My buddy, Paul, asked me one night if the people who read the Burke County Tribune ever get tired of reading about the stupid things I do?

He asked me this about two hours into a shortcut to a backcountry campsite in the Black Hills. A shortcut that two hours previous I had convinced him would have us rolling into camp in thirty minutes…at the most. It was an easy sell. I had the GPS and let him see for himself the location of the camp, our location, the “recommended” trail and my proposed route.

“Here we are,” I said pointing to the little green arrow on the screen, “and here’s the camp,” I said pointing to a little dot on the screen.

I continued with my pitch, “Now here’s the recommended trail.”

I explained pointing to a thick black squiggly line. “See how it loops waaaay around over here?”

Paul nodded and made the mistake of not raising any questions.

“If we go straight towards the camp we’ll be there in 30 minutes,” I stated with enough confidence to almost convince myself. Paul, feeling the weight of his backpack and knowing it was going to be completely dark in about 30 minutes, agreed to the shortcut. Well, he didn’t really agree he just failed to disagree, or maybe he did but I couldn’t hear him over the noise I was making pushing through the brush to get off the recommended trail.

There’s an old saying, “Never mistake the map for the terrain.” I don’t know who said it, but Paul should have. Sometime during my speech on the glory of shortcuts and how recommended trails are the root of six or seven percent of the world’s problems, he should have said it.

During my speech if I had taken the time to zoom in another couple of clicks on my GPS, I would have seen why the trail looped waaaay around.

Generally, trails do loop waaay around steep mountains, cliff faces, streams and other things that impede safe smooth forward progress but caught up in the excitement of a shortcut I mistook the map for the terrain. So it goes.

This really wasn’t anything new for me as virtually every time I head out for a hike, I abandon the recommended trail at some point and time. You can’t work on your map and compass skills if you always know where you are, besides you get a nice little adrenaline rush when you realize you just might be lost. I found out Paul doesn’t enjoy that little adrenaline rush like I do.

Off trail, in steep terrain, in the dark, through more poison ivy than a poison ivy plantation, with a glorified monkey running the GPS, is as good a way as any to find out something like that. He kept whining about breaking a leg, stepping over a cliff in the dark, and other such probable and likely courses of events. All of which I would like to add, mostly never happened.

Truthfully, I thought it was a blast and we did eventually get to the camp. I can’t remember exactly what Paul said the next day when I suggested we take the same route back, but his statement contained many, possibly all, of my favorite words and phrases. Words and phrases I use when someone cuts me off in traffic, when an anvil falls on my foot, and other such occurrences.

So, we took the recommended trail back. Boring old trail, head down, shuffling along like all the other recommended trail schleps. I tried not to complain because Paul was carrying a knife, it was hot, and I had used most of his drinking water to put the campfire out while he was slipping into a shortcut-induced coma the night before.

Good friends are hard to come by…Paul’s still looking.