“You go first,” I said to him as we pushed through the bushes.
The path opened up into a tunnel of freshly bloomed flowers. The leaves on the trees were finally green again and the first warm breeze of the season let pink petals rain down around us. We cut through a side of the tunnel of shrubs, to the trail he used to walk on when he was younger.
Earlier that morning he picked me up in his ancient Ford Explorer because I wasn't old enough to drive yet. Then, I needed a jacket. But now, I had it tied around my waist.
“You definitely didn’t wear the right shoes for this,” he joked, looking back at my moccasins covered in the mud made by yesterday’s rain.
“It doesn’t bother me,” I smiled back
Branches from bushes came flying back towards me as I followed his red shirt through the overgrown path, sticks and thorns scraping my bare arms.
“The path opens up just up here,” he promised.
Sounds of birds singing and tiny animals playing followed us as we took turns climbing on random, large rocks and fallen trees.
We walked past abandoned signs that were knocked over by some storm and passed a random trailer that I wondered if anyone lived in. We saw scattered items left behind by previous walkers, like water bottles and a sock.
I had not walked that long in a while and my breath was getting heavier. With each inhalation I smelled the freshness of the new season and it awoke an old feeling inside me, left over from last spring.
Finally, we approached an opening. A huge green hill was in front of us.
“Wow. It’s so beautiful,” I said as I stopped to gaze in awe, imagining a view from the top or maybe sledding the winter.
He looked at me with his dull blue eyes.
“Yeah…” His tone made it sound like a question.
Suddenly I noticed my arm was bleeding from one of the branches. The clouds ahead looked a little darker.
“I think it’s going to rain.”
“Yeah, let’s head back.”
When he drove me home later that day, we passed the green hill from the trail. A garbage truck was pulling into it.
It was a land fill.
He never told me.
