I don’t know about seven of them. I’ll be lucky to find just one.

Deep in the woods bordering the George Washington National Forest, approximately five miles from Shrine Mont Circle, is a deep, clear pool of water known affectionately by weekend hikers as Seven Springs. It has always been part of a hiking triumvirate: hike to the Cross on Friday, North Mountain on Saturday, Seven Springs on Sunday, squeezed in after worship and before lunch. Best way to ditch folks stuck with clearing out the cabins and packing for home is to take on this third adventure. If you are truly pressed for time (lunch is fried chicken. Nobody messes with the fried chicken), you commandeer a willing driver and vehicle–invariably a minivan still trashed from the ride up on Friday and now loaded with wet towels and under-slept children–too many bodies for belts if you know what I mean, all sandwiched in, damp and happy. From the little pumphouse pull-off on Alum Springs Road (park the car and pile out), it’s a quarter mile hike into the woods along a babbling brook that culminates in an ice-cold pool, complete with waterfall, foot bridge, jumping ledge and rocky “beach” for all the hecklers and chickens you discover you’ve brought with when you get there.

On the day that Will and Bill did in fact set out for North Mountain–Saturday–not with overnight gear but with a dedicated plan to be back by dinner, I stayed behind. Will had briefed me back in Richmond: Father’s Day hike? Just me and dad, mom–OK? You OK with that? He knows I hike North Mountain every year as a litmus of ability as I age. Always want to be able to. And I always have, except for the summer I was eight months pregnant. The following summer I hauled her 11-month-old heavy sweetness all the way up in a backpack. Those blue jeans, size “keep dreaming” in your bottom drawer, right? But sure, I get it. A father/son foot event sounds too lovely for me to crash, so I will bow out and make my own hike (Try not to emphasize the word “crash”). Maybe I’ll hike to Seven Springs, I think, my own plan starting to seed. Sure. Yes, that’s just what I’ll do. Just call me Adventure Jenny. I love hiking. Sure, alone. Why not? What could possibly go wrong?

The running joke is I’ve never been able to find Seven Springs on foot. Countless youth groupers, now young adults with lattes and zero interest in hiking, smirk a bit over the dinner table when I try to talk them into this year’s hike. They smile and indulge in a joint memory: “Remember that time Miss Jenny…” and then the sepia-toned preservations of me in perfect ineptitude with a band of children walking circles in the woods, hopelessly lost. Yep. Laugh, chuckle, heads nodding in corporate glee…the Israelites got nothin’ on me. “We started out but dad had to drive out and rescue us in the minivan because we were so lost…!” The memories appear almost holographically between us: “yeah, yeah…We were going to walk but we got turned around in the woods so we gave up…gosh, we were so lost!” Only you can’t say it like that. You have to say it like this: “SO lost!” Had there been emojis back then they would all have been weeping.

These are the stories they tell about Seven Springs. And so today to set the record straight, or because my guys are gone, I may as well do something, and because I haven’t gotten in my steps for the day, I decide this easy, accessible little hike will be my afternoon destination. An hour out and back, right? Isn’t that about right? Well, maybe it’s an hour out and an hour back, but either way it’s small potatoes compared with North Mountain. I barely even have the right gear. No hiking boots, as this was not a plan when I rolled out of bed, and barely a water bottle except for the one I hastily refill and will carry in hand since don’t have my daypack either (first aid kit, splint, knife, two bandanas, bug spray, compass, handy multitool.) Very out of character for me to be without; these days I’m want to carry it to the grocery store. But who doesn’t need more impromptu in her world?

The freedom is exhilarating, on the front end any way. Channeling my inner Will, I consult my fears on the prospect of a solo hike. No lie, it scares me. I am worried at this time of day to meet a bear. I am worried to encounter a copperhead down by the creek. This is why they make the mountain so high, think I: you can surmount natural wonders and your own emotional hang-ups all in one felled swoop. A two-fer. The only thing I didn’t worry about was getting lost. Speaking of Will, I knew he’d taken this same hike on Friday when he arrived at Shrine Mont alone and with hours to kill. No one around to ask or consult, he no doubt found himself in this unimaginable “green light” zone, alone at our mountain retreat center–well, heck that sure beats ice cream for dinner. Boy decided to knock two of the three right off “the list” upon arrival. “Oh yeah Mom, it’s easy. You just go up out by the upper pond (I know this pond of which he speaks) and you just keep going till you get to Seven Springs.” Well, bless my boot straps that’s just what I’ll do. Second star to the right and straight on till morning. Follow the yellow brick road and all that.

