paths in the woods

I was going to go back into the woods the other night after I got off work.  Maybe go sit in my favorite spot--on the pipe directly over the creek--and experience the night.  But I got off work at four in the morning and by then I was way too tired.

I did manage to make it into the woods earlier in the night, though, while searching for some locals who had an illegal campfire going.  You think--rather, I think--that woods are just a series of trees through which you can walk in basically any direction.  That you just follow the flickering and the voices and you get there.

But it's not like that.  You need to find the path, because it's too dense and difficult to just cut straight for your goal.  So my co-worker and I tracked and backtracked, scratched our heads, and even had to jump over the creek at one point in our attempt to get there.

It gets back to that vastness thing, I guess... there's so much more to the woods than I thought at first.  I thought of it as a basically finite space, all discovered, no secrets.  But there are places so difficult to get to that few do, and any journey from point A to point B is not a straight line, but involves finding the trail.