The forest was dark, even though it was still the middle of the morning. The sky had been dark, too, before all those trees got in the way.
Mom scrunched down in the driving chair to get a better look at the gloomy sky between the thick branches. “I don’t know how people live like this.”
“Live like what?” I asked. “Are you afraid that the squirrels will finally band together to plot their revenge?” With such thick branches, they could be meeting by the zillions and we would never know.
“I mean living in Oregon. Didn’t they notice that California is right there. Why wouldn’t you keep going a little farther to get out of this dismal swamp?”
“What’s the matter with Oreg—”
“In two hundred feet, turn left,” the Witch butted in.
“What? There?” Mom leaned closer to the window for a better look as the mailman van slowed to second-guess the Witch’s advice. “It isn’t even paved. Google shouldn’t be sending innocent, unsuspecting drivers down random dirt roads. It doesn’t seem safe.”
“Good girl!” I cheered. “The Witch is full of lies. She’s been playing you for a fool this whole time. And you keep falling for it. Why, she did it just yesterday. She took us to Oregon when we were aiming at California, remember?”
“True. But it’s not like people just followed some bad directions and never got out again. People decide to stay here. People even risked their lives to get here on the Oregon Trail. To live in a state with the climate of an unfinished basement.”
The mailman van didn’t turn. The Witch went silent as we continued uphill on the paved road. Sometimes the Witch’s silences are meaner than anything she ever says out loud.
Even Mom noticed that the Witch wasn’t heckling her for missing the turn. “Oh dog doo. I forgot. We’re out of cell service again. Now that we’ve missed the turn, it can’t recalculate. So much for finding the trail.”
“I thought the Turtle taught you the secret to having the Witch memorize the mapp,” I said.
“Yeah, but there was no cell service where we slept last night and I’ve been driving ever since. I haven’t had a chance to figure it out yet.”
“So we’re lost?” I asked. “Again?”
“We’re not lost. I was aiming for this forest.”
The mailman van had no idea that we had already arrived without the Witch telling us so. “We’re gonna miss wherever here is if we don’t slow down,” I helped.
“We’re still a couple of miles from the trailhead, according to that map I just erased. But that specific trail isn’t what I came to see.” Mom looked into the dark shadows beside the road like she was remembering a fond memory. “When I was younger, I used to look at maps of logging roads and imagine what it would be like to explore all those paths to nowhere.”
“Are we going to be lumberjacks now?” My tail twitched at the thought. “I bet lumberjacks get to chase lots of squirrels from the trees they chop down.”
“Maybe. A lumberjack is as good a lifestyle as any, I suppose.”
“What’s the lumberjack life like?” I asked.
“According to the song, they chop down trees, eat their lunch, go to the lavatory. And maybe some cross-dressing on the weekends.”
“I would be so good at that!” I said. “See, Mom? You thought you wouldn’t find a job that we could do together, but it all turned out okay in the end.”
“Anyway, now that we’re here, I don’t really have a plan. I just picked a random trail because it was in the middle of a huge green spot on the map and it gave me something to aim at. There wasn’t anything special about it, as far as I could tell. We could drive around until we find another interesting place to stop, then get out and explore.”
“But won’t we get lost without a trail to follow?”
Mom waved an arm at all the windows. “There’s a trail every thousand feet. This whole forest is a network of trails.”
The mailman van kept rolling as the road curled up the hill. Mom’s movements got faster and fidgetier the longer the Witch stayed silent. Her eyes whipped across the window as another dirt road slipped by.
“It’s hard to know when you’ve found a cool spot just by sight,” she said. “I feel like a rat in a maze.”
“Aren’t rat mazes filled with cheese?” I wagged. “Roll down the window so I can help navigate by smell.”
“I doubt there’s a mountain of cheese waiting over the next hill, but the pioneers found everything their heart desired out here.”
“What does a heart desire if not mountains of cheese?” I asked. “Were they looking for mountains of... bacon?”
“If they made it all the way out here, and if they could live with this weather for four whole years, the government gave them 640 acres of land for free. You can grow a lot on 640 acres.”
“We could grow a whole orchard of bacon bushes!” I drooled.
“Don’t get your hopes up. I’d never make it four years in this dreary rainforest.” She gave a nasty look to the dull sky behind the treetops. “I’d rather die in Utah than live in Oregon.”
The road ended in a circle that sat like a monk’s bald spot on top of the hill. The mailman van rolled part way around the circle and came to a stop. Mom pulled the all done lever behind the driving wheel.
