We ran down the paved road with the shadows of branches on our heads and the smell of clouds in our noses. Ahead, on the other left, a dirt car-trail came to meet the road. Where they came together, a fan of dirty tire prints smeared the pavement, as if nature were trying to reclaim its territory.
“Look! Mom! Another road, just like you said there’d be!” I ran ahead to show her the way. “And there are sticks!”
Mom hurried to catch up. “Yes! I remember that log now. This is definitely where the GPS wanted us to turn!” She paused for a second as if to catch her breath, or maybe it was to make me watch her put her hands on her hips and say, “See? We can figure out a lot more than we think if we just keep our wits about us.”
“Goody!” I was so excited, I couldn’t help but run. “If this is just the road to the trail, I can't wait to see what the actual trail looks like. How much farther is it?”
“I have no clue.” Mom had never admitted anything like that where the Witch might overhear her before. “I think it was a couple of miles from the turn, but I wasn’t really paying attention. And what if the map was wrong? How well-mapped can these fire roads really be? And that’s not even factoring in if we get lost.”
“I thought you said we couldn’t get lost!” I gasped. Suddenly, the mailman van felt very far away.
“Don’t think of it as getting lost. Think of it as a grand adventure.” Mom lifted her chin and looked confidently into the trees. Her head fur flapped fearlessly in the breeze. “It’s as if we were setting off in search of our fortunes on the Oregon Trail!”
When she put it that way...
“Hang on a second!” A thought hit me. It was the kind of thought that was hard to think all at once. “Didn’t you say you would rather put toothpicks under your toenails and kick rocks than live in Oregon?”
“I said that?”
“It was more of the vibe in your thought bubble.” I trotted toward adventure on the road ahead.
The suspense grew right away. Up ahead, the road split in three like a twisted pitchfork. “Look, Mom! Another challenge in our grand adventure! Which one should we choose?”
“Oh dog doo,” Mom said. “I didn’t have a plan for more than one turn.”
We stopped to study our choices. The one on the sometimes-left went uphill so steeply that it shook off its trees and climbed naked toward the sky. The path on the other left fell gradually down until it was swallowed in a thicket of timber. I couldn’t tell where the path in the middle went. It plunged into the darkest forest yet and faded from view without giving away a hint about its plans.
Mom petted her chin as she considered each road we could take. “Let’s think about this: Usually they build roads up to a destination.”
“But what if your destination is a valley? Or a canyon?” I asked.
“Think about it: Why would you go to all the trouble to build a road over a hill if there weren’t something interesting on that hill to see. Otherwise you’d build the road around the hill to get to the next hill faster.”
“Ah yes. I forgot that roads are wimps that always take the easy way out,” I said, so she wouldn't think I hadn’t known it already.
“If there’s a trailhead in here somewhere, I bet it’s uphill.” Mom made a crisp nod like a checkmark to show that she’d figured the whole thing out.
“Is that science?” I asked. It’s hard to tell the difference between science and one of Mom’s guesses when she disguises balderdash behind big words.
“Maybe,” Mom shrugged her shoulders, then shrugged her eyebrows. There was a twinkle in her eyes. “It might even be true. Let’s find out.”
She began chugging up the hill.
I followed Mom uphill, but the trees did not. Only a few steps after the turn, the forest beside the road began to thin. A few more steps, and the view of all the other hills we weren’t running on took up more of my eyes than the trees. Then, the trees backed into the distance.
“If there were really a trail, don’t you think we’d see it from here?” Mom asked, as if it were my job to navigate without the Witch.
“Yes,” I said confidently. Not because I knew the answer, but because it was what the Witch would say if she didn’t know the answer to something.
We ran until the road ended in another bald spot on top of another hill. There was still no trail at the summit, but there was an interesting jagged hole in the ground filled with water. I sipped its cool water while I waited for Mom to catch up. It tasted like rain, forest floor, mist, and wilder-ness.
“You should drink some, too,” I said when Mom joined me at the edge of the pond. “It’s very important for a pioneer to stay hydrated.”
