Bushwhacking could be within your reach, as long as there's plenty of stuff to hang onto, which there usually is in dense woods; and if you have some idea of where you're headed, and allow yourself plenty of time. And watch your feet - I've tripped more than once on sticks not quite underfoot. And respect your limitations. Slow and careful...
I took such an excursion yesterday into that brand-new conservation area, to a place I've been before - a pond/marsh of a few dozen acres at the bottom of a gully between hills, in the middle of undeveloped forest. No trails, except for the fragmentary remnants of a few ancient, overgrown skidder tracks. I zig-zagged south for about a mile through the bush, found the marsh & a dry place to sit...
... so I sat, paying homage to the water, the awakening frogs, the breeze, the ambience, even the heron that kept daring me to field-swap the lenses on my camera.
Then I headed back uphill. At no point did I ever know precisely where I was - but I did know that keeping my shadow pointing to 2:00 would keep me on a northerly course eventually bringing me to the road I live on. In fact, about a half-hour later I hit the stone wall defining my southern property line. I'd even managed to keep my feet dry. Had to negotiate a few windfalls on all fours, but swapping a little dignity for a bit of transcendence seemed a fair trade.