There is a track that runs up between two blocks of woodland near me, and about a mile along it there is a spot where the ground goes soft. Not muddy, soft, the kind where your boot goes in and comes out with a noise. The first time I hit it I went through anyway, because I was over a mile in and turning around felt like admitting something. I got through. It took twenty minutes to cover two hundred yards and I lost a good deal of skin off one shin climbing out onto the bank.
I went back four months later in a dry spell and walked the same section in three minutes. The track was fine. The track had never been the problem. The problem was that I had decided in advance that I was going to finish, and that decision was made before I had any of the information.
Sunk cost is the whole thing
Every bad decision I have made on a walk has the same shape. I have already walked an hour. Turning back means walking that hour again with nothing to show for it. Pushing forward means maybe another twenty minutes and then a road.
The trap is that the hour is gone either way. It is not a deposit I get back by continuing. I know this perfectly well sitting at a table writing it down, and I have still stood in a wet field doing the arithmetic wrong.
What has helped is having a rule I set before I leave rather than a judgement I make in the field. Mine is loose: if I hit something that will take more than fifteen minutes to get past, and I do not know for certain what is on the other side, I turn around. Having decided it in advance means I am not negotiating with myself while standing in it.
The three things that make me turn back
Ground I cannot see the bottom of. Standing water on a track is fine if I can see it is two inches deep over stone. Standing water in a rutted field gate where I have no idea whether it is ankle or thigh is a stop. I have been wrong about this twice and both times it was deeper than it looked.
Livestock I do not understand. Cattle in a field are usually nothing. Cattle that all turn and look at me at once, or cattle with calves, or a single animal on its own away from the group, I go around or go back. I do not have the experience to read them well and I am not going to learn it the hard way.
A route that stops making sense. If I have been following what I thought was a path and the wear underfoot disappears, that is usually not a faint path. It is usually me on an animal track. The moment I notice I am the only thing that has been through here, I go back to the last point I was sure about.
Going back to the last sure point beats pressing on
This is the single most useful habit I have picked up. When I realise I am not where I meant to be, my instinct is to keep going and find something recognisable ahead. That instinct has never once worked for me.
What works is returning to the last place I was certain about, even if it costs half a mile. From there I can usually see what I did wrong. Twice it has been obvious the moment I stood back at the gate: the path went right and I had gone straight because straight was flatter.
The reason pressing on fails is that every step you take while lost makes the next decision harder, because you have less and less idea where you started from. Backing up is the only move that reduces the problem.
The abandoned walks are worth more than they feel
I keep notes now, and the turnarounds are the most useful entries I have. Not just where, but what the conditions were. The soft section that stopped me in November was walkable in March. The field with the cattle is empty for most of the year. A path that vanished in July because the crop had grown over it was clear and obvious in April.
Three routes I now walk regularly were failures the first time. If I had written them off permanently instead of writing down why they failed, I would not have them.
Turning back is easier alone, which is a problem
When I am on my own, turning around costs me nothing socially. I just do it. With someone else along I feel a pull to keep going, because they came out for a walk and I do not want to be the one who ends it early.
I have learned to say the reason out loud instead of just the decision. Not I think we should go back, but that water is deeper than it looks and I do not know what is under it. Every time I have done that, the other person has agreed instantly. It turns out they were usually thinking the same thing and were also too polite to say it first.
What a turned back walk actually is
I used to come home from an abandoned route feeling like the morning had been a waste. That feeling has mostly gone, and not because I talked myself out of it. It went because enough of those aborted walks turned into something later.
A walk I turn back on is still two hours outside on my feet. It is still information about a piece of ground I did not have before. The only thing it is missing is the shape I had drawn on a map the night before, and that shape was never the point. I have to remind myself of that about once a season, usually while scraping mud off my boots by the back door.