* length advisory: 5100 words and 92 pictures! Hope it loads! 😳 The text length isn’t so out of the ordinary for this blog, but I couldn’t stop taking pictures. It was a very scenic episode!
** if it has trouble loading, let me know and I’ll split it in two
They say you can’t run away from your problems, but the further Jordan drove, that was exactly how it felt. He left his problems back in Wisconsin, and here, life was pretty incredible. He ran away from his problems. It worked.
Out here, they could breathe. Jordan wondered if his boys could feel that too? How the air smelled sharper, cleaner, alive. How the sky looked bigger and brighter. How the roads went on forever in any direction you could choose. Here, they could wander without an endpoint, go where money and status didn’t matter, to have no expectations and disappoint no one. Out here, there was nobody to tell them no.
Jordan just wanted to be left to be, to exist, to parent his boys the way he saw fit. And out here, he could do that. He could breathe, and their boyish trio was a happy one.
Today, they would catch their own lunch. That was maybe a little more challenging than he expected. Milo wasn’t a fan.
Honestly, Jordan couldn’t stand fishing, either. He couldn’t think of anything more maddening than standing in front of a lake waiting for a fish to bite. But it was one of those things he felt he needed to teach them. It’s what fathers do or something. He would teach them other things too, if he could. Like empathy and inclusion and acceptance. Things they wouldn’t learn from their mother. Jordan felt like a more capable father without Colette telling him exactly what to do and say and how.
Lucky for them all, Felix caught a fish.
And then he caught another one.
Jordan was amazed every day at how two wrinkly little infants had turned into these individual young men. He wondered if they couldn’t be more different. But Jordan could relate to that. Sometimes he felt like the life he wanted for his family couldn’t be more different from what everybody else wanted.
“It’s okay if you don’t like fishing,” he told them. “And it’s okay if you do.”
Felix walked first, spoke first, potty trained first. Felix had more of his mother’s cutthroat drive to succeed. While Milo had…
Well, they were still figuring out what Milo had. And that was okay. When they found it, surely it would be special.
So Felix caught the fish, which they planned to cook and eat, and Milo found some frogs, which they wouldn’t eat.
They made a fire and Jordan gutted the fish and cooked their lunch.
Was it cooked to an optimal 140 degrees? He didn’t know, because he didn’t have a meat thermometer. Don’t tell their mom.
But people have been cooking fish without meat thermometers for hundreds of thousands of years, and he figured they’d survive this lunch. Or else they’d get diarrhea in the wilderness. And if that happened, then so be it. Jordan didn’t want to stop living his life for fear of the shits. That didn’t scare him. But a life unlived, that was terrifying.
———
There was a camp store at the lodge, where they spent a morning stocking up on supplies before heading out further into the forest.
Milo: “Dad, can I have candy?”
“Sure.”
Felix: “Chocolate?”
“Not chocolate. It’ll melt in the heat.”
Felix: “Can we pack soda?”
“If you’re gonna carry it yourself.”
Felix: “What if I drink it here and pee it out before we start hiking?”
Jordan laughed. Nobody would ever be able to say that boy wasn’t clever. “You can try.”
Milo: “Can I have a hot dog?”
“Eeew, there’s a hot dog in a vending machine? And you want to eat it?”
A funny thing happened here—Jordan stopped worrying about Colette. Totally and completely, she had taken leave of his mind. His phone had been offline for most of the drive, so the angry ping of her texts couldn’t reach him. Jordan was so at peace with her absence in his world that it was actually Felix who finally suggested, “Do you think we should call mom? She’s probably worried.”
Oops. “Oh shit, yeah, call your mom.”
Jordan connected his phone to the lodge’s Wi-Fi and it bombarded him with dozens of Colette’s texts, lighting up the screen. And a few charming messages from Maria, too, which Jordan read first, eagerly, before scanning the onslaught of Colette’s complaints.
Felix connected his own phone to the Wi-Fi and called his mother.
“There’s so many bugs here. I caught two fish and Milo and dad didn’t catch any!”
“Wow,” Colette said. “Fishing requires great mental fortitude. No wonder you did better than your dad.” She said it loud because she wanted to make sure Jordan heard it, too.
“I caught a praying mantis,” Milo shouted into his brother’s phone.
“That sounds gross,” Colette responded.
