This is Sheriff Peanut Butter Brickle. Have you ever lost your way? Have you ever forgot your phone, your map, and your senses and embarked on an unknown trail for hours and became lost? Yep. You guessed it.

Let me be the bearer of bad news on a Monday. Girl Person doesn’t always think things thru. She’s a doer, and half doer, and “I’ll try to get everything started in one hour” kinda girl. She can bake a pie, do a load of laundry, wash two dogs, start dinner and write this blog for us in about half a second. But when it’s time to walk Digby and I, she seems to lose track of time.

Because she wants us to be happy. And well, when we pulled her down the trail that she thought was one mile on our lunch break at camp, she thought no big deal. It was short. Why would she need a map? She could do this, or half do this or whatever.

After all, it looked like a loop. Easy enough.

So off we went. We had told Boy Person we were just going around the block. But here was a new trail just begging to be walked on! And we walked. And we walked. And we walked somemore.

Pretty soon, but apparently not too soon, we realized this wasn’t a mile. We realized we had lost sight of the colored trail markers. And we realized we didn’t recognize those houses by a fence. Or that road. Nope. We were in a heap of a mess. Girl Person asked us if we should turn around. I said no. Digby said no even louder. We planted our feet in the ground like a turnip.

We knew it would be longer to turn around. But Girl Person was scared. She listened to us reluctantly. Crying a few tears and saying something about water, we kept going. We walked and we walked and we walked some more.

Pretty soon, we saw some persons far ahead. Girl Person said we had to hurry, but not too fast, because we had to save our energy. She yelled “excuse me! Excuse me”. They stopped and turned around.

Girl Person asked them if they knew how far we were from the campground. They said they had no idea. They were lost too. And this was just unnerving. We were sure Boy Person was organizing a search by now. Girl Person started crying and explained she wasn’t crazy…but she kinda was. I don’t know why they didn’t start running.

She told them we had run out of water and that we couldn’t walk so far like we used to. Right away the nice Girl Person named Jennifer said you can have all our water. The Boy Person named Tyler offered his phone. And they said let’s hike together and find a way out. She had a map, but no one could read it or guess where we were. But we kept walking. Every now and then, they would almost try to turn around, but here came some other campers! They told us that yes. Yes. We were going in the right direction. We only had another half an hour to go.

You’ve never seen such relief from a group of lost hikers. Individuals who didn’t know each other in the morning were good friends by evening.

Being lost is scary. And you can bet Girl Person won’t embark anywhere with us without a phone and plenty of water!

When you are lost, it seems like there is no way out. To panic is to give in to your self doubt. It happens to us all. And sometimes it takes just one person…or two…to push us thru. Even if they are lost themselves.

To say we were thankful for Jennifer and Tyler is an understatement. It may have seemed like such a simple thing to them to offer us their water. And yet, it meant everything to us. I’m not sure Digby would have been ok. As Girl Person told them, we are her world. She would never have had the courage to yell at others or accept help. But for us…she did. I appreciate it. But she should think she is deserving of help too. We all are. Others may not know by looking at us that we feel lost. Sometimes, we have to ask.

We were lost and yet found two new friends and learned some big lessons. If you find yourself lost, remember your worth and find a map. You can find your way out. And if you’re on the other end and it’s your turn to be a Jennifer or Tyler, remember, you may just save a life when they thought there was no way out.

–Sheriff Peanut Butter Brickle

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