The Four Cornered Forest

A Novel: Part1. Installment 1.

THE FOUR CORNERED FOREST

It is my birthday. I love birthdays. And I also love seals and owls. I’ve never seen a real seal but I have a stuffed one that is my very best stuffy, and I’ve seen lots of owls. We had a family of them nested in the larch outside my window last summer. We are surrounded by mountains and pines and larch are my favorite trees, because they have needles but they are soft and come back new every year, and the owls love them. This summer one of the young owls came back and hangs out on the branch beside my window to hunt. Mom says he is there to protect me at night. I don’t know what he is there to protect me from, but I sleep better knowing he is there, even if he does eat gross mice.

For my birthday we are going on a geocache hunt in the mountains which are outside our doorstep. We live in the middle of mountains of western Montana. Edsel says he found one close by on the map. I can’t believe there is one out here, no one ever comes out here, but maybe so. He has it pulled up on Grandpa’s GPS, but I took the coordinates and mapped it on dad’s paper map last night. I hate GPS. Mom says it is because I am a Luddite. I tell her it’s dad who is the Luddite, and I blame him for making me so attached to a compass and paper. I agree with dad. When the world ends and the zombies start hunting for people and the electricity is all gone and the internet is gone, he and I will be living like the royalty of the forest. We have maps, and bows and arrows, and know how to build a fire and survive, even in the winters of northern Montana. Mom will survive too, of course. She can find food in the middle of nowhere. And she is a self-proclaimed witch, who can make real life potions. She smiles when she says it, but it's true. She is kind of like a witch, full of magic and mystery. I hope I am as pretty and witchy as her when I grow up.

Edsel is screwed though. He can’t do anything without electronics and the internet. He uses Grandpa’s GPS to find everything in the woods. He uses Mom’s phone to look up anything he wonders about and I’m not sure he has finished a real book in two years even though Mom and Dad have a huge library with everything you could ever wonder about in the living room. And he can’t stop eating. Mom says it’s because he’s growing. He’ll either be the first to starve to death, or the first pick of the zombies. And I can definitely outrun him. I have new deerskin moccasins I made myself. I can run like a deer.

And I might need to. According to Grandpa, there is a real chance the world might end. And soon. He gets all serious when he says it. Mom says not to worry, not to listen to Grandpa, but it is true that things do seem to be falling apart. Grandpa comes by with weird things like giant bags of flour and lentils and extra rolls of toilet paper and tells Mom how there are guys guarding the roads south of Missoula but when I ask they won’t tell me anything. I know it has something to

do with the virus they talked about on the news, but they won’t talk about it. They just say everything is still fine. No one up here has had the virus. The soldiers are there to keep us safe. But Grandpa doesn’t seem convinced. Mom calls him a conspiracy nut right in front of him, and he smiles and says, “only because there are people conspiring.” And then two days later he shows up with more flour, packets of yeast and other stuff.

Grandpa is gold. He used to swear and cuss a lot until Grandma died, but now he is like a gentle grizzly bear. Mom calls him a Softy. But he does sort of look like a grizzly bear; furry face and hunched back and all. Mom and Dad know a lot about the woods, but Grandpa, Grandpa knows the Woods. Grandpa is the Woods. Mom and Dad can survive in the woods and get around them pretty comfortably and quick, but Grandpa seems more like a forest creature when he is in the woods, seems like he is part of the woods themselves. His hunch, just like a grizzly, suddenly becomes part of his pace and he can navigate the mountains better than any of us. He even smells like pine.

We park at the dusty trailhead and set off. In the forest I find my pace apart from everyone else. Edsel is going fast, face hunched down on his GPS moving at a speed he will never be able to sustain. Mom and Dad are behind me. They walk slowly always, because Dad is looking for deer and Mom is like a nature sponge, smiling, eyes squinty, enjoying, absorbing. When she is in the woods she is so happy. Dad says there are ions in the forest that make our brains happy. I don’t see them, but I believe him.

Up ahead Edsel is stuffing a crumbly cookie in his face and I spy where the trail wraps around to the left and a cone of crumbled granite scree climbs up out of the forest with a small cliff face a few fifty feet higher. Edsel points. And he’s right for once. We are leaving the trail to climb up the slope. I have a difficult time believing anyone left anything out here for someone to find. But that is where it was marked, so we continue.

Edsel is a little clumsy once we leave the trail but I love scree fields. It is like hopscotch on sloped rocks and moving ground. I quickly pass him, my new deerskin mocs keeping grip better than any shoe and I can tell it is going to become a race in his mind, but he’ll never keep up. It’s true. He won’t. All that early effort on his part has him spent. I can hear his lungs already breathing hard. Edsel breaths like a pig in once he gets going. Has asthmatic responses and compromised breathing, Mom says. Then she puts some witch oils on his chest. It usually works actually. And he smells better. Like clove or something.

The slope gets steep and a little wiggly as we get higher, rocks slipping out. Mom yells from below, “slowly you too... it is not a race! Gretel, wait for your brother! This isn’t a good spot to slip!”

But it is a little bit of a race. And I’m winning.

Once I get to the rock face the view looking out is beautiful. Epic. Wide. I don’t know why anyone would even be out here, but supposedly once we circle up and around this rock face there will be a treasure buried somewhere on top. Probably under a tree trunk or something.

The sound of the creek echos off the wall behind me. The pines smell hot. My feet make soft chalky noises on the rocks. I feel a little winded, but the wind picking up around me is cold enough to wake me up and make me not care. When I pause and look back I can see Mom and Dad taking a break down at the base of the scree field, and Edsel about halfway between us, leaning over and clenching his side. My head is feeling a little airy, but the the sound of Good Creek centers me and I watch it off into the distance winding the forest like a cutout snake meandering along in waves of green. I go ahead and dart around the far side of the rock cliff hoping to get the top well before Edsel who is calling after me.

But as soon as I get around the rock wall I am struck by a momentary sense of fear. Dad has always told me that when you feel this, and especially if your hair stands up, you better listen. Dad says we all have a 6th sense whether we realize it or not and that a lot of people go their whole life without realizing they have this extra innate super power. But something in me is going off like an alarm and I wonder if there is a grizzly bear or a mountain lion near bye. Something. But I am not going to let the fear get the best of me and I am now scrambling up the slope along the side of the rock face holding tree roots and small bushes that can hold me weight, climbing higher and higher and almost there.

Suddenly I am overcome by a gripping head throb that feels like I don’t have enough air and the forest takes me over like a living jungle wrapping it’s tentacles around me. I want to call out but my voice won’t work. I hear my own breathing but I can not get my voice to work. The slope mellows out and I am near the top of the cliff but when I look over I don’t see anyone and when I look behind me the green trees seem so thick, seem to be moving, like it's all alive and not exactly out to get me but certainly in a frenzy of motion, live branches, reaching around and tightening with the trees next to them and that is when I see them for the first time... two kids running, one chasing the other, right up the slope from me. The girl is dressed like Laura Ingalls Wilder and she is chasing a boy who is in tattered pants and shirt, and barefoot. He has a smile on his face, but she looks determined and the chase looks real. I call out again but my voice feels muted, and they are running into the live forest, and quickly disappear into the thicket.

All around me the wind begins to swirl. I can feel my long hair swirling like a tornado above my head and my head finally quits aching, and then I hear Edsel coming up the slope below me.