The boys passed the phone back and forth. Jordan didn’t want to speak to her, but he returned some of her texts.
She was mad that they didn’t call the first night and the next morning and every other hour thereafter. “Nope, not happening,” Jordan replied. He didn’t come all this way to be tied to a phone, especially not on a phone with her nagging voice on the other end. “And besides, we won’t even have a connection that often. How about I’ll text you pictures when I can to prove they’re still alive?”
“Smile boys.”
“They look dirty,” she texted back.
Jordan looked forward to disconnecting from the lodge’s Wi-Fi.
Their packs were heavy with snacks and sodas, as much as they were willing to carry. Jordan also replaced some gear, picked up a spare water filter and some emergency supplies.
The boys were mesmerized by a rack of brochures. So many things to do and see, both near and far. The boys picked some, Jordan picked up some more.
“Can we go to Thailand?… Brazil?… Japan?… Mexico?”
“I don’t know,” he told them. “Those are all so far away, even further than this.”
“Can we go to Maine? Can we go to Florida? California? Nevada?”
Felix got out his phone, still connected to the Wi-Fi, and charted the course on a map. “See,” he said, “Nevada is only two days to drive, like this was. Mom has to let us.”
Jordan didn’t tell him, I don’t think your mom likes being told that she has to do anything. “Maybe she will.”
The boys had finished imagining the whole world and wandered off to explore the rest of the lodge. Jordan couldn’t quite pull himself away from the brochures. There was a wine country tour in northern California. He smiled, thinking of Maria. She was always daydreaming about making wine, though she’d never made even the first attempt. She only liked the taste of it when it was very sweet and very fruity. He picked up the brochure to give to her later.
Rock climbing classes in Nevada… he stared at it for the longest time. It was too far. Two days' drive, like Felix said. He read it cover to cover while the boys wandered off.
“Come on, Dad, let’s go!”
He put the brochure in his pack next to Maria’s wine tour. Then he shook his head at himself for the impossibility of it all.
———
Footsteps on pine needles, the whisper of a breeze in the treetops, a sputtering brook following alongside the trail, a distant woodpecker. The sounds of the forest also include this: two brothers bickering, “Bug boy! I thought you liked bugs, bug boy!”
“I don’t love mosquitoes!” Milo screeched.
“Bug boy!” Felix taunted again.
“No name calling,” Jordan said.
Wilderness safety tips include noise. They say to sing, talk to each other, wear a bell on your pack, or bang sticks, to warn ahead for unsuspecting bears. Or, Jordan knew, just bring children. Children are inherently noisy.
But that was okay. Their dad was noisy sometimes, too.
“Woot! A picnic spot. There’s a grill! You boys hungry? I’m starving!”
They grilled the fresh meat they’d picked up at the lodge grocery shop first, saving their dehydrated meals for later in the trip in case they didn’t manage to catch more fish. It was a hearty late lunch that would keep them full through dinnertime. They had a little more distance to cover still before they set up camp for the night. The summer sun drooped just below the treetops now, and Jordan guessed they had another two hours of light left.
None of them liked mosquitoes, but Milo took a strong interest in all the fascinating forest bugs. Bugs they didn’t have back home in the suburbs of Wisconsin.
“Go get those bugs, bug boy,” Felix teased.
“Shut up! At least I didn’t fall in the fire!”
“I didn’t fall in. I jumped over.”
“And caught your butt on fire!”
Photographic evidence from earlier that morning. Yes, Felix caught his butt on fire. Jordan took care of it swiftly and nobody was hurt. But please, please don’t tell their mom!
“Fire butt!” Milo teased.
“Shut up, bug boy!”
“Fire butt! Fire butt!”
“Dad! He’s name-calling!”
Jordan shrugged, having endured Felix’s name-calling for the last three miles. He had to say he was a little bit proud of Milo for finally biting back. “Sorry, bud. I think you had that one coming to you.”
The sunlight faded faster under the tree canopy. It was time to make camp for the night before the darkness of the forest made the task difficult. Jordan found a flat spot for their tents.
Milo cleared the area of forest bugs.
And Felix didn’t tease his brother.
As the night fell, Jordan lit a blazing fire. It wasn’t always easy to do, but the kindling was dry and the wind was cooperative. The boys were impressed. “But no jumping over this one,” Jordan told them. “We don’t need another fire butt incident.”
