Mileage

By Jonathan Lam on 02/15/18

Tagged: [reflective]

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First chapter written for a memoir for Journaling class. (I think) it's all true.

"Mileage"

I used to live next to a trail. For many years, it was just “the trail” to me. A dirt path, two-and-a-half miles long. Where we biked and our dad easily outran us. Our house was right next to the beginning, and our driveway was separated from the path by only a two-and-a-half foot gap of poison ivy. It ran parallel to our road, Tait Road, and, for the first few years, ended where we reached a road. But some years and a new bicycle later, we learned that there was a second part, about a mile-and-a-half long, extended past that trail, and it was very smoothly paved with asphalt and had a rickety bridge and ended at a park, Old Mine Park. And even then, just before we moved and after the paving of the first trail segment, we realized that the trail went even further, reaching to Wolf Park in Monroe, some five miles past that, and beyond. We stopped at Wolf Park every time, whining and turning back. And only this year, a decade later, did I hear that the trail goes in the other direction as well. What I had thought of at as a beginning at our house was only a tiny sliver of a greater system.

Now I mostly know the trail by name and bittersweet memories. Bitter because it’s all gone now. Sweet because I remember the carefree happiness of a childhood the trail created for me. Its name is the Pequonnock River Trail (a name whose spelling I have never bothered to remember), a trail constructed in the tracks a long-gone railroad, and now Tait Road has a parking lot built for the bikers and runners. I’ve only been to the trail recently for cross country or track, and I don’t see many little children like I used to. Just sweaty joggers.

But I can still walk through those first two-and-a-half miles a decade later with my eyes closed, in any season, at any time, remembering every bend and milestone. The furled American flag, the mile-stone (which was paved over), the quarter-mile markers, the trail Indian Ledge Park, the skipping-stones place, Lion King’s den. I can still see my dad’s slippery running pants flowing and my sisters taunting at me from their bikes, white and purple. And I can hear my dad trying to say “invisibility cloak,” but failing because of his incomplete English. But we didn’t care. We didn’t know better either.

--

The Great Invisible Clock

Long icicles hung from the rock walls of the second gorge. In the summer, daddy would ride up onto the top of the gorge on his bike while we stayed at the bottom, but he said it was too slippery now. Our bicycle tires weren’t completely full of air, but daddy said that was okay because it was cold and the tires would fill back up in the springtime. The newly-melting ground was muddy and slimy and spread all over the white tires of Jessica’s bicycle and made squishy noises as we biked. It got all over daddy’s grey, shiny sweatpants and mommy would probably yell at him later for it.

The dirt path below us became pebbly, and we stopped. On our right, the path to Indian Ledge Park appeared. We stepped off the main trail and onto that path. A few steps in, after we descended some fifteen feet and around a short bend, we stopped. Juliet and Jessica gave their bikes to daddy, who leaned them against a tree. He put an invisible clock over it and we continued down the small trail. I took my bike with me, because it was a mountain bike unlike Jessica’s and Juliet’s, but didn’t ride it because the trail was very steep and there was still some slippery snow on the ground. We crossed the stream on the creaky wooden bridge, passed the huge tree stump that was uprooted and lay sideways with a patch of dark dirt underneath, and onto the other main path that led us straight to Indian Ledge Park. Then I got back on my bike and raced my sisters to the park.

I won, of course.

We played on the playground there. The slides were extra slippery because there was a small layer of snow on them, and the metal was very cold. Juliet fell off of one of the monkey bars because it was so slippery, and we had to go home early because she couldn’t play anymore. There wasn’t even time to play on the swings, the best part. Both Jessica and I could use the real swings, but Juliet had to use the buckets with foot holes.

We walked back to the trail, slower now because Juliet was riding on daddy’s shoulders, piggy-back style. Daddy took off the invisible clock and we started biking back, Juliet still crying a little bit. There was only a bruise and no blood, so it couldn’t have been that bad, Jessica and I told her, but she wouldn’t stop crying.

When we got back to the place where the trail split to go down to the river, where I had rode my bike across and we had skipped stones and swung on the rope swing, we noticed that there was a bicycle there. The biker must have been around Jessica’s age, but a boy. The bike was black and red, like my old bike, and had no snow on it. We didn’t see anybody around.

“Why didn’t they put an invisible clock over their bike?” asked Jessica to daddy. He stopped.

“They must have forgot.” He went over, dragged an invisible clock out of his pocket, and threw it over the bike. “I’ll do it for them because they forgot.”

But we still saw it. That meant it would be invisible to them. Our bikes were invisible to everyone but ourselves because daddy did the magic trick over our bike.

Jessica saw it too. “Now they won’t be able to find their bike,” she whined.

Daddy said, “No, they can see it too.”

“But I thought only we could see it if you put it on.”

“It’s works with magic, of course they can see it.”

