I met my 2 sisters and 2 nieces in Virginia for our Thanksgiving break. We were staying at a resort in the Shenandoah Mountains. It was Thanksgiving Day and we had breakfast, lunch, coffee, snacks, and finally we decided to get in at least an hour or two of hiking before we had dinner that night. One niece wanted to stay back at the resort – there was an important hockey game on (she adores hockey), so my 2 sisters and one niece and I headed off to the park to get in our hike.

The Shenandoah National Park is huge. We picked up a map at the park entrance of the hiking trails available. We found one that looked good – about 2 miles. Since it was already 3:30 pm we would just have time to do the trail and get out by sunset.

It was a beautiful day - sunny and slightly cold – perfect for a brisk hike. We walked for a while and fairly quickly, my sister and niece walked at a faster pace and we lost sight of them on the trail. The trail wound down deep into the dense forest. The trail was wide and covered in several inches of fallen leaves. I treated the walk as an active meditation. I kept chanting Datta’s mantra – “Om Dram Dattatreya Siva Baba Swaha” - silently in my mind and felt calmer and lighter as we walked. My mind became more and more still, merging with the near silence of the forest.

Sunset was approaching. There were no more signs on the trail and we hadn’t seen or heard my sister or niece for at least an hour. 20 minutes after sunset it was very dark. There was no moonlight and few stars in a mostly cloudy night sky. It was also starting to get cold and I was only wearing a light fleece jacket. I also realized I didn’t have a flashlight, a cell phone, water, or food, since we expected to back at the car in an hour before we went to dinner that night. It crossed my mind that some of the animals that lived in the forest might come out at night as well. Yet I still felt calm and kept chanting Datta’s mantra.

The trail started to get a little rocky. It didn’t seem to be a “groomed trail” any longer. I heard water and could barely make out a stream running across the trail in front of us. My sister and I had been mostly silent as we walked that day. I felt calm but I wanted to see what she thought about our circumstances.

I said, “I think we’ve left the marked trail. Even before it got dark I hadn’t seen any trail markings for a while. It’s too dark to go back and too far. Also, we have been steadily descending all day, which I don’t think we should have done, according to the map, so we probably left the designated trail a long time ago.” My sister sounded nervous, but said she had noticed what looked like headlights flashing every once in a while ahead, above the tree line, so there was probably a highway nearby. We decided to just keep going ahead, on whatever seemed like the most “groomed” part of the trail we were on, since that would most likely lead us outside the park.

I kept chanting Datta’s mantra silently. As I looked ahead I saw little twinkling lights on the trail running straight ahead of us. They weren’t very bright, more of a soft light, but distinct. I looked at the sky – it was still dark with no Moon, so the light wasn’t coming from the sky. I looked off to the side of the trial and it was very dark there - I could only see a couple of feet – and there were no twinkling lights on either side. As we walked, I saw the twinkling lights running ahead of us, almost like you see on an airport runway guiding the planes on and off the grounds. Within a half hour we came to the end of the trail and the edge of the state park and saw a road and some houses ahead of us.

As we were leaving the park we could make out a large sign at the start of the trail we had just exited. I walked back and stood within a few inches to read it. It said, “Danger. Do Not Enter. Utility Road - Not for Public Use.”

We walked out to the road. There were lights on in the house and we decided to go knock on someone’s door to ask where we were and to see how we could get back to our car and hopefully meet up with our other sister and niece.

The first house had several barking dogs. They sounded like big watch dogs. I didn’t want to stop there in case the dogs were loose, so we walked ahead to the next house. It looked like a “friendlier house” – there was a wreath on the door and more lights were on. We stood there for a minute and were about to walk up to the door, when a car pulled up and a woman asked, “Are you all looking for your sister and a little girl with her?” We looked at each other almost laughing at the synchronicity of the whole thing and gave her an enthusiastic, “Yes!”

She told us she had just dropped them off at the local general store – which happened to be open 365 days a year - even on holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. She also told us that we were 50 miles from our car because we had walked about 7 or 8 miles all the way down the mountain on the fire road (the road that the forest service uses to battle forest fires when they occur). To get back to the car, we would have to go up and around the mountain again on the state highway. Then she said we were really lucky we hadn’t run into any wild animals because, bears, and bobcats and wolves are plentiful in the park and they can get a little aggressive in the cold months. In fact, she said here husband is a logger and he got chased out of the park that same week by a bobcat when he stumbled across it while working. She said she would drive us to the store to join our family. She also said she would drive us back to our car herself but her husband was waiting for her to have Thanksgiving dinner. She said we could call a cab from the store though, and get back to the car that way.

We walked into the store and I saw my sister was there looking really anxious. (She is a nurse anesthetist, CRNA, she administers anesthesia during surgeries, so she had been worrying about hypothermia since she remembered I just had a light jacket and the temps could reach freezing at night in the forest.) I gave her a hug and said everything was okay. We were both so relieved. We were on the verge of laughing and crying at the same time. It was really incredible, as soon as we walked out of the forest we got picked up in about 5 minutes by the same women who had picked them up 20 minutes earlier.

15 minutes later the store owner came by. He also owned an Inn close by and had just served Thanksgiving dinner to about 600 hundred people. He said it was one of his busiest days of the year. He said it would take too long to get a cab and the forest service wouldn’t help us, so he would drive us back to our car himself – 45 minutes one way, 50 miles from his store. He insisted. We asked about his dinner and he said he always eats late that day, since it is a working day. So, we got in his car and he brought us back to our car.

So, okay, we had walked miles from our car, deep into the wilder part of the forest, at night, on Thanksgiving and we were untouched. In fact, we were barely inconvenienced. First, the twinkle lights showed the way out of the dark forest. Then, within about a half hour of leaving the forest, we were being escorted/driven back to our car. I felt like we were literally in God’s hands – profoundly safe and protected. Really, it was a perfect way and the perfect day for a huge reminder about being thankful for our grace and blessings and all that is good. Thank you God. Thank you Datta!