Effect Essay

Take the Shortcut

Just a few days into my summer vacation before my 6^th grade, year I decided to go fishing.  One of my friends from down the road was visiting at the time, and so we decided to hike out back for a while and see if there was a good spot on the brook to catch some fish.  Unfortunately that day there were no fish caught.  We walked and walked down along the brook looking for a good place to stop, but after about 10 minutes of thick brush we decided to turn back.  Too bad we didn’t just turn around.  For some reason I wanted to take a short cut.  I thought that if we looped around we could meet up with one of the field roads we had walked in on, saving us a few minutes.  To both of our surprise though, that decision to try and cut corners and not properly plan ahead landed the two of us in some hot water.  My poor planning got us lost in the woods, made a bunch of people drop everything they were doing to search for us, and in some heat at home.  If we had just turned back around and head along the brook we would have met up with the road and been home free.  But Nooooo.

        We were lost.  And it wasn’t nearly as fun as the TV show makes it seem.  Personally the worst part of it was that the both of us had shorts on.  And that made walking all of those 7 miles through the woods, with the brush and trees just about the worst. I still remember how bad it hurt when I got in the shower that night, and had all of those hundreds of tiny little scratches get agitated by the hot water.  The most embarrassing part of the whole ordeal though?, the fact that we walked for five miles (the majority of our travel) going parallel to the road.  If we had just turned right and followed it for a mile or so we would have met up with an old woods road and been able to navigate back to my house.  But instead we continued on our path, until a slightly delayed stroke of genius hit and I used a compass I found in my tackle box to point us in the right direction.  From there we were able to navigate back to the road and get picked up by some local passersby that were heading out to the lake. 

        When we went missing, It didn’t take long for everyone on the farm to know something was up.  We were all responsible kids, and the fact that we hadn’t checked in with an adult threw up a red flag early.  So the search was on.  It didn’t take long to spread either.  In the usual small town fashion it took no time at all to gather a group of willing volunteers.  They began looking through the woods on the back side of the farm near the brook we had started at, but there wasn’t much tell of where we had went from there.  (rule #1, leave a trail)  Luckily though they also sent out a few trucks to search the local roads.  And one of them went down the very woods road we had been travelling parallel too at just the right time to meet us.  We met the truck about three miles in on that woods road, and loaded up with them to get a lift out.  Being that far in it took us a little while to navigate back out to “civilization”.  And in that time I found the most peace during that day.  In the back of a Tahoe relaxing after an entire day of my anxiety telling me to worry, worry, worry.  My body was tired, my legs ached, and there was still going to be more in store for me when I returned home.  As we pulled down in closer to the searchers I saw how frantic everything was.  I saw the chaos that I had caused, the heartache, all because of that decision I made.

        Although we did return safely, we had still stirred up plenty of grief in our wake.  And after all of the happy hugs and kisses and thank you’s, came the punishment.  My parents have always been really down to earth people.  Kind and fair.  They knew what I had gone through and how taxing it was, and were sure I had learnt my lesson after a “talk” at home.  I punished myself in a way also, because earlier I had ended up leaving my fishing pole way out in the woods after about an hour of being lost so I wouldn’t have to carry it.   But I shouldn’t compare that to Taylor.  He didn’t get off the hook so lucky.  His father has always believed in a more memorable method to parenting, hoping to ensure Taylor wouldn’t ever repeat such behavior.  So Taylor spent the first month of his summer vacation being grounded to stay home, with no bicycle and limited TV.  All for getting lost in the woods because of his friend, isn’t life fair?

        I still kick myself for that short sighted decision.  But to this day though it is still a great reminder to think thoroughly about every decision before I choose.  “Look before you leap”.  It still stands as one of the most important life lessons I needed to learn.  And I did learn it.  I’ll never forget that day I got lost in the woods all because I was in a rush.  And I'm sure Taylor isn’t going to let it go anytime soon either.