Mail to the chief
- Mar 9
- 9 min read
Updated: Mar 12
Suddenly, a bandit popped out from behind a bush. It stood in a star shape, blocking the sidewalk. “Oscar!” it growled.
The bandit was tall and lean, and even though her face was hidden beneath a hat, behind sunglasses, and under a muzzle, I wasn’t fooled for a second.
“Oscar! Oscar! Oscar!” The Bandit play-growled as her arms twinkled.
“Lily!” I screeched. I blasted off down the sidewalk with so much force that the leash burst out of Mom’s hand. I closed the rest of the distance in a blur, and nearly toppled Lily in a high-impact hug. “How did you get here? You’ll never believe all the things that have happened since I saw you last!” I panted over my shoulder as she gave me a ten-fingered butt scratch that went all the way to my ears.
I hadn’t seen Lily since she’d tricked Mom and me into running all those extra killmometers in the dooms. When she put Mom up to it, Lily couldn’t have known about the dangers of drinking from a shared cup. She couldn’t have predicted the risks of using snotty fingers to put unwrapped M&M’s from shared bowls into a muzzleless mouth. How could she have guessed at the life-threatening peril of sitting inside a restaurant? I’d long ago forgiven Lily for putting Mom in danger, and I was glad that Mom had finally come around to forgiving the extra killmometers, too.
It was hard to imagine that we were so primitive back then. We just didn’t know any better. Everything was much better ever since they passed a law that everyone had to eat outside with their dogs.
“Guess what!” I told Lily. “Nature is still open! You don’t even have to be sneaky anymore, they’ll just let you in the gate like in the old days. Some of the people potties are even open. Wanna see?”
“Let’s grab breakfast here so we don’t have to eat in the car,” Mom suggested. It was one of the best ideas she’d ever had.
“Did you know that some restaurants have always let people eat outside?” I asked Lily as Mom tied the leash to a table leg.
“True that,” interrupted a German shepherd, who stopped by our table on the way to the potty. “They even have public bathrooms out here.” He jumped into the planter that made the outdoor walls of the restaurant and peed on the flowers.
I don’t usually like it when Mom ties me up and goes somewhere without me, but with Lily there, I didn’t need to bark. While Mom went inside to order, I taught Lily about breakfast. “Here, let me show you how it works,” I coached. “First you say, I’d like a side of bacon. Then you ask, Can I get that with cheese? Now you try.”
Mom came back and Lily took her turn inside. “Don’t forget to tell them to put it on a different plate so I don’t have to share,” I wagged after her.
“Did you hear the thunder last night?” Lily asked as we ate our eggs.
“Yeah. It sounded close,” Mom said. “I didn’t even know they had thunderstorms on the west coast. I’ve lived out here for almost 20 years and last night was the first time I’ve seen lightning.”
“It’s rare, thank goodness, but it happens. They were saying on the news that it started a fire out by Crater Lake somewhere.”
“Sheesh. I hope they contain it quickly,” Mom said. “It seems like fire season is getting worse and worse every year.”
With breakfasts in bellies, we all mounted Lily’s wagon together. Everyone else put on their muzzles while I mouth-breathed between them.
“You’re gonna love hiking,” I told Lily. “It’s a bit like running, except that it’s slower so you have time to pee on more stuff.”
I ran from the windows on one side to the windows on the other as we rolled off the freeway and straight into nature. “You can stop there! Or… wait, that’s a good spot!” Each suggestion I made squeaked out higher than the last until I was practically whistling.
When we finally dismounted, I could hardly wait to show Lily everything I knew. I ran in circles to demomstrate what expert hiking looked like from all angles while she and Mom swung their packpacks into place.
“You follow this line, where there’s no grass and the dirt is packed down. See?” I stood in the middle of the trail where she couldn’t miss me and waggled my butt to show what I meant. “You’re a natural!” I encouraged, doing a pirouette and scampering down the trail to show the way. When I came back a moment later, I pushed Lily out of the way to get to Mom behind her. “Isn’t she doing great, Mom?”
Lily had come all the way from… I still didn’t know where Lily came from or how she knew we’d be here, but it’d be impolite to let her discover the place for herself without describing it first. So even though we had never been here before either, Mom told her what to expect.
“AllTrails rated this trail as hard, but it also said that it’s crowded,” Mom guided.
“What she means is that most people are wusses,” I translated. “So when they say it’s hard, they probably don’t mean it.”
“It climbs like 4,000 feet in the first 3 miles,” Mom recited, using the Witch as a teleprompter.
“Hang on a second, that can’t be right.”
“That sounds steep,” Lily said.
Mom poked the graph so that the Witch would show her the steepness. “It says 52 percent. That’s got to be a GPS error,” she decided.
“Forty-five means that one of the hill’s parents is a floor and the other is a wall,” I ’splained it to Lily the same way Mom had once ’splained it to me. “Is fiddy-two more floor or wall than forty-five, do you think?”
“Like you said, people are stupid,” the Witch whispered foreshadowingly. “That’s why I said it was going to be three miles when I actually meant five-and-a-half. But I don’t want to ruin all of the surprises… yet,” she added with a silent moo-ha-ha.
“At least the whole thing is less than 10 miles,” Mom promised. “It can’t be that bad.”
“This isn’t so bad,” Lily agreed after we’d hiked up a slow, wide trail for a few minutes.