And so the boys sat nicely in their chairs.
The darkness of night consumed the forest. Then they saw a flashlight coming up the trail, and a park ranger, and a voice boomed out of the darkness, “Toasty fire you got there!”
Oh, God, did Colette file a missing person’s report? Would she really do that? Because they hadn’t spoken to her in ten hours??? She would, wouldn’t she? She’d call the authorities in a whole different country and send the park rangers scouring the park for them.
Jordan wouldn’t be surprised at all.
“Lovely evening,” the ranger said. “Just here to check your backcountry permits.”
Oh.
“Sure, no problem,” Jordan said and pulled the papers out of his pack. “Is that it?”
“Should there be anything else?” The ranger raised his eyebrows into a curious smirk. “You boys smuggling mushrooms back to the states, eh?”
“Uh, no! Definitely not. No plans to smuggle, mushrooms or anything else.”
“Ha ha, just kidding,” the ranger said, laughing. “You can bring back mushrooms if you want, but you need a different permit for that. And you should be mindful of the pound limits, the customs form, a soil inspection, and a filing fee of $89 CAD for the permit. We have native truffles that only grow in this forest. Quite the delicacy if you can find them. Gotta be careful, though. Some of them are toxic.”
“Oh. Wow. I had no idea,” Jordan said. He was truly surprised and enlightened. “But nope. No mushrooms here.”
Then Jordan’s hands grew sweaty at his little white lie. Actually, yes, he did pick some mushrooms. They were stowed away in his pack. He planned to grill them for breakfast in the morning and absolutely not bring back across the border. Honestly, he had no plans of becoming a renegade mushroom smuggler.
But the ranger was uninterested. He had more trail to hike and more permits to check. “Have a nice night, boys.”
Whew. Okay. That could have been worse. At least Colette hadn’t called Interpol on him for abducting her children.
The night was still and quiet. No animals puttered around their tents. No wind rustled the treetops. No owls called out to each other. Nearby, there was the soft trickle of a creek, while much further off, the distant roaring churn of a waterfall. There were crickets. And the obvious zzzzzzzzzip of the boys’ tent zipper.
Jordan unzipped his own tent to find Milo creeping out. “Dad, look! I need that bug!”
“It’s late. It’s very late. Do you need it now?”
“But it’s a rainbow firefly!!! We don’t have those in Wisconsin!”
Jordan didn’t know one way or another whether that was true, but he gave Milo the benefit of the doubt. “But can’t you catch it in the morning?”
“Duh, fireflies are nocturnal. It’ll be gone.”
Duh. Right. “Where are you going to keep all these bugs? Your mom won’t let you bring them home.”
Milo frowned. “Oh, I guess.”
And his frown broke Jordan’s heart. Colette was going to complain about it, but a little bug boy should be allowed to collect his bugs.
“Okay. Well, maybe I can build a bug shed in the back yard? Go get it!”
Milo ran off to catch his bugs, and Jordan stood watch halfway between the tents where Felix still slept and the darkened forest.
Jordan was overcome with the tragedy that these boys could suffer the same fate he did, the inability to live their lives under that woman. Even worse, realizing that he could leave her but they couldn’t. She was their mother for life. Or at least, legally, for the next nine years.
It was a hopeless and guilty feeling, that he wanted to leave but perhaps he should try harder to make it work. For a few more years. For them. If they couldn’t leave her, why should he? Maybe if he could help her get that big house she wanted, they could have rooms at separate ends and never see each other, and she would be happy. Or happier. And he would be… doing the right thing? Could he do that for the boys? Should he?
Milo was back with the fireflies. He handed Jordan the box. “You can look if you want, but don’t let them go.”
Jordan lifted the lid carefully. Inside, the fireflies blinked in purple and pink and blue, colors Jordan had never seen on a firefly before. “Hey, they’re pretty cool, aren’t they? I’ve never seen these ones before.”
“Because we don’t have them in Wisconsin, that’s why. I said that already.”
“Right.”
“Can I really have a bug shed?”
“Yes,” Jordan promised, gravely aware of the reality that Colette might say no to giving even a small corner of her backyard to something she didn’t want on her property. He’d build the shed anyway. What else was there to do?
