The Woods Essay, Research Paper

The Woods

About four years ago I went to Phelps, Wisconsin with my friend, Tim, and his mom to visit his grandfather. We quickly found out that there was not much to do in Phelps. The nearest grocery store was thirty minutes away. The only thing to do in town was to go fishing and because we did not have a boat our fishing was very limited. As the week went on Tim and I became very bored and so one night we asked his mom what we could do and she said that in the morning we could all go for a walk through the woods with a man named Custer who lives next door to Tim?s grandfather. We did not have anything else to do so we agreed to go on a walk the next morning.

We had to get up real early in the morning because Custer was knocking at our cabin door, ready to go. So we began walking down the road until we came to a trail that went into the woods. To pass time on the walk Tim and I started noticing these old, dead trees, which we would then walk over to and try to knock them down. Since there were numerous dead trees, we began to not even pay attention to where we were going. The woods were so peaceful and beautiful that we kept walking deeper into the woods. We were all too busy admiring the forest to realize that the trail was nowhere to be seen. Nobody could remember which way we came.

It did not bother me that much at first because I figured that we were not far from the trail. We decided to turn around and find the trail. We began walking and walking with no sign of the trail. After we had been walking for over an hour I began to get a little worried. I asked Custer how far these woods went on and he said for hundreds of miles in pretty much every direction. When I heard that I then realized just how lost we were. Suddenly the woods turned into this death trap that we could not get out of. I began to look at the woods not as a beautiful forest but as a place that I would do anything to get out of.

I started to think of what would happen if we could not find our way out. I began to ask myself how we would eat and survive in these woods. I thought that I would never get to see my family or friends again. As I was asking myself these questions we came upon a dirt road. Custer said that it was a fire road that firemen use if there is ever a forest fire. Those roads went on for miles in either direction. We stood at the road for a few minutes trying to decide on which way to go. Finally we chose to go right and started walking down this road in hopes that it would come out somewhere.

Once we were on that road I felt a little more relieved but not totally. We must have walked on that road for hours with no sign of human life. Then all the sudden we heard this noise that sounded like an engine. We stood there trying to figure out what it was. It became louder and louder until we could see that it was a truck coming towards us. All of our faces lit up as if it was a sign from God. I was so relieved when I saw that truck because then I knew that we would be all right. When the truck got closer to us we could see that there were two men in the truck. They stopped and asked us what we were doing so deep in the woods. When we told them that we were lost they offered to give us a ride back to our cabin. We quickly jumped in the back of their truck. When we asked the two men why they were out in the woods they said they were looking for bears in the same woods that we were in.

As it turns out we were about twenty miles away from our cabin. If those men would not have been looking for bears that morning we may have never made it back to our cabin. When we got back I realized how lucky we were to have a bed to sleep on and food waiting on us in the kitchen. All the little things that I took for granted became luxuries that I was thankful to have.

Although being lost in the woods was one of the scariest moments in my life it showed me how quickly your life can change from one minute to the next. It made me appreciate my life, even though I may not always enjoy it, and be thankful that I am alive.