Friedri h Wi derness Park

We were high up on a precipice facing that unplanned, but well-placed, golf course. I heard a mockingbird or two and you hated the noise. I said something about our midday adventures and you laughed. It was all up to chance where we would be led by those strange and inexplicable currents of the childhood spirit. I threw a rock. It bounced and bounced, hitting the sides of the slope until it stopped in a juniper bush. We hiked all the way up here and saw nothing out of the ordinary, so we moved onwards, past a barrier covered in etchings concerning the commemoration of a young careless girl. She fell to her death, we thought. Idiot, but hey, things happened. We concurred on this sentiment and journeyed on. We wouldn’t die, I said. You said something about hopefully not, Gee it’d be great not to die. I said yes. We climbed down a slope. There was a movement. We both saw it: a porcupine. Over there. Run. Move. Careful...they shoot their quills. My dog came home one day with quills in her nose.

We made it to the bottom where the woods began like a receded hairline. I stopped and said listen to the noise. You stopped. There were birds, but most importantly there were crunches in some nearby twigs. And you heard it. Wildlife. Of course, we were in a forest so it was only natural that’d we run into a this or that living-wild-thing. Probably a deer. We both nodded, moved on, and picked up some very large sticks. There was the sound of limestone as we walked and the rocks kept on colliding with each other and our footsteps—and more twigs far off, anxious twigs.

Then there it was, an ancient dried up crik bed. I said we gotta watch for snakes and you called me a pansy. This is why we bring sticks and wear long socks. The bed was eroded all to hell. The whole thing was taller than me but not as tall as you. A twinge of jealousy, being the middle height in the fifth grade.

More limestone now, but thicker. No little fragments bouncing about. Whole chunks, like the ground was made of it. Little walls surrounding both sides of us. Lichen, I pointed to a sneeze colored fuzz on some rock face. You said they move from place to place, but real slow, and I said that was moss you were thinking of. A black patch in a small crack in the wall. I said look inside. You jumped back as the patch began to shake. Spiders: daddy-long-legs. Thousands. Everywhere, kinda dancing to ragtime or some weird old-people music. I poked the mass with my stick and lanky little spiders fell to the ground. I picked one up and said that you should smell its head. Lemons.

It was hot, of course. I’d bet that we were mostly made of sweat and we had no water because we were young. We climbed up this time, around an old post (probably for trail horses). It smelled like juniper. Sweet and later associated with gin. My dad said something about it being a nuisance tree. You pointed to a sign. It read “Juniper Trail.” I saw a rabbit that you did not. You said aw man and that you wish you saw it. I laughed and said we should track it. Off the trail? No, you said we should, but wait we already left the trail. Maybe we should follow the rules? I don’t know. We moved on. The climb was strenuous and still, yes, very hot. Midway up to the top of the other slope was a windmill. It slowly creaked as it spun slowly along. It had been here forever. Saw it when I was five. Saw it when I was seven. And I saw it now. Forever. Next to the old steel thing was an actual well. The well was full, almost brimming with green aged water. Inside the well there was a lot of algae and some gold-finger like fish. You tried to grab one, failed,

55 Creative Essay

56 Creative Essay tried again, and failed. I said that you ain’t a racoon. And we moved upward, upwards, up the mountain.

The rocks up here were different and there were smaller plants too. The rocks were scalloped, literally. Inside, if you stopped and looked, there was an abundance of small little fossil imprints. Hey, do you remember that time, that field trip, where we met Dinosaur George, I said. And you laughed and commented on the general “coolness” of Dinosaur George. Texas used to be underwater. That’s why you can find rocks at the top of these hills. Lots of dead things, but tiny plants and, oh, the cacti. Everywhere. Just as bad as the porcupines, but the cacti don’t move. I plucked a prickly pear and forgot about the miniature spines. And you, of course, laughed and called me an idiot. We trudged on and saw that the sun looked bigger up here and that there were these little plants that felt real soft. You said they were called sheep’s ear and then I told the story of the binding of Isaac.

It was late in the afternoon. It had to have been a hundred degrees out. That’s Texas. I pointed over to our left as a blue jay flew past. You said they don’t sing well and I said they’re the mascot for Monterrey’s baseball team. We sat on two big rocks tattooed with fossil indentions. I ate my sandwich and I really don’t want to know what you ate. We regretted our lack of water. The sun was there reminding us of our imprudence. Then we made it to the top of the hill we called a mountain. It was the great point, you said. I didn’t speak, I just looked out onto the blazing horizon.