“Thanks, Dad! It’s gonna be the best bug shed ever! But do you think we need a permit to bring bugs back to Wisconsin?”
“Oh, shit, yeah, we probably do.”
“Oh, shit, yeah, we probably do.”
———
The next morning, after breakfast, they set off for a hike with nothing but the clothes on their backs and some lunch in their pockets. Last night, they slept to the sound of this thundering waterfall. So today, they would go find it. They would stand beside its immense power and feel small and full of awe.
They were wild and unrefined, smelling ripe with sweat, dirt under their fingernails, and fiercely, unapologetically free. Colette would never understand this collective feral boyhood, and Jordan didn’t care to explain it to her. It wasn’t meant for her.
There were no showers here. They would wade out and splash their faces with the rushing glacial water. “It’ll put hair on your chests,” he told them. No, it wouldn’t, but they loved the idea of it, anyway. There was no soap, so they’d scrub their bodies with sand. They’d smell like earth, like ozone, like life. Their laughter would be easy and their spirits would be light.
These were his boys, too. He needed them to remember that. Someday, long from now, when they had been shaped by their mother’s ambition and rules and criticisms, when they were worn sharp around their edges, he wanted them to remember that they were made of this, too.
They dried themselves and their clothes in the sun. It was too much sun, maybe. Their skin felt warm and threatened to turn pink and blistery later. They put their clothes back on and started the hike back to camp.
The afternoon had been peaceful while they splashed in the water, but now the boys were tired and hungry for a warm dinner cooked over a campfire. Their tempers were short, and the mosquitoes didn’t help.
“Hey, boys, quiet down. Come check this out.”
“Whoa! Is she gonna fall?” (Milo)
“Is she gonna die?!?” (Felix)
“No. I mean, I hope not,” Jordan said.
“Dad, did you ever climb a rock like that?” Milo asked.
“Not like that. WOW, that’s wild.”
The climber swung her body from rock to rock, hanging by fingertips and toes, yet she clung to the rock with purpose and skill. It was impressive.
Felix looked ready to charge the cliff face himself. “Dad, can I climb that rock?”
“Not today,” Jordan said. “You need to learn how. You need ropes and harnesses and different kind of shoes.”
“Can we buy them at the camp store?”
“Nah, not today. But you can climb that little rock over there.”
So the boys ran off to scramble over a lesser rocky slope, dreaming of that giant cliff face ahead of them. They weren’t the only ones dreaming.
Jordan thought of the brochure in his pack for the climbing classes. He thought of impossibilities and setting them on fire. And why not? He was sick of caring about what Colette thought of his life. He was sick of not living.
There was a fire lit inside him in that moment. It was a small and exciting fire, a contained little glow. Its possibilities were endless and undefined. How could he know that little fire wouldn’t die when he went to sleep tonight? That it would still burn when he returned home to Wisconsin? That it could even grow into a raging inferno strong enough to burn down his whole life?
———
The last few days of their trip, it rained nonstop, which Colette would have hated. She would have hated the mud and bugs and fire. She would have hated how everyone here smelled of smoke or fish guts or five-day-old sweat. She actually would have loved the lodge, for a quick minute, since there was a charming rustic spa there, but after that, she would have grown irritated.
The rain slowed, but it had no intention of stopping. It didn’t matter, because these boys didn’t intend to let a little rain spoil their adventures. They hiked through the wet brush and mud. The ascent was slow and steady, driving their hearts to steady thump, breaths panting. The dampness of their sweat was washed away by the rain and slicked off their foreheads with the back of a hand.
They followed the trail even when it was difficult to decipher. Up, up, always up. Even when the grade was slight, it was up. Through the brambles and dark hollows.
“Are we going in there?” the boys asked. Milo, doubtful. Felix, hopeful.
“Yeah, totally!” Jordan said. Onward into adventure! Onward with courage and just a sensible amount of caution.
The brambles cleared to an opening, and they’d found what they were searching for. The summit. Maybe it wasn’t as daunting as scaling a vertical rock wall, but the hike was long and grueling, and the view at the top was earned.
“Careful on the rocks, not too close to the edge.”
“Wow,” they all said in chorus.
“Look at what we did,” Jordan told his boys. “Just imagine everything we can do.”
