Why I Always Pack Extra Eyewear

A backcountry fiasco taught me to always pack extra eyeglasses or contacts lenses

By Marcus Woolf

While working on a hiking guidebook for Georgia, I learned the hard way that you should always carry extra eyeglasses or contact lenses. On a warm day in early spring, I drove to the end of Hog Jowl Road and hit the trail for an overnight hike. I was four miles into the backcountry when I paused for a snack. Suddenly, a large bee landed on my temple, and I was so startled that I swiped at it. Unfortunately, my fingers hooked my eyeglasses, which went sailing through the air. Instantly, the world was a blur, as my eyesight absolutely stinks without corrective lenses. I peered in the direction where I believed my glasses went airborne, but all I saw was dense forest and knee-high underbrush. I had flung the proverbial needle into the haystack. I removed my pack to retrieve my backup glasses or extra contact lenses, but I hadn’t packed them.

To make matters worse, I had gotten a very late start to my hike, and daylight was fading. I estimated that the sun would set in less than two hours. As I tried to remain calm and determine the best course of action, I recalled a lesson from leadership training in the Army: You don’t have to make the right decision, but you do have to make a decision, and do it promptly.

I was able to get a cell phone signal and called my friend and fellow writer Michael Hodgson, who was the most knowledgeable outdoor adventurer I knew. Over the years, he had negotiated plenty of difficult situations in the wild, and he advised me to don my headlamp and scan the ground methodically in a grid pattern. If by chance my glasses had landed in the immediate vicinity, they would reflect the light from the headlamp. I got down on my hands and knees and started searching. After a few minutes, I hadn’t found the glasses and realized I was crawling in a patch of poison ivy. Crap.

I sprang to my feet and dove into my pack to retrieve a large Nalgene bottle full of water. I immediately doused my legs with water and washed my hands to limit the effects of the poisonous plant. In my haste, I used a great deal of my drinking water, so now I was blind and facing possible dehydration. At this point, I decided I should exit the woods before I did anything else really stupid. I called my parents, who lived two hours away, and asked them to meet me at the trailhead. I needed one of them to drive my car home, as I was too visually impaired. After the call, I held my GPS a few inches from my face and used the digital map to stumble back to my car. I arrived at dusk and breathed a sigh of relief when the headlights of my parents’ car appeared in the darkness.

The very next morning I spent a pile of money on two pairs of eyeglasses and a set of contact lenses. And to this day, I never hike without backup eyewear. You need to be prepared, especially when you leave civilization behind, and wander in the woods way down Hog Jowl Road.