My family’s favorite outdoor retreat resides about two miles away from our house. It’s a plot of land with a simple lake and a field named Lake Alice, yet because our lanky legs loop through it so often, it has become our go-to retreat and our dog’s second home. Lake Alice is a dammed up, three-foot-deep puddle of water that sits at the base of two hills just west of the town’s highway. The lake has an unused rocky road that connects itself to the closest home whose owners care for a notoriously pushy peacock. On the other side of the lake rests the real trail, the foot trail, which belongs to my brother: he didn’t start it, clear it, or even name it, yet he is its most loved customer. He would walk it every day after school to clear his head and get some air, yet his trips always seemed to be immensely private—almost secretive—and I would rarely get an invitation to join him, even on the weekends. Now that he is out of the house, it is up to me to keep up his trail. I walk it far less frequently, and clusters of fallen trees, limbs, and leaves litter the far too vacant path. I do love the trail though, as I think it lends me the same sense of intimacy that my brother felt as I walk through the woods. It clears my head as it did his, but with every crunchy step I take on his neglected path, I can’t help but compare his relationship with the trail to mine. The trail misses him, and even though it craves any feet—even mine—to walk on its damp abdomen, it is at its widest when he is home.
At the last fork of the trail, which loops the path around either side of the lake, lies an important, though seemingly insignificant, decision to be made: left or right? I used to pick the right side, which would first bring me along a much itchier route, yet after hearing my brother’s explanation on one of our rare joint walks, the left side seemed a far better route, as it perfectly balanced the left’s rocky snake path with the scratchy, knee-high weeds of the right on the way back from the loop. This route saves the vast, mountainous field for last.
The grass here is usually tall and droopy, weary with the heavy load of last night’s weather and the morning dew. Each strand’s stockpile of water is completely stationary, yet when I walk through with my bulky boots, I form a dark stream of compressed, suffocating green that periodically twitches as the blades disconnect from each other. Each fall, as the grass dries and turns to hay, putting on an even more exhausted persona, my father runs through with his red tractor to cut the tan pasture. When the theft is over and densely bailed rectangles litter the cleanly-shaven field, my brother and I run through, plucking one taut knot of blue twine at a time, and load up our truck. This hay is sent down the road to either the sheep or the horses who routinely take my brother’s path to the field throughout the year. I used to dread looking at the fresh-cut field, feeling as if I had stolen one of its most precious resources for my own sake, yet after seeing each year’s new harvest get devoured by the hungry animals, I now think about the field the way my brother does. The field is meant to be cut just as the the trail is meant to have a loyal partner.
A well-known couple of our road—a tall, gray-haired Norwegian 90-year-old, Lars, and his hippie wife, Marit—are the owners of half of the lake and the trail leading to it. The remaining section is owned by a neighbor who is unusually unfriendly, especially for this town. It’s rare for me to walk to the lake without running into the hippie, the Norwegian, or one of their two dogs, both bright powerful golden retrievers with thick skulls and loud barks. The younger of the dogs, however, stands on only three legs, yet she is just as fast as the other as she runs through the tall, damp weeds up to the cusp of my shadow. These two dogs look at me differently now that I see them so often: they recognize me. No longer do they jump up on me as if greeting a new stranger; instead, they treat me like they did my brother and walk wherever I walk. Their smiling, comforting faces mirror Lars’s expression now too—he enjoys seeing my brother’s trail occupied. Though this retreat is private and peaceful, it seems to be the loudest and most active of my outdoor destinations: the birds chirp, the grasshoppers squeak, the flies buzz, and the frogs croak at an intense volume that only seems to heighten as I approach their immaculate lake. Perhaps they’re protecting the lake; perhaps they’re scared of my intentions; or perhaps they’re welcoming me as they did my brother.