Short story: The Long Trail

When I was younger, I was walking on a trail.

My family would often visit trails on vacation, we were not the hotel, lounge about kind of vacation family. My mother and father both loved the wilderness, as did I and the majority of my four siblings.

But this particular trail was longer and more tedious than any other trail in memory. It seemed to stretch on forever, and the gravel it was made from certainly didn’t improve the condition of our feet. I can’t recall how many times I had to stop because my legs or the legs of one of my siblings hurt. But we trudged on nonetheless, our stomachs growling all the way.

Our whole family wasn’t together, my father was up ahead of all of us, my mother was behind me, Jacob (my second younger brother) and Noah (my brother) with our little sister Lilly. My older brother, Gabriel, was bringing up the rear.

I remember Lilly catching up, and us stopping to stare at some deathly white worms, which lay on the surface of a stream, spotted as we crossed a tiny bridge.

Jacob ran ahead despite Noah’s protests and my own insistence that he stay with the rest of us. He was just less tired I supposed, and being the independent soul that he is, he saw no reason to lag behind. My mother moved up ahead, and for a little bit, it was just me, Noah and Lilly, with us occasionally calling back for Gabriel to hurry up. Eventually, we came across my father, my mother, and Jacob, who were resting and waiting for us (my dad had to convince Jacob to wait, I don’t blame him for his stomach as we had yet to consume dinner).

They had stopped in front of an old mill. There was one of those brass plaques that explains the history of the building, but I don’t remember a word of it. I was tired and hungry, and I rarely remember what is on those things anyway. We continued, and after a little less than half an hour, we found salvation.

The path ended in a little field, a field where apparently someone was hosting a birthday party. A party so big that it had a plastic set up tether ball, a plastic tunnel you could crawl through, a crowd of kids half our age, and a dozen of those plastic playhouses you can buy at the entrance and plot behind Walmart. There was a picnic table, just one, not particularly large or well crafted. It was worn with time, and abandoned, with no little kids using it.

But we crowded around it, all the same, our mother leaving to get the car (which, as it turned out, was several blocks away, and needed to be driven here) after our father picked up some fried chicken nearby. There wasn’t a lot of chicken, and it wasn’t the best chicken either. But like the bench, we crowded around and argued over who was taking too much, as siblings do when they are hungry and don’t have too much food.

After each eating a piece of that fried chicken, we dashed off to play. After a little bit, we used our imagination, something that criminal few children do nowadays. We invented a story where a man (me), had walked so long that he had passed the horizon and found a new land. A land where people had gone after deciding that they didn’t like society, and lived in houses of cardboard and plastic, becoming smaller out of convenience.

That little game had given rise to a whole idea for a story about a man visiting a fantastic world beyond his wildest dreams, one which grew and grew, and was inspired by a dream. One which I one day hope to poor my hopes, dreams, loves and hates into.

I would never have been in the mood for playing if we didn’t have that food. It wasn’t really good, but it was still the best-fried chicken which I have ever had.