When I was seven years old, I went to Slate Run with my grandparents, my sister, my cousin, and their mom. We walked around the front of the park and eventually sat on these benches and sat there. And sat there. And sat there. Eventually, we began to try to run around and play in that little area, but there wasn’t much to do, and we got bored.
My eldest cousin, who would’ve been thirteen at the time, decided to tell us about this old farm that was on the other side of the park that you could visit. It was a bit of a walk, but it was very cool to see, and we were so bored that we asked our grandparents if we could go. They said that they were too tired, but Adam insisted that we could go by ourselves since he knew the way, and so off, we went.
Off we went: thirteen-year-old Adam, my eleven-year-old sister, who I called Nina, my nine-year-old cousin Annie and seven-year-old me; we were all walking through this park alone. At one point, Adam stopped to race a turkey (he lost), and then we kept on going.
It wasn’t too hot that day, but I have always gotten affected by the heat and lack of water more than the others, so I lagged a bit. (I would later learn that I have an actual condition) My sister would always yank me back up with them, though.
We walked through the woods, Adam said he knew the way. We trampled through the weeds; Adam said he knew the way. We sloshed through the muddy field, Adam admitted that he had no clue where we were. Annie started crying, and we kept walking.
We had to come across someone or someplace eventually, we all thought. Eventually, as the sweat began to stick, and the bugs began to crawl, and my skin began to itch. We saw a bridge. We saw a bridge, and across that bridge was a parking lot. We were too tired to run, but we walked there as fast as we could, so excited to see our car and our family over there.
They were nowhere to be found. This was not the place that we came from, but all was not for naught. My cousin walked up and asked a woman to use her phone. He called our grandparents, and they drove the car over to come to get us.
I would like to say that the only lesson here was that I should never follow Adam, but I got lost again at Old Man’s Cave with my sister, so I think the real lesson here is that nature is nature. No matter how much you think you remember that path, it may be different. Trees grow, plants die, paths are overgrown, and new ones written. Things are not the same as they were, and if you don’t find a map to follow the times, you will be lost right along with it.