He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Only once have I been seriously lost. I was hiking the woods alone (the same woods I had known since sixth grade).

The aim of the hike was to get beyond where we had gone before. On the northeast corner of our known world was a big marsh, maybe 15 to 20 acres. In spring it could be a shallow lake. Given time and difficulty, we had never been to the other side of that swampy ground.

We called the swamp Death Valley. When we first found it the bleached bones of cattle were scattered in piles across its edge. Here and there the cattle had been trapped in the mud, struggled, died, feasted upon, leaving their own bones as grave markers.

It took considerable time and care to find a way through Death Valley. Then I climbed the rocky cliff that I had seen but never stood upon. Tired I lay prone at the top of the cliff surveying the tangled scene I had gotten through.

Far below, barely half-way across the swamp, coming a different way than I had, was a boy/man. Given distance even the gender identification was more assumption than observation.

I had asked my friend Mark to hike with me. I decided that his baseball practice must have been canceled. Standing I yelled, "Mark, here I am."

I don't remember the reply. But the voice was much deeper than Mark's fourteen or fifteen year-old scratchy tenor.

I ran until I could run no more. I ran until I was breathless, bending over wheezing. I ran full-speed where I had never been before.

Where I finally stopped was, of course, entirely unrecognizable. Even if I had wanted to, I could not have easily found my way back to the cliff's edge, the edge of what I knew.

Quieting my fear and collecting my wits, I roughly situated where I needed to go from the sun's position. I set out to connect with the old east-west cut that was once the road used to haul out the coal.

There was no path. Only a direction. In that direction were ponds I could not cross, cliffs I could not climb, and thorny thickets that tore at my clothes and skin, but after hours I made my way.

I had not run far. The ground was too rough for that. But it did not take long for fear and ignorance to make it very difficult for me to get back to the right path.