Heather Thomas

Things didn't go great from the start.

It was going to be a longer drive than Glass River anyway, at least two or three hours, but we took a wrong turn somehow.

Our GPS wasn't working in the mountains, and my mom smugly said that she had written down the directions in case that happened.

So she handed me the directions.

But my mom's handwriting is shit, and I couldn't make it out.

Like it legitimately could have been a list of directions or a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

That bad.

And somehow getting lost became my fault.

I had been really, really trying to get along with my mom, because having an entry-level job for the past few months has taught me some important life lessons, namely that having an entry-level job sucks.

I want to go to college in a few years, and I don't have much choice other than to live at home while I do it.

That's going to become significantly more logistically difficult if my mom and I kill each other.

We ended up pulling over to the side of the road, where my mom yelled at me for not being able to read her handwriting, until it turned out that she, also, couldn't actually read her own handwriting, although she pretended otherwise.

Our stress level was jacked up further by the other drivers.

We were well off the road, to the point where I was worried the dirt verge would crumble out from under us, but two cars and three trucks laid on their horns honking at us like we were stopped in the middle of the street.

This just wasn't a friendly type of area.

We did eventually get to White Rock Mountain and parked the car.

We arrived hours later than we had been hoping to get there, but in plenty of time to screw up in several more ways before nightfall.

The problem was, we had almost forgotten all the rules you should follow when hiking an unfamiliar trail.

I yanked my backpack on and stomped off, ready to burn off the frustrations of the long car ride.

The trail split and split again, and while there were wooden signs to show the way, they were so old and worn.