“We might as well get out and stretch our legs,” Mom said.
I pressed my nose against the window so I’d be ready for launch the moment the door opened. After I’d pranced the zoomies out, I snorted a giant noseful of the wet-dirt-and-rotten-pine-needle scent floating on the breeze. “I love the smell of Oregon in the morning,” I wagged.
Mom stood at the edge of the bald spot looking out over the rumpled hills lumping one after the other all the way to the sky. Each one had a road curling its way to the bald spot on top, like chapel full of monks with their heads ducked in prayer. Here and there, teency school-bus-grey trucks and digging machines crawled like lice through the trees.
“I guess this would look like a land of safety and abundance after six months of trekking through the mountains, desert, and wilderness,” Mom said in the voice she uses to describe exotic customs she doesn’t understand. “But how in the world did they get across the mountain passes of the Rockies and Sierras on wooden wagon wheels. Not to mention the deserts.”
“I don’t see anybody,” I said. Besides the tiny trucks and bulldozers, the place looked abandoned. “Maybe when they saw it, the pioneers were as disappointed by Oregon as you are. Where do you think they went next?”
“They probably moved on to California or Seattle seeking a better life.” Mom looked at the road we’d just driven up. “How about we leave the van here and run to the trail instead?”
Mom swung on the packpack and we started running downhill. “The turnoff can’t be more than a mile from here,” she said. “It won’t add that much distance.”
“How will we know when it’s time to turn?” I asked.
“The same way we always do. I’ll just look at the... oh.” Mom looked at the Witch in her hand with the confused look of someone trying to turn on the TV with a banana. “Dog doo. I forgot that I cancelled the directions back there. And we’re out of cell service. All I know is that the trailhead was a couple of miles that way.” She waved her arm at some trees to show which side of the mountain the trail was on.
“How will we find something we’ve never seen before in a place we’ve never been?” I asked. “We’re definitely lost now.”
“We’re not lost. We just don’t know where we’re going. The trail is lost, and we’re searching for it.”
“Oh good, I thought you didn’t know where we were.”
“All I know is that we’re on the side of some unnamed mountain in the Middle of Nowhere, Oregon.”
“Now you’ve done it!” I said. “You told me when we were hiding from the Zodisack that we couldn’t be lost if we knew where we were. If you don’t know where we are, and you don’t know where we’re going, and you don’t know how we get there from here, we’re definitely lost for good.”
“We’re not lost because we still know the way back to the van,” Mom said. “You can’t be lost as long as you know how to get back home.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “I guess we live in Oregon now. And you said that living in Oregon is a fate worse than death.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Mom said, like she hadn’t been complaining about Oregon all morning. “The Oregon Trail emigrants had never seen their destination before, either. They made up parts of their route as they went, just like we’re doing now.”
“And they all made it to Oregon safely in the end, right?” I asked.
Mom shook her head like it was a very silly question. “You’ve never played Oregon Trail, obviously.”
“How did they find their way around the made-up parts without cars, or Witches, or mapps?” I asked.
“By following the tracks of the wagons that came before, just like we’re following this road. Aren’t you curious about where it goes?”
After some time that may have been only a few steps or maybe a dog-year, we came upon a dirt road. “Look! We’ve already found the first turn!” I said. “You were right, Mom. This Oregon Trail thing is a cinch.”
Mom’s mouth scrunched on the side of her face as she inspected the car-trail. “This doesn’t look right.” Mom’s always second-guessing ideas that aren’t hers.
"Of course it is. It’s made of dirt, just like before. Don’t you remember?”
“Wasn’t it supposed to be a left?”
“What’s left?” I asked.
“It’s this side,” Mom waved the paw closer to the trail to show me what left meant.
“Perfect," I said. “That’s the same side it was on earlier. Let’s go!”
“But we’re facing the other way.” Mom kept wiggling her left fingers, but turned back toward the mailman van. Suddenly, the wiggling fingers were on the side away from the trail.
“How did you do that?” I asked, looking around for the trick.
“Left becomes right when you turn around,” Mom said, like I was supposed to believe that.
I tilted my head to shuffle the ideas into a way that made sense. “You’re just trying to trick me about left so that you can be right,” I solved.
"It’s very abstract. Your dog-brain wouldn’t understand,” Mom said. “Come on. Let’s see if there’s another road farther down.”
To be continued next week...