Not really lost, just a little off course...
I was hunting on the first day of deer season with my dad and my brother (almost a sacred religious ritual in rural PA) Monday morning. The plan was that my brother and I would push out a small peice of woods and that my dad would wait for us on the other side. My dad's health is pretty poor but he loves to hunt. This is about the only way that he can hunt anymore.

Anyway, I have been through this area about a thousand times in my life. It is literally just up over the hill from the family home. I spent my whole youth in those woods and I was utterly confident that I knew these woods as well as anyone, ever.
As my brother and I moved through the woods toward where my dad was waiting for us (on another road) I got to thinking "man, I don't remember this peice of woods being this big". Funny thing is that it isn't that big.
Then I came out on a road but it wasn't the right road. I was like "I don't remember this road being here." Turns out that we were on the road that we started out on about three hundred yards from our original starting point. We had made a semicircle and ended up heading completely in the wrong direction.

I had never considered a map and compass to be essential in this area because of how familiar I am with it, but I consider them essential now.

This time it wasn't a big deal. It just took a little longer to end up where we were going.
I am a little embarassed to admit this but it just goes to show that no matter how much you think you know what you are doing, things sometimes just have a way of sneaking up and kicking you in the butt. I am just glad that I learned this lesson in a relatively safe setting where it didn't do any harm to make a mistake.
It is embarassing, but I figured I should share it in the interests of keeping someone else from making a similar mistake (possibly under much more serious conditions).