Walk

I moved my family from a small neighborhood in Texas out to a ranch about 15 minutes from anywhere. There were neighbors but most of them just mooed about. The others were small houses or trailers. The owner of the ranch let me rent the place. The house was half a mile into the property and was set on two acres fenced in land. The other eighty six acres was tall pines and grass. The owner also leased this eighty six acres to a man who raised rodeo bulls. The rodeo bulls were nice enough. They mostly kept together and if we got too close would run away. The ranch next to this one had the classic Texas Longhorns and they were always social with the rodeo bulls. The two herds would gather together at the fence and have lunch and chat about this and that. The herds probably talked about us often as not seeing as how we were the first people on the property in quite some time. One day we were invited to a neighbors house that lived on the other side of the ranch. They told us that it would be faster to walk to their house than drive because one only had to walk across the back forty, ford a small creek and come up the hill. This seemed easy enough so we started off. My wife, my son who was ten, my daughter who was eight, and I left the house and started the walk down to the creek. This part of the walk was easy as there were old tire tracks leading down where the man who owned the rodeo bulls would drive to put hay in a hay ring during the winter. We got to the creek and jumped across. My son and Daughter needed a two steps to get over it so we found a rock and placed it in the middle of the creek for them. This accomplished we walked up the hill on the other side and promptly got lost. We went straight back to the fence and thought we must have to cross it. Now this is where my wife said what I should have listened too, "Are you sure this is the right way?" I jumped over the fence and up another small embankment and found myself swallowed up by trees. The trees were mainly young pines but there was some bamboo and live oak. All of these really scratch up the skin but I encouraged them to follow and so they did. We went into these woods and ended up going in the exact opposite direction of our neighbors house. I didn't know this and so we kept going. Half an hour into the woods with everybody angry with me we came to a clearing and then to the back of an elementary school. This was miles out of the way from where we should have been. Now knowing where we were I promptly took us back into the forest thinking that I could get us to our neighbors now that I knew where we were. Sadly this time the forest ended in a ravine about thirty feet almost straight down with a larger brook running below. The worst part was what should have taken fifteen minutes had now lasted an hour and a half. I walked closer to the ravine and could see through the trees to the other side and realized that it was my neighbors back yard. I knew this because I could see his kids playing in the back yard. The ravine was too steep for my wife, son, and daughter so we had to backtrack again and fifteen minutes later we finally arrived at the neighbors house. Dusty, hands with patches of tree sap, with twigs and leaves stuck in our hair we arrived. After the visit and playing with the kids it was time to go back. I explained that I did not know which way to go so our neighbors son offered to take us back. We went out his front door, down the street to a fence and a gate. We went through the gate and we turned to the left walked one hundred feet and then saw our footprints leading up the hill from the creek. We thanked him for his help and with glares on my back from my wife, son, and daughter went home in silence.