“No thanks. Every kid who grew up in the 90s knows how easy it is to die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.” Mom pulled a bottle of water from the packpack. “According to the game, almost everyone on the Oregon Trail died of dysentery. Or at river crossings. We should be careful around water.” She took a big gulp of the dangerous stuff and looked around. “Maybe we can hike behind the quarry.”
“Don’t we need a trail?” I asked.
“Nah. A trail is just the forest floor with most of the pine needles and sticks removed. Sometimes the pioneers had to make their own routes that suited them, remember? Let’s give it a try.”
Walking on a cluttered forest floor is harder than it sounds. Bushes crowded in to claw at our sides. Trees burst out of the ground anywhere they felt like, making us wander in confusing squiggles. I worried how we would find our way around when we couldn’t see the little pond to orient ourselves, but the worrying was unnecessary. Before we got far enough for the pond to be out of sight, the ground dropped away in a very unwelcoming steepness.
I sniffed the ground for a clue of where to go next. Behind the scent of rotten leaves and dead logs, I could barely make out the smell of metal and... was that...?
“Look! Mom! Artifacts!” I sniffed around the cold footprint of a campfire. “Do you think this was where the wagon trains stopped for the night? Or do you think it was the Native people?” I sniffed a bottle crusty with dirt. “Pabst Blue Ribbon! The traditional drink of the pioneers. And is that...” I sniffed carefully at the ashes. “Cool ranch Doritos?! Do you think it’s from the original Cool Ranch. Doritos sounds like a Spanish name. Were there Spanish missionaries on the Oregon Trail? Or cowboys, maybe?”
“Get out of there!” Mom swatted her hand at me. “People must come up here to party, not to hike. Let’s go back to the fork and see what’s up the other trails.”
It’s funny how distances get shorter when you’ve seen a place before. And when you’re going downhill. The trip up the hill had felt like a long journey, but when we turned back, it took no time at all to run back to the junction.
Now that we’d tried the uphill side, there were still two paths we hadn’t explored: the flat-ish path into the dark woods, or the downhill path that also disappeared into the woods before revealing its secrets.
I stood in the center of the fork and looked back at Mom. “Which way?”
“Let me think.” She scowled into the forest as if it would give up its secrets after one hard look. “If we go downhill, that probably means that the road is taking us to the next hill over. But remember when we got out of the car, it looked like there was a road to the top of every hill. Like every house has a driveway.”
“So we’re going downhill?” I asked, trying to sound like I understood. “Because that must be the road to every hill in Oregon?”
“No. These roads were built to be convenient for the logging trucks to go directly to each site. If the trail were on the next hill, I bet the GPS would have sent us to the next hill’s road, not this one.” She pinched between her eyes and scrunched up her face like it hurt to think so hard. “So if the trail must be on this hill, we should try the middle trail that doesn’t go up or down.”
“I’ll lead the way!” I volunteered.
I ran down the dirt road into the thickest woods we’d visited all day. The trees surrounded me like a teeth and the forest swallowed us down its leafy gullet.
The road wove through the dark belly of the forest like an intestine, keeping me in suspense with every step. It didn’t twist so much as wiggle out of view to keep me from seeing into the future. Just when I was starting to get the hang of the deep forest, the road made a sharp turn and dropped down a steep slope.
“Drats! It tricked us again,” I panted. “It’s taking us to the next hill against our will!”
"We might as well see what’s down there.” Mom took a tiny step forward and leaned to peek down the slope. “It’s not like we know the trail we were looking for even exists. We could have been los— I mean, who even knows if the GPS is any good out here.”
“She was never any good, Mom. That’s what I’ve been trying to show you. The answers were inside you all along. The Witch just bounces an uglier version of what you already know back at you to mess with you.”
“You’re probably right. Maybe we never would have found the trail, even with the GPS’s help.”
“Yeah. We could have spent all day driving and wishing we could get out and explore like we’re doing right now,” I agreed.
“Okay. Let’s see what’s out there.” Mom stepped over the edge of the steep hill. “It looks slippery. You go first.”
“Bombs away!” I got a running start and plunged deeper into adventure.