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# Lost in the Woods
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/lost-in-the-woods/
- Published: 2026-06-20T15:11:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-20T15:11:00.000Z
- Description: “Lost in the Woods” a humorous review of a day hike with children, witten Saturday, June 20, poem 171 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo, "The Fearless Five" by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Generational, Humor, Loosely Hinged, Of Place, Poems, Pun-y / Tongue-in-Cheek, Rants, Reminiscing, Unserious, Authority, Camp, Children, Community, Day Hike, Dead Birds, Elixir, Exhaustion, Five Stages of Grief, Hope, June, Leading, Mushrooms, parenting, Polities, Power Dynamics, Raincoats, relationships, Seven Stages of Mania, Victorious, Yes, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

Girl led means letting children decide  
Will we go left or right or straight?  
Will we take the bridge   
or the hollow or the hill?  
Do we stop for mushrooms   
or dead birds?  
Might we squeal at deer   
or feign exhaustion?  
Will the busy system be tested?  
Will the campsite trail maps   
lead us astray?  
Will impromptu skits emerge   
from the band of merry scouts   
traipsing along sylvan paths?  
Will each hiker cycle through   
five stages of grief   
and then tack on   
seven stages of mania?  
Will bright raincoat-clad teens   
surge ahead  
Surfing on the crest   
of rulesets while forging faster,   
manufacturing hyena-like bird calls   
as they speed walk around the next bend?  
Will they each take turns questioning authority,   
creating their own power structures,   
polities rising and falling   
faster than Rome in a day?  
Will girls share stories   
of morbid true life headline stories   
about hiking gone awry?   
Will we finally find our way into dappled,   
then full sunlight,   
and emerge victorious near the camp store?  
Will we survive this?  
Will we go from huffing to hooray-ing,   
high on the elixir of relief?  
  
The answer   
to everything,   
of course, is:  
  
Yes.