“Dad, can I come up there? I wanna come up, too.”
“Okay, careful.”
One at a time, Jordan took the boys by hand and guided them onto the higher rock, finding a flat place to rest, mindful that there were no long drops beneath, just another rock ledge about five feet down. And here they would stop, resting safely on their butts. “Don’t move an inch,” he ordered.
“Can we tell Mom?”
“Yeah, tell your mom. Actually, tell her all of it.”
The boys accomplished this easily, although not without complaint from time to time. Jordan couldn’t wait to see what more they could do when they were older and stronger. And no, he wasn’t asking Colette’s permission. They weren’t married, and they weren’t going to be, either. They were a family, sort of, but she wasn’t the boss of it. Even if she probably thought she was.
“I wish mom was here,” Milo said. “Isn’t it sad she doesn’t get to see this?”
“You know she wouldn’t have liked how hard it was to get here,” Jordan said. “Sometimes, spots like this are a reward. You have to work really hard to get here. Not everybody gets to see it. And besides, I’m sure she’ll take you guys somewhere she likes better for Thanksgiving. She always does.”
Colette’s idea of a dream vacation bored him—sunning herself on a cruise ship while getting her nails done. Or sitting idly on a sandy beach while a waiter brought her cocktails. She always took the boys for Thanksgiving, hating the idea of thankfulness and gratitude, wanting to go somewhere exotic and foreign where Thanksgiving didn’t exist.
Then Jordan would volunteer to work Thanksgiving dinner at the inn. Holiday pay. And Maria would probably work, too, so Stephanie could take the day off. They’d goof off in the kitchen and eat leftovers late into the night. Everybody won.
“But why don’t you take a picture? Then she can see it when you get home.”
“Okay,” Milo said, digging into his backpack.
“Don’t drop your phone, klutz!” Felix taunted.
“Felix, no name calling.”
“But he’s gonna drop his phone off the whole mountain, then he’ll nag to use mine the whole ride home. How’s it my fault if he makes a mistake?”
“Don’t drop your phone, Milo.”
“I wasn’t even gonna!” Milo whined.
Milo took his photo and put his phone away safely, and the boys stopped bickering for ten glorious minutes.
And Jordan thought of his dad then, in the momentary quiet. He thought of his own childhood, which had been so peaceful in comparison without any siblings to fight with. And if only his dad could see this, now, what those two little babies had become and what they could do. Jordan wished he could take a photo to show him later, but death didn’t work that way.
Now, noise meant family. It meant not being alone. The scuffing of heels on the rock, the gathering of loose stones, a brewing debate—who can hit the water from up here? Felix laid out the rules. “Don’t move an inch! You have to sit on your butt! Don’t move your butt!”
“I wasn’t even moving my butt!” Milo whined.
The thrown stones echoed, ping, ping, ping, down the rocky canyon walls.
“I love you, guys,” Jordan said.
“Love you, too, Dad,” they both said.
The boys spent one last magical night under the stars.
Then it was time to turn around. There was only one way out of here, and it was the way back. Even though they would spend another two days on the trail hiking back to where they started, then another two days driving home, when the stars set and the morning came, Jordan felt as if this trip was already over. The first steps out of their summit camp started the journey back home.
The boys looked forward to civilization, their video games, cartoons, and delivery pizza. They rattled on about which toppings they would order, they bickered about it, and would they really need to share? “No, you can each have your own pizza,” Jordan promised.
Jordan let them have their fantasies while to him each step felt heavier than the last. Each step pointed to the end. And when would they ever get to do this again? Maybe never? This delightful fantasy was not their real life. This had been a big ask, and it was not one Colette would likely agree to again.
Especially not if she was mad at him. Especially not if he destroyed their family.
“Dad, come on! Let’s go!”
So they threw their packs in the back of the truck, and they began their drive back home to Wisconsin.
———
When the boys weren’t arguing—”He’s touching my shoulder! He farted!“—they slept or ate their snacks or watched their videos quietly. Jordan had so much time to think. The relaxing rumble of the road usually soothed him, but this time it was no match for the churning of his thoughts.
They drove through mountains and valleys, forests and fields. Little by little, they lost the natural world on their way back to civilization, passing cities and towns, passing large sprawling suburbs, highways connecting one metropolis to the next. Living and breathing nature was replaced with concrete. Green to gray.
