Lost. How is this even possible?

Haleakalā, Maui, Hawaii

From a recent news story.

WAILUKU, Hawaii (AP) — A Hawaii woman who was found alive in a forest on Maui island after going missing more than two weeks ago said she at times struggled not to give up.

Amanda Eller told the New York Times that despite these moments, she told herself "the only option I had was life or death."

"I heard this voice that said, 'If you want to live, keep going.' And as soon as I would doubt my intuition and try to go another way than where it was telling me, something would stop me, a branch would fall on me, I'd stub my toe, or I'd trip," said Eller, 35, a physical therapist and yoga instructor. "So I was like, 'OK, there is only one way to go.' "

The Hana Highway on the wilder side of Maui.

Now a disclaimer.

I've never been lost.

Never.

I've spent a lot of time in the sticks and in the woods by myself and not once in my life have I been lost.

For that matter, I've spent a lot of time in big cities all over and I've never been lost in them.

I'm not exactly a globetrotter, but in my time on the ground in three countries (including the US, of course) on two continents, I've never been lost.

So perhaps I simply don't appreciate this.

But I've been to Maui, and I just can't begin to grasp how a person could possibly get lost on Maui.

Yes, there's some wild areas, sort of, on Maui, but come on.  All water flows downhill and its wet.  Walk downhill anywhere in Maui and you end on on a beach.  It's frankly not all that big.

I can see how you could get injured. There are rugged lands.  You could trip and break a leg, a real danger in hiking by yourself.  You could fail to appreciate the nature of volcanic terrain and take a bad fall and be killed.

But lost?

That's only possible as we've become so acclimated to our manufactured cubicle world that we're really clueless.