I think I need to start this with a few explanations. I live in a Nordic country, which means that there is a lot of nature around and people usually know how to interact with it and respect it. I did not.
I like to walk in a forest from time to time. I’m also a bit neurotic, so I’m usually very well prepared. I apply the mentality of “better have and not need it, than need it and not have it”, even in the shortest walks around small forests. I usually take my backpack everywhere I go, even in the city, even when shopping at the nearest small store, and my backpack is pretty well stocked in my opinion. I have a water bottle, some nut bars for a snack, I have a lighter AND storm matches, I have a head band light and a knife, I have a small, thin one-use raincoat and a rescue blanket stuffed in there. I have some basic first aid things, I keep my phone well charged and check everything before leaving. Yeah, a bit neurotic, but you just never know!
I remembered this today because I was (again) checking my backpack and all the stuff in it. So what I am about to tell you is a story about when all this was useless. I broke the rules not meant to be broken and paid the price. I did not respect nature and it got me into trouble.
It was the spring of last year, the kind of beautiful, bright day when nature is just waking up after a long winter. Sun was shining and while the ground was muddy and it was a bit cold out, it was a perfect day to have a small hike around the neighborhood forest.
It wasn’t some vast, untouched forest area, it was a small forest between two towns and it’s surrounded by roads on all sides. All logic and reasoning says that I can NOT get lost there, it’s only a couple of kilometers of forest from the middle of it to the nearest road. Like half an hour or an hour walk even at the most leisure stride. Nothing to worry about. I knew the place pretty well, not like I have memorized every single tree and path but I knew the place, I’ve been there dozens of times. So off I went, with my well stocked backpack and recently charged phone, no worries in mind whatsoever.
At first it was so nice. So nice. Birds were singing and trees were just opening their first leaves. Air smelled so fresh, so pure, only like nature and mud and rebirth. I thought this was an excellent day to take some photos, in a natural bright light, maybe take some selfies because I felt good and thought I looked nice that day. After walking for about a half an hour, I came to a small clearing. I haven’t been there before, not that I remembered at least, but you can’t remember every single tree and clearing no matter how small the forest is.
In the middle of the clearing there was a ring of mushrooms, which caught my interest immediately. I’ve read something about them, like that they appear where there has been a bigger tree before and it has died off so the mushrooms appear where the tree’s roots have been or something like that. I thought it looked so nice, I remember thinking that it’s a shame I didn’t have a drone or a really long selfie stick, it would’ve been such a cool picture to take from above, me lying in the ring looking all like forest nymph or something. Still, I had to try.
I sat down in the middle of the circle and took my phone out, trying to reach my arm as far as I could, to take a selfie with the mushroom ring or at least showing some part of the ring. I smiled and posed for the camera, just like always, trying to find a good flattering angle, trying to make me look as pretty as I can. But after taking several pictures, and I mean dozens of them, I was not satisfied. I laid in the circle, on the soft but somehow dry mossy ground (everywhere else was muddy) and looked through all of the pictures, trying to find the perfect one. That’s when things started to go wrong. Even though it was a bright day and should’ve been excellent lighting for photos, all of the pictures were somehow off. The colors were muted, the pictures were just a bit too dark. The more I looked at them the more wrong they felt. My expression was a bit forced, like a fake smile, even though I felt like I was smiling pretty naturally, the day was nice and I was feeling happy. But somehow all the pictures just didn’t come out right. I laid there and tried to fix them with filters and tampering with the color settings and everything, but I didn’t manage to make any of them any good.
After a while my phone started to act up. I realized that the sun was lower than before and I might’ve been there a lot longer than I thought. I immediately glanced at the time in the upper corner of the screen but at that moment it didn’t show any time at all, just a black piece of screen. Soon the whole screen started to go black. Okay, it’s an old phone, sometimes they just die on you in inconvenient situations.
When I got up I started to feel a bit more anxious. I stepped out of the mushroom ring in the direction I came from, but as soon as I exited the ring the forest didn’t seem like the same anymore. Suddenly I felt cold. I realized no birds were singing and even though this cold draught was playing in my hair I couldn’t hear the soft swishes of branches and leaves. Everything was quiet. Well, no reason to panic, I just needed to walk where I came from for half an hour and I would be back in my backyard. I took a sip of my water before getting up but it tasted wrong, sort of metallic and sharp. I spit it out and thought that I forgot to change the water from last time.
I looked around and couldn’t find the path I was on earlier. It was just not there. There wasn’t really any path to the clearing, all sides seemed pretty thick with branches and I couldn’t figure out where I came from. Okay, still no reason to panic, I can pick any direction and within an hour or so I should come up to a road, it’s really not a big forest. So I started walking. I had to push away some bushes and branches to get out of the clearing. It took a while to find any kind of path, even though I knew from experience that there were a lot, and I mean a lot of small narrow paths around there.
Finally I found a path and started following it. Now the sun was definitely a lot lower, the shadows were longer and twilight was setting in. It seemed like I had walked at least for an hour, maybe two, but the narrow path just continued on. There weren’t any other paths branching from it, which seemed weird. I was definitely getting worried at this point. Soon I would need a light, so I took the head band light out of my backpack. Only its batteries had died. Like, why and how? I’m usually overly prepared, bordering on neurotic with checking and double checking everything. This just can’t be! I was almost panicking when I saw movement ahead.
