Mom’s voice snapped me awake. “Other mucker!”
I jumped to my feet. “Where? I’ll get him!”
“Lay down!” Mom said in an ungrateful voice. She pulled the blanket back over herself and patted the warms spot I’d left before there were so many other muckers about. I checked out the window to be sure, but nothing was moving in the dark night, so I lay back down.
When she was sure I’d settled, Mom turned back to the Witch. “I just read a review that said the upper lake on tomorrow’s trail is still under several feet of snow. How can there still be snow everywhere? It’s almost Memorial Day!”
I hoped Mom couldn’t see my tail wagging in the dark as I thought about rolling in even more white dirt. “We haven’t left Idaho yet,” I said helpfully. “We could go potato pi—” Mom’s leg stiffened and I changed my mind. “... we could go somewhere like Good Boise.”
“There’s nothing else around here. Not even another mountain,” Mom muttered to the Witch. “Oregon? More like BOREgon! No wonder a town in these parts could be taken over by a yoga class run amok. A volleyball team could outnumber them.”
“So what will we do?” I asked, hoping it was yummy.
“The trail goes by two lakes.” Mom's finger scribbled around the Witch’s face as she peered into the future. “There's supposed to be a trail around the lower one. We can walk around that if we have to, but the really cool scenery was higher up at the second lake.”
“Don’t worry, all scenery is cool when I’m sitting in front of it,” I told her. “I’ll show you how every place is fun if you’re paying attention. You’ll see!”
Mom thumped her head into the pillow and yanked the blanket closer to her chin. “We should get an early start in case something unexpected happens. It might be a long day.”
I knew something was wrong before I even opened my eyes. When I did, my peepers only told me what I already knew. The darkness was already melting and I could see Mom without the Witch to light her face. That hexed hunk of junk had let Mom sleep in again! Oregon made Mom grumpy enough, but being late would make her even grumpier.
I stared at her sleeping face, but there still wasn’t enough light for the silent alarm clock trick to work. After a few impatient huffs didn’t get the job done, I aimed a paw at her belly and stretched.
“Ow.” Mom rolled over and showed me a bonier part of her back.
“Oh! Did I wake you?” I nudged my nose into her ear and gave it a kiss. “Good thing. The sun is almost up. Didn’t you say you wanted to get to the white dirt as soon as possible?”
“Idaho is an hour ahead of Oregon.” She pulled the blankie over her head.
“What does that mean?”
“It means go back to sleep,” the blankie said.
“Did you know that potatoes are very active at this time of day?” I told her hopefully. “I need to go pota— I mean, I needa go potty. Yeah. That’s it.”
“Fine!” Mom sat up and threw the blankie over my head as if by accident. It was a trick she used a lot to give herself more time to wake up. Blankies are confusing. You never know when it’s going to tie you in knots or turn into a maze. Sometimes I fell asleep before I made it out. This time, I escaped just in time to join Mom on a potty break.
“We’d better get out of here before anyone sees that hole you dug,” Mom said as we passed the moose nest.
“Actually, you’re supposed to dig a hole to go potty when you’re camping,” I told her. “You would know that if you weren’t such a city sucker.” Now that there was more light, I had to admit that my discovery was shaped more like a loaf than an egg or a potato. There was nowhere for the antlers to fit. Maybe it was a dinosaur egg?
“Are you coming?” When I looked up, Mom was standing with the people-potty door open. Its smell was strong enough to pickle every potato in Idaho.
“I can’t wait to use a real bathroom again.” Mom’s voice sounded hollow in the dark potty cave. There was a clattering noise near where the sound was coming from. “...where they replace the toilet paper more than once a month.”
“I can’t wait to let someone else make my coffee for a change,” she said a little later as she dragged the tray that was also the kitchen counter through the dirt to find the least wiggly spot. When she opened its lid, the stove screamed and Mom’s face scrunched. “And not to have to set up the kitchen every time I want a cup of coffee.”
“I thought the whole point of this trip was to be self-deficient,” I said. “Like the Oregon Trail winners or Lois and Clark.”
“Everything is such a production though. By the time we hike, drive, and eat, there’s no time for anything else in the day.”
“What else would we do?” I asked. I’d never done anything but hike, eat, sleep, or copilot. I didn’t know a day needed anything else in it.
“A shower, for one.” Mom pulled the collar out of her head-fur, but the tail stayed in the same place all on its own. She scraped the rebellious furs into line and tied the collar back on. “If I didn’t need to spend 20 minutes making coffee, I’ have time for a shower. Or at least time to drive to a place with a shower. Or getting a hot meal that didn’t come from a can.”
“But all the best meals come from cans.” I gasped. “Spam comes from a can!” Did she want to eat kibble my whole life?
“Dream bigger!” Mom swept her hand through the air as if she were painting the sunrise with a single stroke. “You could be eating eggs and bacon at Denny’s.”
