Sense of Direction or Sense of Adventure?

 

Kat, my adventuring daughter – Little Talbot Island State Park

 

“Your grandma always had a terrible sense of direction. She could get lost on an escalator.” – – from And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman

 

It’s funny that this could describe me and my mother, yet it never stopped her and doesn’t stop me from having adventures. Mom would pack her pistol for protection and her machete for whacking away grass and weeds in the cemeteries she visited and she’d hit the road for Georgia. She would get her sisters and they would visit court houses and cemeteries and woods in search of long lost ancestors. This was all without GPS and, in the beginning, without internet. Finally, the last time she visited my Aunt Betty, when Mom was 81 or 82, she got lost because Aunt Betty had moved to a new place. She decided then that she would not go back again alone. But she was never able to go back again at all after that, anyway. I know my Aunt misses her and her visits terribly.

I , however, have the technological benefits and I still get turned around. I’ve taken much longer then intended hikes and made many an unnecessary U-Turn because I second guessed myself. I am not afraid, usually. but there was this one time when I got a little panicky because night was coming on and my daughter and I were out in a kayak and heading in the wrong direction. We passed some fishermen on a boat who looked familiar (we’d passed them once already) and shouted out to them. They pointed us in the right direction and we paddled like mad to get back before dark and before the kayak rental place closed. We made it, but just barely.

So, even without a sense of direction, my sense of adventure is still intact. And for that I’m glad.

 

With my adventuring cousin, Paula – Jean Petit State Park