I wasn’t totally sure that made sense, but once we started moving again, it was time to say the Pledge of Allegiance as fast as possible as the large American flag appeared as we went around the corner. With one hand on my heart and the other on the steering wheel (I had just learned the one-handed steering trick, and even Jessica couldn’t do it) I raced Jessica with the pledge. She won this time.

But then, as we passed the first gorge and saw icicles again, I began to cry. I thought daddy was lying, and that by putting on the invisible clock, they wouldn’t be able to see it and lose their bike. Daddy lied to us because he couldn’t undo the magic. We made someone lose their bike.

--

Bouncy Ball

My grandma was out on the hunt with us. She was picking at the ma-churn (or in english, the “smart grass”) from the sides of the trail for us to eat. She taught us how to pick it as well, and we did it too, every time we couldn’t see people on the trail. It smelled very good when we picked it, and we made sure we didn’t pull the roots out so that they would grow again. (But sometimes we were wrong and plucked normal grass by accident, which isn’t very tasty in soup.) And then there was the chong-chong (“scallon” or “scallop” or something like that). They were easier. They were round, not like the ma-churn.

She was holding a plastic bag from Stop and Shop that we poured our yummy treasure into. It filled up pretty quickly, because we had not picked the ma-churn or the chong-chong for a few weeks and they had all grown tall again. I don’t think anyone else picked them. I never saw anyone else picking them. But my grandma was cool, and we got free food from the trail. My dad always made fun of her for scavenging food, but he never cooked like she did.

We were in the middle of our sneaky veggie-picking when I noticed the blue ball. It was at the bottom of a ditch near a little stream that carried water under the trail in a large pipe. I liked it right away because it had a cool pattern, like the stone marble. Someone must have dropped it down there and not tried to pick it back up. It was very steep and far down. I pointed it out to my grandma, and she looked and started climbing down.

Jessica and Juliet and I all told her to stop. It was too dangerous. But she climbed down on hand and foot, picked up the ball, and climbed back up again. She was still holding the bag of veggies in her other hand. She brushed off the dirt, and we returned home, and we filled up the bouncy ball with air and played with it for another day and a half before we got bored.

It’s still a good bouncy ball, many decades later. The cats are afraid of it though.

I have an awesome grandma.

--

Crash Bandicoot Spring

We picked up Ray from his house, so it was Juliet, Ray, my dad, and I in the car. We were on the way to the trail. The snow was melting, but the ground was still frozen. Nonetheless, it was a warm 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so we chose the day to take a run. The sun was high, there were few clouds, and there was almost no wind. It was the kind of day you would remember for being extraordinarily ordinary. In its weather, in the event. A typical Sunday-afternoon jog with a friend.

Ray was no ordinary athlete. He was the top sprinter at our school, almost at the point of breaking the school record in the 100 meter dash. And I was just some skinny Asian kid who somehow picked up running because my family did it. He was an amazing short sprinter. I endured through distance. He was well over six feet tall. I hadn’t gone through most of my growth spurts yet. He swore a lot around friends. I never did. We were a good match, I think. Balanced.

We parked in one of the spots leading up to the trail.

Our old house’s driveway and the beginning of the trail both are located on a steep incline. Actually, one of the reasons we decided to move away was because of that steepness— on very cold days, the driveway became became an impassable sheet of black ice, uncontrollable on the way down and sometimes unable to go up in a car. (When it got this icy, my grandma headed out with us with a sharp garden tool we called the “icepick” and we chipped away at it). The trail has the same incline. When we first moved to the house, we couldn’t make it to the top of either hill from a standstill. So if we were going into the trail we would first check if any cars were coming, then use some of the momentum from hurling down our driveway to go up onto the trail, or vice versa from the trail onto our driveway. Or we could cross the poison ivy path, at our own risk.

The poison ivy path didn’t exist anymore. A hedge grows there now. I guess the current owners of our old house wanted some privacy from the influx of sweaty people. And the familiar sight of the 1999 Nissan Maxima was replaced by a red Hyundai Sonata.

Not much had changed about the trail. It was just a lot more active, with many older runners exercising. I didn’t see any toddlers. The floor was still mostly speckled with the incoming sunlight from the trees.

My sister had not yet begun cross country, so she was very slow. My dad went with her. Ray and I went ahead.

The first thing I noticed was Crash Bandicoot Spring, which was near the beginning of the trail. A name I hadn’t recalled in many years. My sisters and I thought it looked like something from the PlayStation 2 videogame, “Crash Bandicoot.” I don’t remember which part. After that came the first gorge. The American flag. The skipping stones and rope swing. The paved-over mile-stone. The long hill. The short hill. The second gorge. Indian Ledge Park. The straightaway with the new fence. And then the yellow gates that marked the end of this segment of the trail. All in heavy breaths, so that we didn’t really pay attention to the sounds or smells. It was so fresh and quiet that there wasn’t really much to hear or smell. Just old landmarks, ancient memories, rushing by in blurs.

Two-and-a-half miles. It took us sixteen minutes. But to me, this was something that began over a decade ago. Nobody passed us.

Panting, sweating, we turned back.