When we left off, Oscar and Mom had just safely forded the river, conquering the most treacherous challenge on the Oregon Trail. “Okay, now, where’s the trail?” Mom looked around with hands on hips. "It’s up there,” I said. “By the bridge.”
A few bushes up the river, a little bridge stood over an even frothier part of the stream.
The mightiness leaked out of Mom’s dauntless pose. “Oh. How did I miss that?”
“You wanted the trail to be challenging, remember?” I said. “That means making things harder than they need to be. That’s why you forgot to look for the easy way and now your shorts are wet.”
She peeled the cloth off her leg and flapped it around a little to show how almost-dry it was already. “They’re running shorts. They’re supposed to dry out quickly.”
“You don’t have to beat all of life’s levels by yourself, you know,” I coached. “Sometimes someone has already come through to make it easier, but you have to take their hints.”
“It’s important for people to be self-reliant, Oscar,” Mom said in a bossy tone that matched the prickles on her legs. “You don’t understand because you’re a dog, so you have everything done for you. We humans can’t always expect our moms to come in ahead of us to remove all the obstacles.”
“Yeah, but what if they have anyway?”
“Okay, fine. I guess we don’t always have to be living in hard mode.” Mom stomped away toward the bridge.
Now that we’d conquered the river, the trail climbed a safe distance from the lake and shook off its puddles out of respect for our bravery.
“Does it ever seem to you like the world is testing us?” Mom asked the ground in front of her. "We’ve been picking our way through puddles and mud for miles. It’s only after we decided to do things the hard way and succeeded that it actually got easier.”
I didn’t like where this was going. Especially since that static sound was back.
When we came around the next bend, a river mightier than any I’d seen so far was rushing head-long toward the lake. It was in such a hurry that it hardly looked like water—more like a river of foam and anger that sprayed up and sideways as much as it flowed down. It looked like a waterfall tipped over and was running across flat-ish ground.
Over the top of all that madness was a bridge wide and sturdy enough to drive a wagon across.
I looked at Mom, but this time her eyes didn’t wander off the trail to look at the riverbank for the hard way. I ran ahead to show her the way to the bridge, just in case.
When we reached the middle of the bridge, Mom stopped to watch the river. She stood there calmly watching the water fight its way through the narrow passageway under our feet. This time, her eyes weren’t wide with dread like they were when she had that waking nightmare under Mt Hood.
I sat next to her, glad I was up here and not down there. “Scary things can be kind of exciting when you know you’re safe, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah. Cliffs, steep mountain passes, rough conditions, fast rivers... snow—they’re all better from a distance.” I didn’t correct her about how white dirt was better up close. “But the best views are often in the most precarious places.” Mom rested her chin on the railing between her paws. “I guess that the most spectacular things in nature are the most dangerous. Every once in a while, things don’t play out as expected. It takes wisdom to know when to push it and when to back down.”
“I thought backing down was for losers,” I said wisely.
Mom peeled herself off of the railing and started walking again. Behind us, the river still raged, even though no one was listening anymore.
“Have you noticed how easy mode isn’t as fun?” I asked.
“Yeah. The mud and puddles weren’t a challenge, they were just annoying. And have you noticed that the views aren’t as dynamic?” Mom waved a hand at the lake without looking up.
“Dogs don’t hike for views, we hike for smells,” I reminded her.
“When we’re on tough trails with lots of exposure, the view is always changing.” Mom gave the tree trunk beside us an unimpressed look. It wasn’t doing anything that the trees on the other side of the lake hadn’t done a million times already.
“You don’t need to expose yourself for a thrill,” I said, thinking of when she mooned the moose.
“Exposure just means something you can fall off of. Maybe it comes from the idea that you have to expose yourself to more risk to see more. All we’ve seen today is the same view of the mountains.” She looked up again, just to make sure that nothing had changed. “When they aren’t blocked by trees, that is. The most exciting part of this hike was when we crossed that river.”
I didn’t like the lesson she was working up to. “Can we find another way to make excitement without getting wet?” I asked.
