This week continues last week’s story. If you haven’t read Oregon Trail Pt. 2 yet, you can read it here.
I flew down the trail just slower than a fall. At the last moment, the road turned quick as a rollercoaster and stopped short.
In front of me, the trail was clogged with a tangle broken branches and jagged rocks. Some of the rocks and roots still had dirt clinging to them as if they hadn’t given up the ground without a fight. The mess plugged the whole forest like fur in the bath drain, leaving not even enough room for an ant to go over, under, through, or around.
“Well dog doo,” Mom said when she came around the bend to join me.
“No thanks, I don’t have to go right now,” I said.
“It’s a dead end.” Mom took a step to the side, as if looking at it from a different angle could unblock the trail. “This must be where they throw all the roots and branches they can’t use.”
“Use for what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you use lumber for. Picnic tables? Paper? Porches?” She sighed and turned around. “I'm not looking forward to running back up that hill.”
“I’ll show you how,” I said. “Follow me!” We had already tried the uphill road and the road that led into the dark forest, so I knew just what to do when we got back to the fork.
Except the fork looked different coming out of the dense forest than it had before we’d gone in. The only remaining road to try was on the downhill side, but now that it was on my other left and its twin slope was still burning in my legs, it looked less “down” somehow.
“This way, right?” I asked.
“Bombs away,” Mom agreed.
I did as I was told. This hill fell more slowly and gently than the last. When it finally bottomed out, it twisted gradually and gracefully through the trees. Had Mom finally figured out this orienteering thing? I trotted around another turn, and...
... there was another fork!
“Which way?” I asked the woods behind me again.
“Oh fudge. I can remember one turn, but too many turns can be confusing.” Mom looked over her shoulder to see what the trail would look like in the future if we ever made it back here again. “And if we wind up on the next hill over, I could lose track of what hill the van is parked on. We could get lost for real.”
“You can’t be lost if you know how to get home again,” I said wisely. “Maybe we should test if we're lost by seeing if we can find the mailman van from here.”
“I have an idea,” Mom said like I’d asked her for advice rather than helping her with a wise suggestion of my own. She looked at the ground around her shoes like she was searching for a scent with her eyes. Before I could correct her technique, she picked up a stick.
“Mine?” I asked.
“No. Leave me alone. I’m being resourceful.” She picked up a second stick.
“Is that one one mine?” I asked, trying not to prance noticeably.
“No, get out of the way.” She hugged both sticks to her chest to make them harder to snatch away as she picked up a third stick.
“That one’s gotta be mine. Quit hogging them!” It came out as a screech, but I didn’t care.
"Cheese. Chill out. I’m almost done.” Mom arranged all three sticks on the ground in the shape of a chicken’s pawprint. Or a fork in the road.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I said. “It’s more fun if you throw them first. Want me to show you?”
“Okay, let’s go!” Mom said, leaving her chickenprint of sticks in the dirt without chewing a single one.
I ran after her to let her know she’d missed the best part, but by the time I caught up to her, there were new sticks on the road and it wasn’t worth going back for them.
We kept running through the forest for what might have been miles or minutes. It’s hard to tell when everything is new and everything looks the same. Soon enough—or finally—we arrived at another fork in the road.
“Do you want me to help you with the sticks?” I asked.
But this time Mom wasn’t looking at the ground. She was looking at a sign trying to blend in with the trees beside the road. “Look! Look! It says Kentucky Falls!”
“Down with Kentucky! Long live the Oregon Trail!” I cheered.
“Kentucky Falls is the name of the trail, potato-head. It says it’s half a mile this way."
“But how will we find our way back to the mailman van if we wander all the way to Kentucky?” I asked, but she was already running away. The word Kentucky echoed in my head until the sounds warped and it sounded like a rap beat more than a name.
Kentucky - Kentucky - KenTUCKee - kin TUCK key - Kan’t uck kee - Kan’t touch me
We came around a bend and I spotted the unmistakable house-shaped sign for a trailhead. As soon as I saw it, I ran ahead. “I can lead from here!”
The trees hugged in tighter as I followed the skinny dirt line deeper into the forest. Mom’s footsteps didn’t follow me.
When I turned to see what was wrong, Mom was still standing in the road. “Get back from there,” I said like she tells me when I wander off the sidewalk. “Do you want to be roadkill?”
“We’ve already run like 5 miles. We should get back to the van.”
“But...” I said. “But...” I said again. “But... we came all this way.”
“The trail is like another 6 miles out and 6 miles back. That would make something like 20 miles by the time we got back to the van. More if we got lost along the way.”
“It’ll be an adventure and a challenge, just like the Oregon Trail,” I reminded her.
“We shouldn’t push our limits in the wilderness like we can at home,” a stranger said with Mom’s mouth. “We need to keep some energy and supplies in reserve in case of an emergency or if we get lost.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my Mom?” I barked. “When you find a trailhead, you’re supposed to follow it.”
“Give me a break! We ran. We explored. We had an adventure. What more can the trail give us that we don't have already?” The imposter pretending to be Mom turned and began running away back up the trail.
I watched her go from the trail. I could follow, but what if the Momposter was really a dog-eating monster? I could stay and explore myself. I looked back at the trail disappearing into the trees.
Then I remembered what Mom said about living in Oregon being a fate worse than death. I took my chances and trotted after the Momposter.
