Mt. Moosilauke (1890) - Getting Lost
". . . How easy to get lost in the woods. The subject is fruitful of reminiscences. One said, "I entered the woods once with a man who had been much in them, intending to shorten the way by so doing to a point beyond them, and illustrated the proverb: 'The shortest way round is the longest way home,' for after a walk in defined paths for 18 minutes we came out of the woods exactly where we went in."
Another said: "When I was a boy I got lost in the woods and shall never forget it. I came out on the opposite side from home. Every opening in the trees beguiled me into the hope that I was out of the woods. "Without a guide of compass or shadows, or without a knowledge of woodcraft, one is quite at sea. But the Moosilauke mountain is not so vast as Mt. Washington, where several have been lost and only their bodies found. . . ."
From "Lost on Moosilauke" by Samuel L. Gerry, pp. 132-134, The Moosilaukee Reader (Vol.1). ©1999.
