Walkabout

Did you ever go for a walk through the woods, all alone? Not on a marked trail, but, rather, just roaming, exploring new paths, or old logging roads that are grown over now? To walk through a stand of young trees, and have a "Bambi" jump up and run away, shrieking, seemingly from right under your feet?

One hot Saturday afternoon, Johnny Miller decided to go for a "walkabout". In the years when he lived in town, in Armadillo Creek, his parents trusted him and his community enough that he was allowed to roam quite a bit, and sometimes he took those liberties to extremes. On this particular day, he just needed to get away for a little while. He didn't tell his Mom where he was going, but he took the time to tell his brother that he was going to climb the mountain behind the house, maybe even walk out to the old family cemetery on the road out to the farm, a few miles away.

So, he crossed through the garden, over the fence and into the woods, and started climbing up the mountain. A little while later, he found himself up on the ridge of the mountain, where many years ago a logging road had been cut through, and he followed that faint path down the ridgeline to the highway, going out of town, heading toward the south. He walked a mile or so beside the highway, then took an old dirt road out past some farms, till they stopped by a creek.

He had remembered, as a little boy, hearing his father and uncles talk about how, years ago, they'd cut across this way on their walks into town, cutting a few miles off the journey. On this particular hot day, Johnny found a shallow part of the creek, and waded across, and on the other side, now, was fields full of mixed breeds of cattle. He walked up the trail through the fields, and out to the road that went back down to the old Miller Homestead, and next to the gate leading into those fields from the main road, was the cemetery.

He walked around there a bit, looking at tombstones, curious about his ancestors who were buried there. There was his Dad's father, known locally as "Turkey Jim" for having been such a turkey hunter as the area had never known. It was said that he could sneak up on a flock of turkeys before they even knew he was there. Turkey Jim had passed away before Johnny was born, and it made him sad to think that he had missed such a character, and the stories he must have been able to tell.

Later, he made his way to Turkey Jim's father's gravesite, and his father's and his, up to Riley Miller, who had been in the state's infantry unit during the civil war. Seeing so many generations of his family, in one place, but laid to rest, was sobering to Johnny, and after he left there, and started trudging his way back through the fields, heading home, his thoughts were lost somewhere up in the atmosphere.

As he crossed one narrow patch of woods, between two fields, but before the creek crossing, Johnny noticed another trail heading off into the woods, at an angle to the one he was following. It was a road less traveled, obviously not used in many years. But, something called to Johnny, and he thought, "Well, how about I go down just a little ways and see what's there?" And, so he started down the new trail. He had been walking for quite a while, when he got to the edge of the woods, and found a clear-cut area. It was a place where the Forest Service had authorized a logging company to come in and harvest the timber, some time in the fairly recent past. The faint trail through the woods, here, turned into a little more well-defined road, through the clearing, and that little voice inside Johnny kept whispering, "Keep going... You can always turn back later...."

About halfway across the clearing, there was a trickle of water crossing the road, a stream, of sorts. Johnny squatted down and took a long drink of water from the creek. He noticed, with a smile, that there was a minnow there, in the shallow water, trapped by the stream, which was drying up in the hot summertime. He reached down and scooped up the little fish, and it squirmed there, in his hands. He then put it down in a broader, deeper part of the stream, where it might have a little better chance of survival.

Johnny crossed through the remainder of the clearing, and came to a well-maintained gravel road. From here, he had an idea of where he must be, back behind the mountain that ran behind the old Miller Homestead, and, in his mind's eye, he thought it was only a couple of miles back to town if he just kept on going, and went out to the highway running out of Armadillo Creek to the east.

Unfortunately, it had been some time since Johnny had been down this road, and riding in a car that someone else was driving seemed to take a few miles off of every journey. A few hours later, Johnny walked into his home, just as darkness was falling, and the television show Airwolf was on. From the point where he had hit the gravel road, until he got home, the journey was almost fifteen miles. All told, he had walked probably about twenty five miles or more that day.

But the story wasn't over, for when he had not come home for supper, his Mom had sent Dad, and his brother Tommy, to look for him. Since Tommy had been the last person to see him before he started his walkabout, and knew that maybe he had gone out to the cemetery or something, they had decided to look around there. They had stopped at the gate, next to the cemetery, and went on down into the farmer's fields, looking for signs of his passing (and they did not find any). But, while there, his Dad got their truck stuck in some mud, and Dad and Tommy walked out of the fields, and back to the owner's house.

The owner of the farm brought Dad and Tommy back home, as it was getting too late in the day to start digging the truck out, and they had to get a ride back out the next day, to go and pull the truck out of the mud with a tractor. Johnny never even remembered if he got in trouble for his adventures or not. Certainly, he probably got a lecture, but the day had been filled with overwhelming happiness, a boy, on his own, exploring a wild and remote countryside.

He went to bed that night, eyes filled with stars, head filled with dreams of a fish that had been in his hands, if only for a moment, and all was well in the world.