What you don't do

You don't explore your (untamed) backwoods, in order to discover where your land meets the road that runs parralel, a mile behind your house.

Not ever, but really not in the late-ish evening.

And no again if you have neither navigational skills or breadcrumbs.

I came back from my run determined to bushwhack.
A half hour later I was running low through brambly tangles, sneaker high in mud-swamp, neither at the land-road meeting place nor knowing the direction I'd come from.

Giving up my road goal I turned back .

But my back was not a strict backtrack. It was a serpentining version.

A pricked and tripped BlairWitch spane later, I saw a swath of lawn through my wretched tunnel tangle of brown/gray. Lighthearted/what-will-I-have-for-dinner approaching, I came to the paddock edge of the horse farm.

I was a half mile south of my house.

Undeservedly, I did finally arrive at the heaven-glimpse of the back of my house. I saw my blessed forsythia and, like a beleaguered traveler, the light of my bedroom window.

I emerged on my lawn, I blessed my soddy grass, and I congratulated myself.

On wrapping up one of the dumber evenings of my city soul uprooted life.

C - chastised by the land