Sometimes when we get lost — nothing unusual for me — we still find things.
As I wandered through Dundee, Scotland, I got twisted and turned on my way to find the Law, the city’s lookout point, even after I jotted down directions from a local resident. (I know you’re wondering how anybody can miss a city’s highest point?) On my meandering, I chanced upon the Miley Urban Wildlife Refuge stretching along an abandoned railroad right of way.

There, between Old Kings Cross and Clepington Road, the trail passes under the arches of two sandstone bridges built in 1859. Flowers bloomed, primrose and Queen Anne’s lace and others. Rabbits, one of them plump and slow, crossed the slightly muddy trail ahead of me and hopped into the thickets that line it. The sound of birds competed with the sounds of unseen traffic and an invisible trash truck. Raindrops glistened on leaves and on moss-covered rocks. I nodded hello to a man hiking with a German shepherd.

It wasn’t Dundee’s highest point, but it provided a high point of the day. And I realized it wasn’t necessary to find the Law after all. I was pleased to find something I hadn’t looked for.

I marvel at monarch butterflies and salmon and sea turtles and migratory waterfowl that navigate thousands of miles and end up where they want to be. No maps, no compasses, no trail markers, no signs — and, over the oceans, vast nothingness without visible landmarks. I don’t know how they do it, although it’s evident that genes and instinctive memories of places they’ve never been more than compensate for the absence of GPS.

In contrast, getting lost is the norm for me, whether on the Interstate or back roads. I can’t tell north from south or east or west unless the sun is rising or setting. Actually, I’m the kind of person who often rotates the road map to ensure I’m turning in the right direction at an intersection or highway exit.

The backcountry poses an even more serious challenge.

Wild blueberries tempted and delayed us as my son, our Cairn terrier and I set off along the Interloken Trail between Seneca and Cayuga lakes in New York’s Finger Lakes National Forest. I was writing a recreation guidebook to national forests, so this afternoon venture was, in a sense, a business trip.

Our planned hike was to be five miles, but those blueberries would prove to be only the first of several reasons why it took longer and went further than expected. We started at a trailhead near a campground, cut east onto Gorge Trail, then north along the graveled Mark Smith Road, intending to take Burnt Hill Trail west back to our starting point.

Along the way we stopped to examine a fire-scarred maple. The trunk was adorned with a distinctive off-white fungus that resembled barnacles arranged in vertical ladder rungs on a seaside pier post. We took a break to examine opaque plastic tubes sticking up from the forest floor like 5-foot-high ventilator shafts, part of an experiment to accelerate the growth of oak seedlings and protect the saplings from browsing animals.

There also was time added and extra distance hiked when we got lost, but more about that mild embarrassment in a moment.

Hiking is more than a way to move from place to place, from a starting point to a destination. It’s an avenue for observations. Ours included blueberries and blackberries, streambeds dry in late summer, horses’ hoof prints baked into the mud, ferns along a swampy area, wild apple trees, a toad on a dead oak leaf and dried pine needles carpeting a steep downhill slope. We headed through a gorge with enough trickling water to satisfy our dog, hot and thirsty after snuffling at unfamiliar forest scents.

To understand how our plans went awry, you need to know that Finger Lakes National Forest includes wooded areas and rolling pastures. Farmers rent the fields to graze their cattle from mid-May until mid-October, so hikers must take care to close and secure the gates after passing through them.

The trails though the woods were well marked and well worn by human feet, making it impossible to get lost. However, trail markers were missing in the fields, where tall grasses, purple clover and abundant wildflowers such as brown-eyed Susans obscured most of the footpath.

So we wandered and wandered, and wandered some more. We had no compass, and I repeatedly studied my maps, hoping in vain for inspiration. As we changed angles in search of the gate leading to Burnt Hill Trail, birds nesting in the high grasses flushed at our approach. A landmark radio tower seemed to change location. We followed a rusting barbed wire fence line to no avail. At one point, a pale yellow butterfly flew ahead of us. A beacon? No, a tease. It apparently didn’t know where it was going either.

We finally came across what looked like a path — a cow path. Soon we encountered several Holsteins enjoying the shade of a copse of evergreens. “Lost in a field? That’s pitiful,” my son said. The comment was on point but unhelpful.

In truth, it was pitiful, so we backtracked to a gravel road, walked a short distance west and picked up the Interloken Trail where we had begun our hike. As we neared the original blueberry patch, it was time to pause again. Wild blueberries were a reward, deserved or not.