The hills have ice
- 5 hours ago
- 8 min read
Ever since the boogeyvirus locked us up and threw away the key, the part they called “real” life felt like make-believe. Mom may have enjoyed the months of freedom from bras and pants with buttons, but her paws had been leashed to the keyboard for too long. I was tired of naps, and missed the feeling of strangers’ noses and paws on my butt. It was high time for a proper vacation.
To prepare, Mom and the Witch began meeting in the evenings to go trail shopping. They scrolled, tapped, and zoomed until they’d planned a route to Oregon and back. We would start in the unknown mountains of Forgotten California, and come back through the mountains that everyone knows about.
When people think of California, they think about the beaches on the left and the mountains on the right. They know about the desert in the south and the City in what they call The North. What they don’t know about California is that the part called North is really the middle. There’s a whole other half of California above the elbow that hardly anyone knows about. It’s filled with bundles of mountains you’ve never heard of, lakes shaped like strangers’ birthmarks, giant trees, and dwarfed towns.
When I jumped out of the Wagon on the first morning, the thin air filled my nose with familiarity. This mountain had seen me before!