Sure enough, trail is easy for a time. Well-blazed and wide enough to see it and trust that I was following a real trail. Other than a daunting feel of setting out alone and of being alone in the woods–that sudden silence and stillness that descends, almost like stepping through the back of the wardrobe–I’m quickly in my element. Indeed, the woods are lovely this time of day. Emphasis on lovely, shimmering and silent, cool for the time of year and so inviting. I like Adventure Jenny. She doesn’t have time for Facebook news or WebMD or Googling how lethal is rattlesnake venom compared with a copperhead, none of that. She doesn’t carry back-up band aids or a multitool for a walk to the mailbox. She is one with the moment and indistinguishable from the wilderness, a symbiosis of common spirit as the kairos practically drips from the trees: right thing at the right time in the right frame of mind. At last… think I, my footfalls certain, I’m on God’s time now.

The problem came after the first mile in, where I came to a fork in the trail, or an off-shoot rather, with a newish sign nailed to the tree and pointing left: “To Seven Springs.” It couldn’t be newer, fresher, or more indicative of the trail if there had been a Delta ground handler standing in the middle of it waving a neon flare. Well, I no orienteering expert as the joke goes, but that seemed pretty straightforward to me. So, left I went. At that point I was following the white blazes and feeling pretty good about my hike, which I noticed was taking a while and seemingly deeper and deep into the woods. That’s OK, thought I–the enthusiastic hiker. Streams live in woods. So do bears. I was conscious of the hour of day–evening–and conscious of what I’m walking through: wild blueberry bushes, knee high and all around. Bears love blueberries.

Eventually I came to a ridge-lined streambed deep in the woods which I thought would explain the water sounds I’d been hearing from time to time, confirming my feet and propelling me forward. But my inventory of what’s in front of me when matched with my memory comes up short by one key item: Rocky terraced creek bed, deep in the forest: check. Big neck-breaker boulders: check. Steep wooded ridge on both side, like shoulders draped in pine trees, hemlocks, mountain laurel: check. Water: Nope. There is little or no visible water, and the creek bed is so cluttered with debris–fallen trees, brush piles, and undergrowth–you can barely see it. No pool of shimmering water, no waterfall with the convenient log bridge felled across it, no jumping point halfway up, no sandy shoals in which to wade and shriek about the cold water. Water, schmarter. This is no “Seven springs.” Spring 1A maybe, but it’s not my end point and it’s obvious I need to press on.

Here is where I make one of many fateful mistakes (I think the first may have been following the clearly marked sign, but jury still out on that one.) Instead of turning perpendicular to follow the creek up or down to the point along it that would have to be the spot I know (like, how many streams could you have running through this one wood?), I cast my eye across to where the white blazes stand like groupies on almost every tree on the other side. They are clustered in their insistence: Come this way…thiiissssss way… So what’s a clever hiker to do? I crash/cross the rocky stream bed and keep going.

Hours and miles later my theory that there are two streams, the second one containing my prize, is debunked. Or rather, it runs out of steam about the same point I do. I’m not thrilled to be alone. I’m concerned about the time, not only that I’ll miss dinner (pretty much a given) but that if I really am as lost as I’m beginning to feel then I could be faced with improvising for a night in the woods and more worrisome: I’ve let no one know where I was going. I’m out of cell service range and almost out of water. For a while now I’ve been following logging roads, relieved not to be in the darkening and deeply overgrown woods and reasoning that one of them has to lead me out to the highway which I’ve heard from time to time and know I was near. It’s the same road that’s received us before on our botched hikes. So where is it now? I would love nothing more than to follow a little trail that spills out onto Route 717, turn left and hike briskly back, tail between my legs. Who cares about that now, anyway, with the daylight waning and my sense of direction completely shot? I’ve long ago abandoned my plan of reaching the spring, or of procuring a “trophy” rock for my collection. In a word, I want outta here. I just want to get back before dark.

