Raise your hand if you’ve ever lost your phone. Raise your hand if you’ve ever lost your phone somewhere in the middle of five acres of pasture you’ve been mowing with a six-foot whirling brush hog blade.

Best case, it’s just hiding somewhere, somewhere under the acre or so of mulched grass that you’ve just mowed. Worst case, it went through those whirling six foot blades and has been either a) mulched or b) chucked god-knows-how-far elsewhere – either into the as-yet-unmown portions, or the woods beyond. Or c), of course: both.

It was already a not-particularly-great day, and getting out and doing some tractoring was my way of channeling my frustrations into something productive, by means of diesel and 1970’s Michigan steel. As always, I was layering my noise-canceling Bluetooth headphones over those good old fashioned yellow foam earplugs. It helps to have something to listen to as you tear around the pasture in big rectangular circuits at three miles per hour.

For some reason I’d thrown on a hoodie that morning. (Meghan: “Don’t tell me you put your phone in the hoodie pouch. Just don’t. Nothing should ever go into the hoodie pouch. Except maybe your hands.”) So I popped my phone into the hoodie pouch instead of the usual deep pants pocket. I mean, when you’re strapped into the tractor, it’s hard to get to the phone to adjust volume or change stations, right?

You can get pretty into the groove when you’re tractoring, but it was around the third or fourth lap that I noticed that the music had stopped. Hmm. Puzzling. Reached into the hoodie pouch (“Look, if you put it in the hoodie pouch, can you honestly say you were surprised it was gone?”), and was surprised to find that my phone was gone.

Kept the tractor rolling around the next two turns while I contemplated several disappointing scenarios.

I was heartened near the top of the pasture when, of their own accord, my headphones went “Boop – Bluetooth connected!”  And then, fifteen or so seconds later followed with “Boop – Bluetooth disconnected!” At least my phone wasn’t completely shredded somewhere out there. Stopped the tractor, climbed off and spent the next half hour walking in grids of Boops trying to triangulate the center of connectivity. Kicked at the grass. Pawed at it. Got down on my knees to try and get an angle that would glint off the morning sun. At least twice got the idea of calling my phone and reached in my pocket to…

Okay, we’d do this the high tech way. Walked back to the farmhouse, where I had an iPad and fired up the Google “Find My Device” app. Which helpfully depicted my phone somewhere in the middle of a featureless field. Thanks, Google. Also, a note of UX feedback: in addition to showing where my phone is on that fancy blank slate map of yours (no, you can’t change to satellite view), how ’bout you also show me where I am on that map? Like you do on normal Google maps?

Very helpful, Google. Why can’t you let me overlay visuals, or, at the very least, show me where I am in this picture?

I did manage to get Find My Device to divulge the lat/lon coordinates where it believed the device was hiding, which I transcribed to ordinary Google Maps and plotted walking directions back to just about where my triangulation suggested the phone should be. Pushed the “make my phone ring” button on the finder app and heard…nothing. Another UX favor here, Google: I know a lot of us keep our phones on vibrate to avoid creating disturbances when we receive calls. But when someone pushes a button on your app that says “Play Sound,” perhaps they want it to actually, you know, play a sound? Not vibrate? Work with me on this one.

Another half hour of kicking and pawing through the grass before I decided to try to more traditional tools. Tromped down to the barn and loaded a rake and weed whacker into the back of the minitruck. Fueled up the weed whacker. Discovered that the minitruck was also out of fuel. Fueled up the minitruck. Finally ready, I turned the key and…minitruck battery was dead.

Jumper cables, jumper cables…none in the barn. Meghan had a set I could borrow, but she was on the run for harvest day, and needed her truck. And since I now drive an electric car, I couldn’t jump it myself.

At this point I was not far from giving up, hopping in that damned electric car and driving the hour down to Silverdale to just buy myself a new phone. Sometimes retail therapy is the right solution. And sometimes, you really need an excuse to sit in the solitude of your own car and wallow in the self-pity of your oh-so-first world misfortune.

But. Elyse was working up by the greenhouse with her van. Maybe I could ask her? Sure, she said – but should we have a go at her calling my phone first?

I explained that it was on vibrate and began running through my litany of sorrows as we tromped back up to the pasture with Fig and Otter and a bonus dog in tow. She called twice while we both listened and kicked through the mulch in the general location that I’d charted, pored over and dragged my hands and feet through for the past hour.

Thirty seconds later she says, “Oh, is this it?”

My saviour

[Oh – and Tasmania. I sort of dropped off the edge of the world after that last Tasmania post, didn’t I? Sorry about that. Halfway up the west coast, bouncing along the deserted dirt roads of the Tarkine Wilderness, I felt the narrative voice just kind of slipping away, and decided I’d roll with it, so to speak. Just let myself be in the moment. You understand. Continued to be a magical time, and I’m dearly hoping to be invited back next year. Selected pics here, if you’re interested, and more stories if you catch me over coffee or a beer some time.]