“Sucker! I’ll show you!” muttered the Witch, barely able to contain herself.
“We’re supposed to turn here.” Mom led us into the forest, where the mountain hid behind a thin layer of trees. No sooner did we step into the shade than the steepness began.
The forest crowded in so close that it was hard to see the trail, let alone manage two humans at once. I was glad for the clingy trees because without their roots spilling across the trail to make stairs, it would have been one long dirt slide to the bottom. I climbed in two-legged leaps, clambering my front paws up the slope until I was standing tall like a human and exploding my back paws under me to complete a leap-froggy move that impressed everyone who saw it. Behind me, the girls climbed in ground-swallowing steps, bringing their knees almost to their chests and grabbing tree branches to hoist themselves to the next step.
Every time we met other hikers on the narrow trail, someone had to step into the woods and cling to a tree to keep from tumbling downhill. When other people stepped off the trail for me, I joined them under the tree. While we waited for Lily and Mom to pass, I would press my butt into their legs with a doggie hug so their free hand could scratch my rocketblasters during the tedious wait. After the girls crawled by, I inspired everyone with a new show of strength as I re-launched up the slope. I collected many new fans on our way to the top.
By the time we came out of the trees and onto the sunny crown near the summit, I was drooling like an enchanted waterfall, Mom’s shirt was raining, and Lily looked even more sparkly and vibrant than before. From here, the mountain was too steep for even trees to hang onto. The sun dried us while I led our expedition through the rocks and wildflowers.
“Have you ever seen flowers?” I asked Lily. “These ones are called feather-flusters.” I tried to roll in them so she would notice, but the mountain sucked me farther downhill than I’d planned. I jumped to my feet and climbed on. “And these ones… oh, these are very rare. They’re called floofs. They were discovered by Dr. Seuss in the eightieth century.” I zipped past them to show how their dainty pedals waved in my wake. “And these little ones here, they’re called 1970s linoleum. It’s an heirloom breed…”
“You’re so handsome!” Lily told me when she saw how nice the crushed flowers looked under my waggly tail.
“You’ve sure got a talent for this hiking thing,” I told her. “There are people who hike for years without ever noticing how handsome I am.”
The people of Oregon had never seen a dog quite so excited to see them either, and they were starstruck by my squealing, wiggling enthusiasm. They rubbed in the compliments while their own canine sherpas sat like obedient sticks-in-the-mud, snobbishly rolling their eyes away while I stole the hearts of their families.
No matter how high we climbed, the mountain just wouldn’t quit. Every time there seemed to only be a few steps between me and the sky, I would come over the rim to find more rock reaching even deeper into space. All around me, mountains stuck like fangs into the sky. Behind them, the lopped-off cone of Mt. Hood stuck out like a glowing tongue.
By the time the other mountains were no longer around us, but below us, there was nothing left of the trail but slippery dirt and rolly-polly rocks. My Fans had nothing to hang onto when I stopped to inspire them, so I was careful to push in the direction of the mountain when I offered my butt for scratching. With my butt facing the mountain, I watched Mt. Hood with each new Friend as it rose like a moon in stop motion above the shrinking range.
Finally, I came over yet another rise and there was no more mountain to climb—only sky above and around me. Hikers were strewn on the ground like bowling pins on strike, and standing tall in the center of the devastation was…
…a mailbox.
“Oh no!” I tap danced urgently as Mom and Lily clawed their way onto the scene behind me. “This must be a mailman’s hunting grounds. Don’t worry. It looks like he’s already eaten today.”
Lily and Mom took their place among the spent hikers and I went to inspect the mailbox. It looked more like a shrine than an active mailbox, covered with flags and offerings like it was. It reminded me of pictures from the summit of Mt. Everest except that there were bumper stickers instead of flags. Where climbers lovingly placed photos and gifts in Everest’s white dirt, the hikers who conquered Mt. Mailman left offerings of empty drink cans and divorced flip flops.
“What does it mean?” I sniffed.
Mom squinted at the Sharpie inscription on the pedestal. “I have no idea.”
“It’s a mystery why the native people of this land worshiped the Mailman,” I told Lily, who was probably wondering about the history of the place. “Read the inscription to her, Mom.”
“It says f—… It says duck. Nothing else. Just duck.”
“I don’t think even a duck could fly this high,” I bragged.
“Let me get a picture of you 2 before we go.” Mom held up the Witch in one hand and flapped the other one in the direction of the mailbox to show where we should pose.
“This is the worst part of hiking,” I whispered to Lily. “Follow my lead and I’ll help you get out of it as fast as we can. What did you do with the hat?”
Lily pulled a crunched up hat out of her pocket and snapped its elastic under my chin. “You’re such a good boy, Oscar.”
“I know… I know…” I told her. “But she won’t let us leave until she gets the picture. I’ll wear it this time, but next time it’ll be your turn, okay?” I jumped onto the biggest rock just like I knew Mom wanted me to and waited for Lily to find a place next to me.
“How did you learn how to jump on rocks like that?” Lily asked admiringly. She leaned in and I licked the sweat off her face for the camera.
“If you only knew how many rocks she’s made me jump on. That Witch is full of nothing but snark and pictures of me sitting on rocks. Let’s get another one of us kissing. Muah!”
Want to keep reading? Grab Oscar’s book, No Place Like Alone on Amazon.
