sharply cleared. I realized that moving blindly in the dark was a surefire way to walk off a ledge.

I pulled my jacket tight, tucked my knees to my chest, and leaned against the wide trunk of a cedar. I didn't sleep. Every snap of a twig sounded like a predator, and the damp cold seeped straight into my bones. When the sky finally turned a pale, bruised gray at dawn, I stood up with stiff joints and saw the main trail just thirty yards to my left. I walked back to the station in silence, poured a mug of lukewarm coffee, and never went into the woods without extra batteries again. This scene was not so much terrifying but I learnt a lesson that I would never went into the words without extra batteries again whenever I thought that day I always afraid never went into the woods without extra batteries—and a heavy dose of humility—ever again.