“There you are,” the person who looked like Mom and ran like Mom said. “I thought you were gonna try to live in Oregon forever.”
That sounded more like the Mom I knew. “How will we find the mailman van?” I asked, just to test her. The real Mom would say we weren’t lost and then describe what being lost was like.
“We’re not lost,” Mom said. “We just have to retrace our steps and do everything we’ve done before, but backwards without losing track of where we’ve been.”
“Oh phew. I thought for sure I’d lost you,” I said, running ahead.
We ran back up the road, but everything looked even more different than before. We’d run on so many car-trails that looked just like this one that morning that it was hard to remember where anything was. When the road split at the fork, nothing looked familiar. There was no uphill or downhill, just two left trails and a lot of trees.
“Now we’re really lost!” I said. “We’ll never find our way back to Oregon at this rate.”
"The sign, don’t you remember?” Mom pointed her eyes at the little wooden sign camouflaged in the trees. "It was on the right when we got here, so we want to take the trail on the left.
Two could play at that game. “No you’re left and I’m right,” I said. “Ha! Take that!”
Mom took a few steps past the sign and turned back toward me. “C’mere. Now look. Does it look familiar?”
I stood next to her and looked back. The kaleidoscope of trees and moss fell into a pattern that made sense. “I’ve been here before!” I wagged. “We went that way to find the trail. Should we go back to Kentucky to get our bearings so we don’t get lost again?”
“We’re not lost!” Mom flapped her arms in exasperation. “It means we must have come from this direction. Let’s go!”
When we arrived at the next fork in the road, I knew to look for clues. It’s a good thing, too, because if it weren’t for Mom’s stick sculpture, I never would have recognized the place. Neither road looked like anything I’d seen before. Or they both looked like places I’d been.
“Now we’ll never find the mailman van!” I whimpered. The rumbling in my tummy and the creaking in my leg muscles was starting to make me feel the same way about Oregon as Mom did. “All that ice in the chest is gonna melt and my cheese is gonna drown before I can save it. What will I eat now?”
“It’s this way,” Mom pointed her arm down one of the roads like she was taking aim.
“How do you know?”
“Because I left that arrow on the ground, remember?” She nudged one of the sticks with her shoe to make the chickenprint clench.
“The what?”
“The arrow I made out of sticks to show what direction we came from.” She nudged the chickenprint's middle toe to make the heel wiggle like it was trying to get my attention. “What did you think I was doing?”
“Hogging the sticks.”
We ran in the direction the chickenprint told us to go. With all the forests looking the same, it was impossible to tell if we were on the right track at first. Then the road tilted up.
“Oh no! Now we’re definitely lost,” I said. “The road we took to get here went downhill, remember?”
“Downhill becomes uphill when you’re going the other way,” Mom said.
“Oh sure. Just like left becomes right and a mistake becomes your plan the whole time.”
“Exactly,” she said, not getting that the joke was on her. “I thought even dog brains could understand how hills work.”
“I expect (pant) that kind (pant) of talk (pant) from the Witch...” it was hard to get my timing right while running uphill. “...but don’t (pant) let it rub off (pant) on y—“
“See?” Mom interrupted when we reached the top of the hill. “I was right.”
Mom charged through a lopsided intersection of four trails without even slowing to consider her options. “Wait! How do you know this is the way back to Oregon?” I called after her. “Don’t you think it could be down one of these other roads? The one with the dense forest, maybe? Or the one that went uphill?”
“We made it!” Mom shouted over her shoulder from half way round another bend.
When I caught up, I followed where her eyes were pointing. Like magic, a paved road appeared in the forest. There was a tire-patterned fan of dirt on the black asphalt where the two roads met.
“How did you do that?” I asked. “Make a road appear in the middle of the wilder-ness, I mean?”
“The same way the Oregon Trail emigrants did. By instinct and by keeping my wits about me.”
"No, really. Have you been tricking me on purpose? Are you in cahoots with the Witch?”
Mom narrowed her eyes. “Us humans know things,” she said, like it was very special to be a human.
Pavement has a way of making the rest of the world fade into the background so it’s less distracting. I let the pavement carry me uphill without worrying about where it was taking me. Time slipped by without my even noticing.
I had feasted on three imaginary plates of bacon, and was starting on my fourth when I noticed that sky had replaced road up ahead. As we plodded closer to the bald spot on top of the hill, the mailman van rose like a moon against the sky. Even though my heart recognized it as home, my eyes saw its egg-shaped splendor as if for the first time. It was like old became new when I turned around, the same way left became right and downhill became uphill.
The mailman van may have looked old, but not in a bad way. More like an antique that would make people say admiringly, “they don’t make them like that anymore.” And its coloring was bright as a sheet—part blankie and part tent. It wrapped snugly around us while we slept and would keep us dry when the Oregon rains came.
My heart fluttered with the rediscovery of a nice feeling that I hadn’t noticed I missed until I felt it again. No matter where Mom and I went, home would never be far, so we could never be truly lost.
“Hey, Mom. Have you ever noticed how the mailman van looks like a covered wagon?” I asked. “Like the pioneers used on their road trips?”
She tilted her head. “Hey. You know what? You’re right.”
“It’s round, white, and carries our whole life inside,” I added. “And it keeps heading to Oregon, even when you don’t want it to.”
“I think you just found the name for our van.” Mom slid opened the door. “Come on. Let’s see how good this Covered Wagon is at finding its way out of Oregon.”