Hike went well off the beaten path

It was one of those late winter/early spring Sunday afternoons.
Skies were gloomy, but at least it wasn’t snowing nor was it raining. But it was gray and uninviting.
One of the redeeming features of the National Football League is afternoons like that are not a problem. You just grab the remote, settle in on the couch, and move into a special kind of vegetative state.
But football season was over. Baseball was on the distant horizon. March Madness hadn’t started yet. And no one with a lick of sense cares about the NBA. Hockey? Are you kidding?
On top of that, neither of us was deeply engaged in a book. Connie flies through light reading on her Nook thanks to the Evergreen system, and I’ve been caught in the middle of a gigantic novel that’s largely written in Jamaican dialect. (It’s anything but light reading.)
“Go for a hike?” one of us said.
Sure. That’s what we do on Sunday afternoons like that.
I think I’m the one who suggested we do the nature trail at Hudson Family Park.
The city’s maintenance of the trail has been extremely uneven. Some parts are in good shape. Others are a mess. Signs that had been put up just a few years ago have disappeared, thanks to vandals.
At the very least, I figured, a walk on the nature trail would prompt an editorial or two for the paper.
So we set out, changing into our hiking boots before we left.
It’s a good thing we did. We hadn’t gone far before we’d moved beyond the realm of wintry slush and into the kingdom of mud and standing water.
“Not sure this was a good idea,” one of us said as we made our way from the trailhead into the trees along the Salamonie.
That point was underscored a few minutes later when the trail began to disappear under the puddles and ponding. The river wasn’t high. In fact, it was almost photogenic when we stepped over to the bank to check it out. But the trail itself was a mess.
Not the city’s fault this time, I figured. This was simply about nature and the changing of the seasons.
So we pressed on.
And as we did, something happened.
Without realizing it, we got farther and farther off the trail.
Stepping away from the flooded areas, we found ourselves blazing new paths through bramble and thorny bushes.
“The path around the pond is over there to our right,” one of us said.
And that was true.
But exactly where, we didn’t know.
“There should be a sign around here somewhere letting us know we’re at the border of the city-owned property,” one of us said.
Trouble is, that sign was a few hundred feet behind us.
We knew the river was to our left. We knew the park was to our right. Or behind us to our right about 45 degrees. Maybe.
As we paused in a mucky thicket of dying ash trees, Connie’s cellphone gave out a “ding.”
“What is it?” I said.
She looked at her iPhone. “Just a Silver Alert,” she said.
“Is it for us?”
I imagined the news item: “Last seen, the couple — in their 60s — had wandered off into the woods along the river. No one saw them come out.”
Time to find the park and head for home.