And I don’t want to re-enter the woods. I want one of the wide, cleared logging trails to lead me home. But after following and unfollowing several of the ones out here–the orange trail, the three hashes orange trail or the blue circle trail, I start to think as I give up on these circuitous and unreliable trails that they aren’t trails at all; they are either boundary markers or–more likely –the marks on trees selected to be cut down. Indeed, I’ve come upon an enormous clearing, several acres wide, that looks almost apocalyptic it’s so barren. Three hulking machines, er–grace the mountainside: two excavator/bulldozer-looking thingies and a long logging truck with a blue cab and huge vertical ribs up each side. They are paused mid-job and it’s hard to tell whether they are still active or if this is some bizarre Twilight Zone scene where the work has been suspended and no one’s been at it for years. Will, come to find out, had hiked past the same clearing, seen the same rusted and “frozen” looking equipment and had the same thoughts. So Rip Van Winkle is a logger now. Great. Round about the third time I pass by the same clearing (emphasis on “round about”), this is where the swearing kicks in, a natural extension to the muttering aloud I’ve been doing for a while anyway. “Seven Spring my *ss,” I say to no one in particular, “may as well be hiking to Saskatchewan.” I don’t usually swear in public and certainly not in print. But it is an accurate rendition of what came out my mouth. I wonder if the bears heard me.

Adventure Jenny is no longer feelin’ it. For all I know I’ve hiked to West Virginia and may never be seen again. I’m woefully under prepared and decidedly out of my element. I didn’t wear my hiking boots of take my day pack. My trusty walking stick–the ridicule of Old Rag–was already gone up North Mountain with Bill. The “why not!” impulse almost didn’t grab a water bottle either, which could have been disastrous. I fished a plastic one out of the trash, washed it well and refilled it for the little hike. Channeling my inner Will, I wanted it to be as free and unencumbered a hike as possible. I also told no one where I was going. I just hiked up to the top of the hill where the basketball courts are and the upper pond, passed a group of campers or counselors seated criss-cross applesauce on the cement court, and disappeared into the woods.

Emphasis on disappeared.

Somewhere in hour three my the melodrama kicks in and I am hunger gaming it home, thinking about the shelter I will have to lash together with my bear hands–er, bare hands to protect me from the animals of the night, alternately trying to contact my base unit telepathically. What will they say, seated next to my empty chair? Will they joke about a “hike” to Seven Springs, making those little hook signs with their fingers; will they shake their heads and wonder where in the world Ms. Clock Watcher has gone? Will they worry? When they left I was on the porch reading a book. Then I remember, and it’s like a jolt of comfort to my mounting worry: Will knew. The only one. We had a conversation about it at breakfast when I mentioned that I might take a hike of my own. He told me about hiking to the Spring. What he didn’t tell me is that he never made it either. Apparently he came to this huge clearing (oh, really?) and there was all this huge logging equipment (oh really? You don’t say), only it was really rusty and stuck (uh huh) and it looked like it had been there for years (uh huh. Yep.) Yeah. Well.

Eventually my plans to forge a new trail or to follow the wide open and obvious ones fail. One of the logging roads I followed just ended in a little thicket at the edge of the woods again. Literally dead ended. Emphasis on “dead.” What the heck? Invested in this one is a good thirty minutes or so, I had no choice but to turn around and head back the same way. The white blazes mock me. What? Leaving so soon? Eventually by some miracle I find the place I had come out of that trail to continue on through this labyrinthian nightmare. I’m desperate enough to kick a bear upside the head, and so I mini-surrender and step back into the woods. Sure enough–trail: Beautiful blissful, well marked TRAIL, and the first familiar thing I’ve seen in a while. Here’s a sweet little well-traveled path leading back where I came from. When I come upon that little devil marker hanging in the tree I all but smack it with my improvised hiking pole, but instead I’m so relieved on the sure footing and sense of direction I could hike for days along this knowing I was going the right way.

And sure enough, the auspicious beginning of my hike hours ago now plays out in reverse order: path, lake, basketball courts, upper pavilion, playground, home. I beeline it for the dining hall, thinking to slip into my seat as surreptitiously as Will had done that very morning. If nobody sees me… maybe I really wasn’t gone. Wasn’t really lost. Instead, my stealth entry clashes with the all-but APB my family has put out, all eyes look up, and one table actually starts cheering. Guess they won’t buy that I been at the book store and lost track of time. For the second time today I find myself at table already full, filled with gratitude and relief, running over me thick as syrup over the ‘cakes and as sweet and deep as a woodland spring.