Lost in the Cemetery

Saturday afternoon was such a beautiful day that the family decided we wanted to do something outside. After debating a trip to the zoo or maybe a trip to a public park we decided to go hiking. I've written a couple of times about trips we've taken to the Cincinnati Nature Center (You can see photos of our trips here and here), but Natalie had mentioned before that we could go hiking at a nearby cemetery that her Girl Scouts had been to once before.

There are three--count 'em, three--cemeteries within walking distance of our house? Why so many? There's an Irish Catholic cemetery, a German Catholic cemetery, and a Protestant cemetery. We looked online, and the hiking trails are in the non-Catholic cemetery, Highland Cemetery, which is right across Dixie Highway, so we all put on our walking shoes and headed off for the woods.

It seemed like a good idea, but what we didn't count on was a) how large the Highland Cemetery is (There are parts of it in three different towns) and b) how far back into the cemetery we had to walk before we even reached the hiking trails.

It was so far, in fact, that Lisa and Meredith gave up and headed back home before we even reached the entrance of the hiking trails. Natalie and I, though, really wanted to go into the woods, so we walked on and found the hiking trails not really that much further up the road from where Lisa and Meredith turned around.

We took the primary trail, which wasn't all that long, but it wasn't short, either. It was one and a half miles, which is only six times around a track. However, when you're walking six times around a track you're not going up and down hills, stepping through creeks, and dodging poison ivy. Natalie and I did all of that, and by the time we emerged from the woods over an hour after we went in, we were exhausted.

And worse, we had no idea where we were. There were maps at the entrance of the walking trails, but I didn't feel like grabbing one. We'll probably come out right here where we went in, I told myself, and if not we'll figure it out.


But when we came out everything looked different. I couldn't find ANY reference point that would even begin to tell me in what direction to go to get back to the entrance of the cemetery. And my tension was exacerbated by the fact that we came out not in the cemetery main, but in the pet cemetery. I don't know why, but something about a pet cemetery just seems surreal. I told Natalie, "We are flat out lost."

Thank goodness Lisa and Meredith had headed home. When they got home and checked the answering machine they heard this message: "Help Lisa! Help Meredith! We're lost in the cemetery! And we're thirsty! Come find us!"

I started looking at the web browser on my smartphone looking for the Highland Cemetery website so that I could find a map of the site to tell me in which direction to go. Before I could figure it out Lisa called, laughing, and told me she was on her way. Ten minutes later she and Meredith came around the corner and picked us up.

All in all, though, it was a nice time. Next time, though, we're driving to the entrance of the hiking trails, and we're taking one of those free maps.