Every couple of years, my husband Blake and his hiking buddy Bryan do a Serious Hike.
I mean Serious. Months of training. It’s the kind of trip you plan on an extensive spreadsheet.
They started this back in 2019 with the Grand Canyon, rim to rim to rim. Then the very wet West Coast Trail followed by Zion, Rocky Mountain… These two have a whole ritual, and I’ve watched it from the sidelines for years. Blake pulls out the packs, tests the boots and gear, pores over maps on the dining table like a man preparing for an expedition. Which, to be fair, he is.
This year the plan was Yellowstone. And I watched the whole thing come apart from two thousand kilometres away. By the end, I understood it was a story about something much bigger than a hike.
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They planned it carefully. They always do. Yellowstone is bear country, so they did the smart thing and added three more hikers to the group, thinking more bodies, more noise, more safety. So, there were five men, fully prepped, and everything mapped.
The night before, one got sick and had to pull out. Four.
Day one was everything they’d trained for. Majestic and wide open, with a herd of bison on the horizon like something out of a documentary. This was the trip.
Day two was meant to be the big climb. Mostly uphill, the hard glorious part of the whole thing. Except all the trail signage was down. And the GPS couldn’t confirm where they were. And then even the physical map stopped making sense against the actual ground in front of them. The map said one thing. The territory said another. And there was no reconciling the two.
So after much deliberation, they turned back. There would be no day three. Or four. Or five. The two extra hikers decided to fly home. And Blake and Bryan, being who they are, sat down and made a Plan B. The thought was for some day hikes, maybe a bit of fly fishing, salvage something from the wreckage of the itinerary.
They set out the next morning. And before they even arrived, Bryan’s trusty 2020 Subaru Outback died. I don’t mean a flat, or a jump-start situation. It died catastrophically, on a Sunday, in the middle of nowhere, hours from anyone. Roadside assistance eventually loaded it onto a flatbed and hauled it to the nearest town to wait for a garage to open Monday. On Monday, the mechanic took one look and pronounced it a write-off.
Blake and Bryan looked at each other. And they booked the next flight home.
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Watching this unravel from a distance, with Blake’s satellite texts coming in, and each one another piece of the plan dissolving, I noticed that at no point did they do the thing our whole world trains us to do. They never white-knuckled it. They never forced it.
When the map stopped matching the territory, they turned back.
And I think that’s one of the wisest, hardest things a person can do. Because everything in us is built to push forward. We trained for this. We planned for this. We’re supposed to be on that trail right now, and by God we’re going to complete it. The summit is right there. The plan says go.
But the plan was drawn for a territory that wasn’t in front of them anymore. The signage was gone. The map had stopped describing the actual ground. And no amount of training, or wanting, or stubbornness makes a map true again once the territory has changed.
The brave thing, and I believe the genuinely mature thing, was to stop and read the real ground honestly and say, this route no longer exists. We turn back.
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The belief that won’t survive this week
“If I turn back now, all that preparation was wasted.”
It wasn’t. And turning back isn’t the same as failing.
We’ve been sold a story where the only good outcome is the completed one. Summit reached, trail finished, plan executed. Failure is not an option. Anything less is quitting. So we keep marching forward on routes that stopped existing a long time ago. I’m thinking about the career that no longer fits, the relationship running on a map from ten years back, the version of a life we planned for before everything changed…because turning back feels like admitting defeat.
But what Blake and Bryan understood in real time, twice, was that turning back when the terrain has changed isn’t defeat, but accuracy. It’s the willingness to see what’s actually in front of you instead of what your plan insists should be there.
Anyone can follow the map when the map is right. The wisdom is in noticing when it’s stopped matching the ground, and having the humility to stop walking.
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This week holds the equinox, the one day of the year when light and dark stand exactly equal. It’s the great balance point, and it’s also the great turning point. The moment the year stops leaning one way and begins to lean the other. Balance and turning, in the very same breath.
Which is the whole lesson of that ruined, expensive, slightly ridiculous trip.
So I’ll ask you what I’ve been asking myself. Where in your life has the map stopped matching the territory? Where are you still climbing toward a summit on a plan you drew for a landscape that’s since changed underneath you? Is the route you’re walking still actually there for the job, the role, the relationship, the whole picture of how things were supposed to go?
And if it isn’t, if the signage is down and the GPS can’t find you and the map just doesn’t match the ground anymore, maybe this is the week to do the wise, humbling, un-glamorous thing, of reading the real terrain. And if the route’s gone, turn back, because that means you’re paying attention.
The bison were spectacular, by the way. Blake says the one and a half days they got were worth the whole disaster. Which is maybe its own small teaching, that even a trip that falls completely apart can hand you a horizon full of bison, if you’re willing to stop insisting on the trail you came for.
Jonni
P.S. If the map stopped matching your territory a while ago and you’ve been marching forward anyway, hoping it’ll start making sense again, that’s so much of what I do inside UNLIMITED. I won’t hand you a new map, but I will help you read the actual ground you’re standing on.
P.P.S. I’m still laughing. While the two of them were off in Wyoming not finding the wilderness they trained for, I was having the wildlife week of my life right here at home. A mama elk and her baby spent forty-five minutes rummaging through my garden one evening. A doe and her two fawns strolled past me and the ducks in the field like they owned the place. And that bear — that same bear — turned up again and refused to leave, popping up in one corner of the property after another until I ran him off yet again. I sent Blake the photos and videos, and he wrote back that I was having more wildlife sightings than they were. And I was. One of the other hiking buddies said maybe next year they should just pitch their tents in my yard. I bet they’d see more.
