The Wishing Maze

The sounds of pebbles and twigs cracking beneath my footsteps got louder and closer together as the night grew darker. I felt the mosquitos, moths, and mysterious flying bugs erratically touch my skin. But I couldn’t see them, even as my eyes searched.

Maybe because most of my attention was on on something else: Where was the right trail? The one that would lead me out of this cactus-filled forest became increasingly urgent for me to locate before dusk turned to night.

I had been up this trail once before, but I hadn’t taken the same way back that time. Then, I’d been accompanied by my friend who lived on this island and had been up and down the trail dozens of times before. We had taken a different route out the other side of the forest.

How did I get myself in this situation? I’d been on this island for just over a week and I was already flirting with spending the night in a bug-ridden spiky desert forest, all alone.

Earlier that year, I set the intention to acquire a strong sense of direction. I was tired of getting turned around in unfamiliar places and being helplessly reliant on Google Maps. I had learned to drive during the MapQuest era, and not long after that, I got my own Holy Beacon of Learned Helplessness: the smartphone. Thank goodness! I’d never get lost again!

But what if my phone died? This thought occurred to me later on, after it happened to me a few times while living in large metropolises of South America. When my battery drained, I’d gone from having a false sense of security to feeling overwhelmed with panic.

Furthermore, what about simply being one with my surroundings? That would be nice, I thought to myself a time or two. Imagine taking a long walk in a new city on your own, taking in all the sensory experiences, and finding your way back without a hitch. What would that be like? I had never known, even though I had explored plenty of new cities on my own.

A few months after telling myself, I want to finally be one of those people, I moved to yet another new country. This one was a Dutch Caribbean island of 160,000 people — certainly big enough to get lost in while navigating the streets, let alone up in the forest at night when nobody knows where you are and you’re out of cell range.

Willemstad is not a public transit city like Santiago is. There’s a bus system, but it’s unreliable, which is even less bearable when waiting in 90-degree Fairenheit Caribbean weather. You really need a vehicle to get around.

Instead of forking out a few thousand dollars to buy a new car, I rented a scooter. It was a fun, easy way to move around the island.

Except for one little hangup: I couldn’t reference Google Maps while driving it.

As I began venturing out into different parts of the island, I asked myself how I’d reliably get to where I need to go. I suppose I’ll have to study the directions before leaving, I told myself. Shouldn’t be too hard, I wasn’t driving more than 15 minutes in any direction.

Then I turned a new corner of the maze, confronting a series of street names that look like this:

As neither a Dutch speaker nor a Papiamento speaker, these words were no small challenge for me to internalize and memorize.

And as I dipped my toe in the waters of impossible street names, I began to notice another twist: Many times, street signs were missing. Sure, most streets have names, but the city doesn’t bother informing you what they are. But even more discouraging was that some streets just don’t have names at all.

Like shooting at a target that isn’t there.

So what did I do? Well, I had to get around. I certainly did study routes before driving from A to B, but sometimes I missed a street because the sign wasn’t there, or its name evaded me. I’d pull over, take out my phone, and hope the route would load on my 2G data with the sun beating down on my shoulders.

If this scene sounds pathetic to you, that’s exactly how it felt. I despised my Learned Helplessness in these moments. What an utter fool, on the side of a busy island road, frowning miserably on her rented scooter with her nose in her phone!

When the maze is winning, try something different

Something I learned after clashing with Chilean culture in my early 20s was to step outside of my rigidity. If there’s friction when you’re in an unfamiliar environment, chances are you’re the problem.

Why shoot at a target that’s not there? That’s a game that’s only going to end in a loss.

Instead of looking down at my phone, I decided to look up. One of the benefits of riding a scooter is a panoramic view of everything. Sure, a windshield is supposed to provide this, but if you’ve ever driven on a motorcycle or scooter you know it’s a whole different game. You can see everything around you with total clarity and immersion.

Rather than relying on methods that worked in other cities, I found something that worked better in Willemstad: looking for landmarks. The city is anything but cookie-cutter. Every street, building, and corner has its own unique look. You never pass the same billboard twice. The myriad potholes in the ground became helpful hints as to where I was, thanks to their varying shapes, sizes and depths.

Curacao is a place of many colors. The commercial buildings and houses alike are all painted in their own way. Beautiful street art and murals appear frequently throughout the island too.

Every trip out of the house was a mini-challenge for my direction-senseless mind. With every successful return home, I advanced a little further in the maze.

That evening in the woods when I was almost sure I’d get stranded as mosquito food was a challenge too. As I quick-footed through the trail with nothing but my iPhone light to inform me where I was stepping, I reminded myself of a few important things that I attribute my survival to:

Don’t panic. I knew that if I panicked I would have lost my head and lost my ability to find my way out.
Don’t get turned around. The only advantage I had was that I’d paid attention to the turns I took on the way into the forest (and I had taken about 10 turns on a 20 minute hike in). I accidentally took one wrong turn, which became apparent to me when I saw old abandoned cars in the trail that I was certain I hadn’t passed on the way up. So I quickly turned around and got back on the original trail, telling myself it’s important to not let that happen again. I would lose any sense of direction I had with me.
Move as quickly as you can without missing any trails. Dusk was turning to total night by the second.

Not long after getting myself back on track, I found the turn I’d been seeking. And then again. And then again! By the final stretch of the trail, which was through a tunnel of trees – so it was really really dark – I was sprinting. High-footing it over bulging tree trunks I remembered seeing on the way in, body-checking all those flying mystery bugs, I finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel. My shoulders dropped as I stepped onto the street pavement and headed home.

Drenched in desert sweat and adrenaline, I jumped into the pool with all my clothes on the second I reached my house. The sweet, sweet reward at the end of the maze.

Thanks to these experiences, I developed a much stronger sense of direction that year in Curaçao.

This experience is just one example of the Wishing Maze; when we wish for something, rarely is it handed to us on a silver platter. Rather, when we make a wish, we are given a maze to complete, with what we seek at the end. I wished for a better sense of direction, and I was answered with an opportunity to develop it. While it was immensely frustrating at the time, in hindsight, it’s fair.

Those who don’t reach the end of the Wishing Maze may get stuck in it forever, or choose to return to the beginning. Those who choose not to play at all stay in the same circumstances, with their same skillsets.

The people who reach the end of the Wishing Maze are rewarded with one of the handsomest prizes of all — the prize of becoming closer to who they want to be. Who do you want to become? What skills do you aspire to acquire? Put it out there, and then embrace the challenge of the Wishing Maze.

Thanks to Jonny Gios for the photo.