“Really?” I asked, too dazzled by the idea to tell her to quit fooling.
“And you know what else they have at Denny’s?” she asked in a tempting voice.
“What?”
“Potatoes!” she said. “You can have them any way you want. Hash browns, home fries, tater tots... And do you know what you get when you come for lunch?”
“Moose burgers!” I ordered.
“With fries! And not just home fries like you get with breakfast. You can have thin-cut fries, waffle fries, curly fries, sweet potato fries, steak fries...”
“I’ll have all of them!” I ordered.
“Maybe tonight. First, let’s check out this Strawberry Shortcake of a trail.”
We drove through the empty gold-grey prairies of Oregon as the sun rose in the back window. When the sun was high enough in the sky not to notice it anymore, the Wagon turned onto a dirt car-trail.
As the wheels crackled and ground up the trail, a forest unlike anything I’d seen that morning closed in around us. One minute we were in the grassy countryside of Doggiexote, and the next we were in the deep, dark forest of the scary part a fairy tale. The Wagon stopped under the awning of a tree.
Mom swung the packpack onto her back, stuck her hands in her pockets, and marched forth, looking only at the trail right in front of her. “I didn’t know we’d be in the woods,” she grumbled. “The pictures made it look like this spectacular alpine vista. Probably one of those fake stock photos people add to trail listings so you’ll rate it badly and the locals can keep the place to themselves. Serves me right thinking there’s anything worth visiting in Oregon.”
I looked into the dark forest ahead, but the trees hid any hint of what the future might hold. “If the pictures were a trick, does that mean the froofy name could also be a prank,” I wondered.
The trail opened onto a lake surrounded by a wreath of trees. The water twinkled in the sunlight, but other than that, it looked a lot like Montana without the clouds. I hoped Mom would keep her promise about not making me swim through anything unexpected.
“Have you noticed?” I asked.
Mom looked around the lake for something to complain about. “Noticed what?”
“There are no more clouds over Oregon,” I said. “It's like you said about how things fix themselves if you don’t give up.”
“Yeah. I can see why this would look like the promised land after the deserts and mountains along the Oregon Trail. Poor fools! It’s nice in late May, but just you wait until November!”
The trail led us around the side of the lake until trees blocked our view again. “At least we’ll get the shady side done early.” Mom always got a little grumpy when she couldn’t see the future. “That’s where most of the mud will be.” She stomped in a slimy spot hard enough to leave a shoeprint that might last the whole summer.
But the farther we went around the lake, the soggier the ground became. We hopped around puddles and into a clearing. While Mom pulled a fresh water bottle out of the packpack, I scoped out the path ahead. On the far side of the clearing, the trail pinched down to its regular size, with thick bushes crowding each side. After a few gooey steps through shoeprint-smeared mud, it dove under a humongous puddle. More of a lake, really.
“Look, Mom!” I said. “I think I found the second lake. And you’ll love this part: there’s no white dirt around it at all. Wanna take my picture?”
I took a drink from the puddle while I waited for Mom to catch up. On the far shore, the rest of trail was dark and down-wise. It reminded me of another trail in Oregon what felt like a lifetime ago.
“C’mon, Spud,” Mom’s voice came from behind me. “It says the trail goes this way.”
Mom was looking into a brighter clump of trees, where the hill spread out the branches enough for some sun to sneak through. A narrow trail curled up a slope that might climb only as high as a tree or all the way to the moon for all I knew.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “All the hiker tracks go that way. Look, you can see them.”
Mom looked at the uphill trail like an old cowboy looks at a new horse. “The trails that go uphill take more work, but they have the best views. I think Oregon owes us this, don’t you?”
“But the uphill trail is usually a dead end,” I reminded her. “You just wind up on top of the hill looking at all the places you could have gone.”
“Most of this trip has been looking for places we could have gone but can’t get to. At least the pictures are better at the top of a hill.” She flicked the Witch to back her up. “It says this trail climbs another 800 feet or so to the second lake.”
“Is that a lot?”
“It’s about as tall as the hills at home. Can you believe we’re already at almost 6,000 feet? That’s more than a mile high, but it doesn't feel like it.” She looked around like Oregon tricking her wasn’t such a bad thing after all. “We’ve driven around so much that I didn’t even realize we were at altitude. Some days you have to climb the mountain and some days you get to start right below the top, I guess.”
“So you’re saying that we’ve finally earned it?”
“Silly dog. You don’t earn things from nature. Nature deals luck randomly. We just have to be prepared for anything so we can survive a bad hand long enough for the cards to be dealt again.”
“Isn’t that what earning it means?”
“I just mean that it isn’t—” We came around a bend in the trail and Mom sucked in a gasp that stole the complaints right out of her mouth. “Oh, Oscar!” was all she could say, but not in a Mom-like voice at all. It was the voice of someone who wore petticoats and ribbons in her hair.
To be continued...