We spent that morning getting lost on the mountain trails
down the road from our house. Not our usual walking trail, a different one we
have left unexplored for so long, mostly because it requires traversing a
stretch of the main road that runs perpendicular to our little dead-end road.
It is still a country road made of dirt and gravel with wildflowers spilling
out onto the edges from the ditches on either side, but it is a thoroughfare
and it is not uncommon to see a car or two.
Cars make Murdoch’s brain shut off to the point he thinks he
is invincible, a giant even, that could very likely catch and eat the metallic
beasts as they rumble past. I become nothing more than a nuisance fly buzzing
about behind him, a superfluous accessory to get snagged on things and slow him
down as he lunges after his prey. So, Murdoch and I came to an agreement years
ago that we would not venture on to that road together lest we kill each other.
But there was this trail, we heard, one that would take us
up to the top of the mountain where we could look out over the valley. Our
usual trails have become so familiar, an adventure seemed like a good idea once
we discovered we could get to an access point of the trail by walking through
our woods and emerging onto the road for just a short stretch before being able
to duck behind a line of trees into a meadow on the other side.
So this morning beneath an overcast sky we headed into our
woods, taking a left instead of a right to crash
through the line of trees that
contains our world, and crossed the road without incident. Once in the meadow
of wildflowers, a sea of yellow and purple and green, I unhooked the leashes to
let the dogs dash through it all and watched the grasses swallow them up. I
knew there would be ticks. Even as their numbers seemed to be diminishing along
our usual trails, here we were immersed in grass up past my knees, a completely
different environment from the broad-leaf carpeting in our own woods. But I put
the tiny creatures out of my mind and followed the dogs into the scrub and
new-growth forest and away from the road as the trail started up the mountain.
We climbed and climbed, following the curving trail of
waving grasses meandering through the patches of scrub forest, accompanied by
the high-pitched whine of mosquitoes and the pattering of blackflies against my
face. I put up the hood of my shirt over my sunhat to keep the bugs from
attacking my neck and watched deerfly land on the dogs’ heads.
There were more trails on the mountain than I had
anticipated; kept open it seemed by four-wheelers and probably snowmobiles in
the winter. At each fork we stayed to the right as I tried to imagine our
position on the mountain and keep us walking towards the top. When we were
quite high up and the trees changed from new growth to mature woods, we headed
in beneath the canopy, our feet slurping along the muddy trail, everything cast
in green.
Looking up through the trees I could see the cliff face at
the top of the mountain staring back at me and I thought we must be close, but
when the trail began to track downhill again the whole adventure started to
feel a bit like a wild goose chase. We had been walking for quite some time and
we would have to do that same distance in return. Anyway, I was getting hungry
and it felt like we would be searching for the top of that mountain for the
rest of the day. So we turned around and began to retrace our steps home.
Then, on the way down, we missed a turn and got lost. I had
a sense the trail didn’t seem familiar but I reasoned, how would I really know
one patch of trees from another. But the puddles were different; it hadn’t been
quite so wet on the way up. I couldn’t find my footprints from earlier, or the
dogs’. And what about that tree I had to duck under, surely I should have
passed that by now. And where was that pile of old weathered logs I’d found
behind a row of newish trees, the light shining down from a tiny clearing above
as though the logs stood in a spotlight on stage, the trees kind of containing
them, defining them. It was like catching a glimpse through the curtain just
moments before the show was to begin. I would have remembered seeing that
again.
When the trail straightened out on its downward grade, I
could see the distant view between the columns of trees and I knew we were
heading down the hill in the wrong direction. We were facing north towards the
valley, not west towards the mountain that rose up behind our woods.
I stood on the shady trail and pulled my hood close around
my face against the bugs as I felt that glorified sense of satisfaction at
being in the homestretch dissipate. The sun peaked out now from behind the
cloud cover heating up the day, and I wondered where I had gone wrong,
disbelieving that we were actually lost. Of course, we couldn’t get thoroughly
lost on this mountain, there were trails all over the place that went somewhere
and worst case we would just follow one and stumble into someone’s back field
and then figure out where we were. But that wasn’t much of an option for me,
trying to wrestle my dogs in a civilized setting.
So, I turned and called to the dogs as I tried to muster
some enthusiasm for climbing the mountain again. I glanced over my shoulder at
them as they stood in the middle of the trail, peering over the grasses at me
as though I were crazy. Hadn’t we already climbed this hill? But when they saw
I wasn’t kidding, they followed and the three of us trudged back up the trail
together and I tried to forget about how hungry I was.
We walked and walked, making one more wrong turn, until I
found the last spot I recognized and then I stood in the middle of the forked
trail and turned slowly until all the elements of the landscape started to fall
into place one by one. I pieced together a view I remembered, ‘that little tree
there and that stand of poplars. This is the way we came’. Then I recalled the
short side jog we did from one trail to another and we were on our way again.
We all sort of shambled down the mountain, passed the tree
across the trail, the pile of old logs, and our footprints in the mud pointing
up the hill. It was a while before I could hear the road ahead, the odd car
rushing past. I leashed the dogs before the road came into view, not wanting
them to tumble on to it in front of a truck
The flowers in the meadow glowed brilliantly beneath the
full face of the sun and in some ways it felt as though we had just been here
moments before and in others as though we had been gone for days. We crossed
the road, again without incident, and then clambered through the trees and
brush back into the cool familiarity of our woods.
Back at the house, the sun now streaming through the windows
and spilling on to the deck, I found 17 ticks on the legs of my pants after I
had discarded my hiking clothes for something clean and I shuddered to think
what I would find on the dogs.
After lunch I ushered them out on to the deck, the two of
them tired enough after our three-hour adventure they seemed happy to lie on
the warm, sun-drenched boards as I worked my fingers through their fur.
The sun slipped quickly across the sky, soon throwing ragged
shadows from the treetops onto the deck. I watched the shadows inch closer and
closer to the wall of the house, the patch of sun diminishing, its intensity
muted by the shade as I pulled more ticks from fur, and still more. In the end
there were so many, I lost count.
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