“The important thing is that we have a choice. A challenge that finds us when we’re not ready is just scary. But a challenge that we accept is exciting.” Mom walked through a puddle without even flinching. “We should be thoughtful about what challenges we accept.”
“Let’s not accept challenges from anything that’s wet,” I said, running around the puddle so my paws could keep drying out.
Mom went on with her speech as if I weren’t there. “Like tonight for example—we could probably sleep beside the road again, but doesn’t it sound nice to stay somewhere with a shower and wifi?”
“For what?” I especially didn’t like the shower part. That’s just a bath that falls from the sky.
“Okay, those things are for me.” She stabbed her heart with her finger. “But don’t you want to go somewhere with a Denny’s nearby so you can have bacon and eggs for dinner? And maybe a side of home fried potatoes?”
So all I had to do to earn bacon and eggs was to challenge Mom, like a duel?
The idea was so brilliant I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. She’d never back down once she accepted the challenge.
“I challenge you to take me back to Idaho to go potato picking,” I said.
“Potato picking isn’t a real thing.” She shook her head to make her lie more convincing. “I just made it up to be funny. Dogs have no sense of irony."
“No time for ironing now,” I said. “We might miss potato season.”
When we got back to the Wagon, Mom checked the Witch’s opinion.
“Boise?” the Witch asked, as if Mom had asked where to find the best mustard-and-toothpaste sandwich in Missoula. “Every trail in Boise looks like this.” Her face showed trails through scratchy grass and hills in the shape of a half-made bed.
“There are potatoes under there!” I wagged.
“It takes so long to get out here, I don’t want to waste a day on something boring.” Mom cast her finger around the Witch’s face in a complicated dance of scratches, swipes, pinches, and squints. “Sheesh. There isn’t much in southern Idaho. Or eastern Oregon for that matter. Look! Here’s that place where those homicidal yogis took over a small town in the 80s and tried to poison the locals.”
“They poisoned the potatoes?” I gasped. “That sounds like a job for Oscar the Sleuth, greatest dogtective on the frontier!”
“They didn’t poison the potatoes, they poisoned the salad bar. Which, no wonder it didn’t work. Who in rural America was eating salad in the 1980s?”
“When did they invent potato salad?” I asked. But Mom wasn’t listening.
“This one looks okay, but it’s called Strawberry Mountain. Isn’t that... kind of... you know...” she trailed off in that way that meant she wanted to play the guessing game.
“Girlie?" I helped. “Sissyish? Nancy pants?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a place where a salad bar is a murder weapon,” I pointed out. “Who knows what they can do with a fruit salad...”
“At least it shouldn’t be snowy,” Mom said, dropping the Witch into her lap and pulling the seat leash across her chest. “I never thought I’d spend so much time worrying about snow in summertime. It’s is the one challenge we may never overcome.”
“Don’t forget about finding the legendary potato orchards of Boise,” I reminded her. “You just said that was an unsolvable mystery, too. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
The sky got smaller, or maybe the land grew back to its normal size as we got closer to Idaho. When the Witch welcomed us back to the Potato Kingdom, it was high time for lunch.
“Look! A farmer’s market!” Mom said. The Wagon started clicking the warning that it was about to leave the freeway. “I haven’t had a fresh vegetable since that guy stole my avocados.”
“If you’re craving a salad, better to eat one here before we get back to Oregon.” I jumped into the copilot’s chair for a my first glimpse of a real-live Idaho potato farmer. I hoped they’d be willing to share their secrets.
The Wagon rolled into the kind of rest stop whose biggest attractions are usually a flush toilet and a trash can. Today, farmers sat behind a clump of tables piled high with peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, and kale.
When I dismounted the Wagon, I was so excited that I could hardly hold it in. My tail wagged hard enough to shake a doo loose. I had to wait for Mom to go back for a bag, then take a detour to The Trash Can before I could introduce myself to the farmers.
I stuck my nose over the top of the first table to smell the goods. “One peck of potatoes, please!" I ordered cheerfully.
“Can I please have a pound of strawberries?” Mom asked the lady behind the table.