We were recently given permission to put some hives in an abandoned lemon orchard by the owner. I took a bait hive and a pallet with our phone number on it and drove out to the lemon orchard. The lemon orchard is land-locked by olive orchards and hay fields. I carried the bait hive the ten minutes to the lemon orchard and started walking around to determine a good location for the hive. The dense grass and the weeds, including thistle and other thorny bushes were taller than me, so it was not easy to navigate around the orchard or to figure out exactly where I was at any given moment. After scouting out the length and breadth of the lemon orchard, I settled on a spot about one-third of the way in from the bottom and about mid-point from side to side (or at least so I thought). I went back to the car to retrieve the pallet, which was on the heavy side, and after carrying it on my back into the orchard and not finding the hive, I put the pallet down so I could more rapidly and easily locate the hive. It took me less than 10 minutes to find the hive, but then I could not find where I had set the pallet. I walked around and around the orchard, trying to re-trace my steps, and like something out of a bad movie, realized I had been over and over the same ground multiple times without finding the pallet. I finally decided I would have to resort to brute force and starting walking back and forth in the orchard one row at a time, until about thirty minutes later I finally came upon the pallet. Now I had to find the hive again, which luckily, and embarrassingly so, was only about fifty feet away and I managed to stumble upon it rather quickly, even if not as the crow flies. It was amazing that even in a small orchard, it was possible to lose one’s bearings for so long. It reminded me of the time I decided to take a short cut in Big Bend National Park in Texas and was totally lost in a vast and unforgiving wilderness area – but that’s a story for another time.