The air changed, smelling of car exhaust and pavement and muddled fast food grease of every type.
They filed into the tidy suburban streets, little box houses in rows—white, brown, beige, blue. Cage after cage with people inside.
Jordan hated the suburbs. He hated this street. He hated this house, especially this house. This house sent shivers down his spine.
Jordan didn’t want this life. He wanted to claw his way out of it until his fingers were bloody. Why were they here? He didn’t agree to this, nobody ever asked him. He didn’t want to be here.
Two weeks wasn’t enough. A month wouldn’t be enough. Years. A lifetime.
Get back in the truck, he wanted to say to his boys. We have to go. This isn’t our life. This isn’t right.
But Colette would sooner skin him alive before she let him take those boys. They’d had that fight before, had it a million times.
So the truck remained parked and the boys had already run into the house.
The boys bombed through the front door, leaving it wide open, so they could run to their mother in the kitchen. That was fine because Jordan followed behind them with his arms full of their camping gear, backpacks and boots and worn out supplies, and made a small pile near the door. No, he didn’t intend to leave it here, he wanted Colette to know. But the boys had her attention, so he didn’t say anything.
“My boys! How did you get even bigger since you were gone?”
Colette opened her arms to two slimy, sweaty, stinky children, offering a loose hug, patting their backs.
“Oh, why are you wet?” She didn’t wait for them to answer. “And you smell like campfire. Still? Were there no showers? Hugs later. Get straight in the shower. Don’t sit anywhere! Go on, straight upstairs!”
The boys minded their mother and ran upstairs.
“Hygiene, Jordan. My God, their skin could rot right off. And what did you do to your face? How are you twenty-eight years old and you still can’t put on sunscreen? But you kept them alive, it looks like.”
“We had a blast,” Jordan said. “I would have stayed there forever.”
“Ha, well, you can’t. So welcome back to reality.”
“Can’t? Who says? You?”
“Says everybody! Ugh. You’ve been watching too many of those vanlife videos. It’s a fairytale. It’s not real. People don’t really live like that. They just want you to believe in it for the views.”
“Some people do.” Jordan shrugged. “We could homeschool the boys, unschool them, so we’re not tied to a school schedule all the time. That’s a thing people do.”
“Not normal people. Unschool? What even is that? I worked so hard to get them into that school. They have a middle grade to college-prep curriculum. What about their friends, their sports, their future?”
“What about seeing the world and living life on our own terms?”
She grimaced. “Eww. Why?”
“To break out of this box,” he said.
“The box isn’t the problem. We just need a bigger box. A nicer box. I want the boys to have their own bedrooms. I want a master bathroom suite with a soaking tub. I want a home office that isn’t also my dining room.”
“I don’t want to buy a house.”
“Right, you want to live like a hobo.” She cackled.
She hated how little ambition he had. He imagined if she had a genie’s magic lamp, she would have wished him into an entirely different man, maybe a corporate CEO with a six-figure salary. But fantasy wasn’t reality, and the reality was that her children’s father was tragically subpar for her tastes.
“What about what I want?” His question was futile. He already knew that.
“Maybe if what you wanted wasn’t so stupid! Want a better job! Want to make something of yourself! God, you’re such a child sometimes. Grow up.”
It was no mystery that she didn’t love him, but he often wondered if she actively hated him. She wanted him here to help when the boys were little, but now that they were almost ten, she probably wished he would just leave.
Why are you here? This isn’t your life.
He didn’t want to leave his boys. But short of kidnapping, he didn’t know what he could do.
He laughed, an exasperated huff. “Why don’t you just say it’s your way or the highway?”
She cocked her brows. “I didn’t think that was unclear.”
The cage wrapped around him and swallowed him whole.
She shook her head once. “My boys won’t be homeschooled and they won’t live in a travel van. You know the campfire smell doesn’t come out of their hair for days. It really does make me retch. And when you’re done cleaning up this pile, you need a shower, too. Don’t even think about sneaking into my bed for a nap. And, actually, don’t sit on the couch, either.”
Another ten years, he couldn’t do it. Not even for his boys. He couldn’t keep this family together for them. It was going to unravel. It had to. And he was sorry for that. So sorry.
They’d have to get used to him being sorry for things.
——— ———
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