The red truck pulled up alongside me, tires spinning slightly in the gravel of the wash. An elderly man leaned out the truck’s window. “Do you know where you are?” he asked, voice laced with concern.

The question felt in equal parts both polite and insulting. I knew why he’d stopped. The more popular Arizona Trail had turned off from the wash about two miles back, and even though the GET continued down it, an easy assumption might be that I’d missed the turn. At least this stranger was trying to be helpful.

“I do know,” I told him, explaining briefly that I was headed into town. He left, satisfied, before I could rattle off my GPS coordinates as well, or pull out Exhibit One – my thick stack of paper maps. I knew exactly where I was.

The miles flew by as I hiked toward Mammoth. Once I reached the end of the wash, I paused, checking my maps. I needed to get over to the highway, which wasn’t particularly far away. But there didn’t seem to be a direct route. The San Pedro River lay between me and a ride to town.

The GET route map offered dubious advice: to leave the dirt road I was currently on, follow the bank of the San Pedro for awhile before crossing over to follow a cow path up to a gravel road to the highway. Two-ish miles from start to finish. Before I committed, I checked Google maps. Maybe there would be an easier-to-follow route even if it ended up being a bit longer. If I’d learned anything in all my time hiking, it’s that shorter doesn’t always mean faster. Or easier.

Google maps popped up with an apparently great alternative – back roads leading exactly where I wanted to go. I set off confidently. But less than a mile in, I stopped short in dismay. “Turn right,” said the directions. To my right lay nothing but a solid wall of trees and brush. There were only a few faint wheel rut indentations in the ground to indicate there had once been a road here.

I turned around just as two motorcyclists sped past, enjoying the seemingly endless length of the dirt road I was on, dust swirling in their wake. They probably knew exactly how to get to the highway via the fastest possible method.

Come back, I wanted to call. Do you know where you are?

My choices at that moment were either to head south, walking much of the way into Mammoth, or to try the map’s route. Despite a twinge of misgiving, I opted for the shorter “official” route.

I should have listened to my gut.

My first indication that this might not be a walk in the park came as I reached the edge of the silty San Pedro to find little trace of a bank. The water, shallow and weakly brown, lazed its way downstream, quickly disappearing around a bend where trees obscured any glimpse of whether a walkable path continued downstream. A family sat around an afternoon barbeque spread close by and looked up in silent concern as I trudged past. I was gone before they could make up their minds to stage an intervention.

Mere yards into the traverse, a thick wall of high water flood debris blocked the bank, forcing me to detour around the tangle of branches and garbage and fallen trees. One thing led to another. Before I knew it, I was separated from the river by several measures of degree. Clumps of vegetation and brush conspired with the legion piles of debris to make walking straight impossible. I had to get back to the river.

The grass here was dry and tall. Sunlight filtered down in patches through the leaves overhead, speckling the ground and playing tricks with my eyes. You see, only a day earlier I’d heard through the hiker grapevine about a hiker who had just been bitten by a rattler on the Arizona Trail, and snakes were fresh on the mind. This place looked like perfect snake habitat. Every blind footstep forward into thick grass, every tangle of flood debris I climbed over – the smooth wood bone-white and stripped bare of bark – my brain whispered, snake. Any rustle in the grass of something scurrying out of my way – snake.

I found a long stick, prodding the brush before me as I walked, and somehow made it back to the water.

There was no bank. Just a twisting, shallow river. Trees. Undergrowth and piles of driftwood. I was too far gone to go back, so I went forward as best I could. I scrambled up banks. Down banks. I climbed over the tangles of wood, remembering to step on, (not over, onto ground you can’t see). I waded through deep, silty mud, which was often carpeted in a spongy layer of pollen and cotton-like fluff, to cross the river once, twice, again. Some unseen thing startled at my approach – plop – into the water and my brain irrationally screamed, snake.

The traverse seemed never-ending. What might have taken twenty minutes on a road stretched into an hour. And still, my GPS claimed I was right on track. I knew where I was, and it was a mistake.

At some places, I found myself tracing the outlines of a shoeprint in the silt, following the same non-route, and I took a schadenfreude-like comfort in knowing I wasn’t the only poor fool who’d come this way.

Eventually, I fought my way up to higher ground to join the cow path. It started out clear and hopeful, exactly where it was supposed to be, but unfortunately cows don’t play fair when it comes to creating trails. The trail faded. Branched. Split and wound in a myriad of ways, creating an entire maze through the cacti and thornbushes. I could do nothing but resort to following the dot of my GPS until finally, amazing, I emerged onto a gravel road so wide and clear I nearly cried tears of joy.

I found a hitch into town just in time to snag the last room at the only motel in Mammoth.

I’d made it. And once again, with river water still squishing in my shoes, I knew exactly where I was: in a place where hindsight was twenty-twenty.