LOST IN NEW MEXICO

Ojo Caliente, just a few minutes north of Santa Fe, had not yet developed into the luxurious spa resort it is today when I got lost there. I’d heard a frail young woman on the train tell how its waters helped her illness. She planned to return there after the next surgery on yet another part of her brain. I unfolded my New Mexico map and searched the northeastern quadrant for tiny font spelled in Spanish.

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The last stretch of road was as dry and dusty as I expected. It was early March and the midday sun felt good as I walked the premises looking for humans or a welcome center. No wind. Sparse clouds. Blue sky. One old building looked like a boarding house from any old western movie so I knocked, with knuckles and voice, and entered.

Choices explained to me all seemed reasonable: $20 for a full day to try each of the five different mineral pools or $60 to include the night in the old hotel and breakfast in the morning. After dropping my backpack on the bed, I decided to explore the nearby area and try the pools after supper.

The bluff behind the main building was easy to scale. I was raised in northeastern Colorado with similar caliche bluffs as my playground. I wandered those home pastures for days as a child, never once disoriented. However, soon, too soon, I was lost.

How could this happen? The sun was overhead, so cast no shadows to indicate direction. I couldn’t see any buildings or trees that might indicate a settlement – even the settlement I just hiked up from. I had lost all signs of the trail. I still believed there was a trail; I had just followed one up here through a rocky washout to this plateau. I followed something like a dusty cow path toward the south along the middle of that ridge. But somewhere along the hike, the gravel and knee-high sage brush all began to look all alike.

I looked up and tried to deduce a goal, target. A building? A tree? Nothing evident. Broken pottery shards indicated previous peoples had spent time here, some even arranged in circles, but I couldn’t figure out a pattern that would offer any direction or mapping code. Their pretty pattern was useless to me.

When I looked down, searching for some indication of a trail, I became unclear whether I was coming or going. Whether I was nearer the beginning or end of this route. Without markers or trail, my walking was wandering. Energy wasted, not well-spent.

I picked out a particular sage plant and designated it my anchor. I stepped off a circle of ten feet diameter counterclockwise toward the west to see if I could find a walking path. Nope. Stepped off another circle toward the south. Nope. I felt tension in the muscles along my spine, like a deer, alert.

The circle to the east just brought me closer to the edge of the plateau, and still no trail. I wasn’t concerned about food or water yet, just impatient with myself.

I should know how to do this. How can I be lost when I can see horizon to horizon? I don’t get lost in the wild. Never had been lost before.

I made a decision to head toward the only land feature I was sure of. The river below, flowing along the base of this plateau. I felt confident I could navigate the 300-foot steep slope, the brush, rock, and wildlife just like I had as a kid. We had cactus and rattle snakes there too.

Not giving up the idea that the trail was probably close to me but just beyond what I could see. Even though I’d failed to pause occasionally to orient myself to my surroundings, it still puzzled me how I could have gotten so off track.

Was I lost? Or was I just a little off the path? How far away from a path qualifies as “lost”? I could have been a few feet off the path and not know it. I could see the sky horizon to horizon. If that the same as being lost? I was definitely without direction at that point.

With my mind disoriented and tension building, all directions seemed pointless.

Yes, I walked around that plateau for a long time, looking for a trail, but staying oriented to a specific group of brush a bit taller than the surroundings. Working to increase trust that the sun would eventually cast shadows I could anchor to.

I came upon a Native American posi, a circular spiral of rocks, and walked it like a labyrinth, praying. Standing in its center, the nearby sage finally cast a shadow. A few yards beyond, standing near the ledge of my plateau, I finally got my bearings. The Ojo camp about a mile north smiled its adobe pink smile and I smiled back.

These days, I recognize my disorientation sooner, and can better differentiate it from fear. I approach the unsettling feelings with more patience and peace. I wait and trust the sun, orient myself to the Son more often, and look up more than down.

How do you approach disorientation?

What’s your anchor in tense situations?