I was so relieved when I saw other nature walkers further down the path. They were a couple of elderly people, moving slowly away from me. I couldn’t hear what they said but they seemed to be happily chatting with each other. I started to run towards them, calling out hellos when I approached. They didn’t seem to notice me. Maybe they were hard of hearing? When I got closer I got really worried. I could see them moving but there was no sound. They walked and laughed and chatted but I couldn’t hear anything. Maybe something got into my ears and I was temporarily deaf? But I could hear my own voice. I tried yelling at them, screaming for help but they didn’t even flinch. They couldn’t see me either. I ran right in front of them, but they just looked right through me. The weird thing was that now it was definitely twilight, almost dark, but they didn’t have flashlights. They moved around like they could see very clearly and I was having a bit of trouble seeing where to put my feet.
I couldn’t catch their attention in any way, I tried standing in front of them but they pushed me away like I was just a small sprig in their way. I think that’s what they saw and felt, me as a twig or a small bush. When I tried touching them my hand just kind of froze, catching an edge of their clothes like a branch would. I was completely invisible. They didn’t notice me in any way. So I decided that the next logical thing to do was just to follow them out of the forest. Only after just a few dozen steps, they disappeared. They were there and then they weren’t. I was alone in a dark, silent forest. The narrow path just continued on, but I couldn’t really see that well anymore. I never felt so alone.
I couldn’t understand any of it, I was so well prepared and nothing just worked. I pulled out my rescue blanket, the thin foil kind, but it didn’t help keep me warm no matter how I wrapped it around me. I tried my lighter, but it didn’t work. I resorted to lighting the storm matches one by one and tried to keep going in their light, but the matches only burned for so long until it burns your fingers and I was not going to cause a forest fire just because I was stupid enough to get lost in this small little forest. I didn’t want to use all of the matches. I rested for a bit and tried to eat some of the nut bars I had in my pack, but they had gone bad. I was sure that I had just recently checked their expiry dates but I must’ve looked at the year wrong, because they were really old and iffy smelling, so I didn’t eat them.
I was panicking a lot and just cried there for a long time, not wanting to use all of the matches. There were no sounds, I mean I could hear my own sniffling and breathing but otherwise it was eerily quiet. I really didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe I should sleep for a while and continue when the sun comes up. I couldn’t figure out anything else so I tried that. I thought I had slept for like a full night’s sleep but the sun never came up. It was a really pitch black, scary, quiet forest. So with nothing else to do I tried continuing on the path with the light of my last few matches. I contemplated making a torch from branches but, like I said, I was really afraid of a forest fire. I did try with a small dry twig but it just wouldn’t catch fire and I didn’t want to squander my last matches.
I felt so alone. Like I was lost to the world. I didn’t understand any of it. I was hungry and thirsty but there really wasn’t anything to eat, it was such an early spring that only the first leaves were appearing on the trees. My head hurt and I was cold and the sun wasn’t coming up at all. After I burned the very last match I was just hopeless. I thought I might’ve gone insane or something. I thought I might die there, just a few kilometers from my home, in my friendly neighborhood forest, no bigger than big parks in some cities. I couldn’t see anything, but I had to try to keep going even in the dark. I felt like I had been there at least for a day, maybe more. My legs hurt from the amount of walking I had done, my head was throbbing from dehydration and hunger, I couldn’t do anything but just try to keep going, with small unsure steps, feeling around the ground to try to follow a path.
I don’t know how long I was there. It felt like more than a day. I slept a couple of times and continued walking. Then at one point, I miss-stepped into a puddle or just really muddy ground. One foot got stuck so I had to step closer with another foot and then the water went right through my shoes, which were supposed to be sort of waterproof but clearly weren’t. So I sat on the ground, on top of the rescue blanket, and took off my shoes and socks. I tried to dry them as best I could, wringing the socks but it didn’t help much. So I just put them back on, shivering and sniffling, cold and desperate.
Then everything changed. Like out of nowhere the sun came back up, it was just as high up as when I found the mushroom circle. It was suddenly warmer, and I could hear birds again. I looked around and I recognised where I was - I was just outside my own backyard, just a few meters away from my home. I couldn’t understand it but I was so, so relieved! I got home fine and afterwards when I was checking my head band light, it worked like a charm. My phone came back online with the battery still over half full. The pictures I took were still slightly unsettling, my expression a bit forced and the colors oddly muted, but everything else was fine. Even the nut bars were fine, they didn’t smell bad anymore and the expiry dates were like a year in the future. The weirdest thing was that I was sure I had slept at least for a night in the forest but it was still the same day. It had only been like an hour or two! Also I noticed afterwards that I now had a few gray hairs in my temples. It’s not that uncommon to get a few of them relatively young but I’m absolutely sure I didn’t have any before.
I can’t really explain it and I wouldn’t believe it if someone told me this. But I’m sure I was lost in a dark forest for a long time. Afterwards I read more about the mushroom rings and they are called fairy rings or “witch’s rings” in my native language. There are a lot of beliefs about something called the “forest’s cover” in our folklore. It’s when the forest hides or imprisons you, so you can’t find your way even in familiar places and other people might see you as a stump or a rock. It can happen if you step into a fairy ring, they say. One way to get out of it is to reverse your clothes, so I must’ve put my socks back on backwards or switched them to wrong feet after they got wet.
Sometimes I lay awake at night and think how lucky I was to get out. It was the most scared I have ever been. You should really know your roots, like the local folklore and beliefs. My vanity of wanting a nice forest nymph selfie got me into trouble and I still think about the price when I see the gray hairs on my temples. Don’t be like me. Respect the nature. And *do not fuck* with fairy rings.