~~~
“Ricky, let’s get moving! I don’t understand how someone as hyperactive as you can take so long to walk a couple blocks to the forest,” Robert yelled.
His little brother had found a lizard or something clambering off of a rock as Ricky chased it. Most of the lizards in town were fully aware of the terror Ricky represented and would have been long gone by the time he got within two house lengths. But this particular lizard was either new to the area, still young, or was enjoying the May sunshine just a little too long until Ricky came running full force.
“Alright!” Ricky answered with a holler. “It’s not like you got some kinda line dead or something anyway, Robbie! We can take all day!”
“And we probably will, too,” mumbled Robert. Then a little louder so as to be heard, he replied, “Are you trying to say ‘deadline’, you Doofus?”
Ricky probably picked up the term from their father last fall when he was trying to hurriedly build them a tree house during the first snows. It was one of the promises Dad had tried to fill, on a deadline, before shipping out to Iraq for his second tour of duty. There were many promises made when the parents first spoke to Robert and Richard about moving to a whole other state, but after arriving, Robert learned he probably shouldn’t have complained too much in the first place. The Rocky Mountains were beautiful, and through the past winter there had been all kinds of new sports and activities to do in the snow that, frankly, just can’t be done in a place with no hills or mountains.
“Where exactly are we going anyway?” asked Ricky.
“See that cliff face up there?”
Ricky raised his head. It was definitely a long ways up. Probably near a one-thousand foot rise if the boys had a way to measure it, and it would just about take a mountain goat to get to it.
“Way up there? You’re joking, right?!?” Ricky replied, but he was unable to hide his natural grin. “Because…that would be freakin’ awesome!!!”
He started to jog up the hill into a path leading through some thick scrub oak.
“Wait! Wait!” Yelled Robert running after. “I didn’t tell you why! We’re going to hang you from a rope off of it and see if any eagles come to eat you!!”
Apparently that made the idea of the climb even more interesting rather than cluing the younger boy in on the joke, and Ricky picked up the pace. It was through several hundred yards of oak mixed with a couple spruces and a maple or two before the boys stopped at the first meadow above their home. It was a large lump of land that was probably a couple football fields in size. Some of the other kids in school during the past year told Robert it was called the Maple Springs Airfield. Sure enough there was another, older boy there getting ready to launch his model airplane down the runway made of tromped-down grasses and shrub in the middle of the field.
“Dan!” Ricky hollered, raising a hand to the boy he recognized from their street. “Guess what!”
“Uh…” began Daniel as his model of a B52 bomber rolled down the bumpy runway about to take off. “You’re here to ruin my day?”
“Jerk!” Ricky yelled back, but smiling all the same. “No! We’re climbing up to the cliff face up there above the ridges!”
“Oh yeah?” Dan asked casually as the plane soared out towards the valley above the rooftops of Maple Springs.
“We’re not really,” Robert corrected.
“What?!” Ricky cried unhappily. “Then where are we going?”
Both boys plopped their backpacks next to the gear Dan brought up and watched the plane for a moment, before Robert tried to explain. Daniel was only a year-and-a-half older than Robert so they’d hung out a few times, but this was the first occasion he had to watch him fly the model plane. Many kids, and adults too, had model planes and RC cars they brought up to the meadow above town and Robert was still hoping when his father came home from active duty the next time that he’d be able to get a helicopter.
Normally on a mid-Saturday morning there might be a few more people up in the meadow driving radio controlled vehicles or watching those that were, but so far Dan was the only one that had made it up. In the winter the meadow was a place where the Maple Springs residents would drive their snow-mobiles around. But in the summer the hills lower down the slopes that lead up to Maple Springs were designated dirt bike and ATV riding areas. The boys could hear a number of them buzzing around below town, even above the shrill mini-propeller sound coming from Dan’s airplane. Robert guessed that since it had only been a couple weeks since the snows really melted away that most people in town were busy testing out their motors and “clearing out the old gas” still on the trails below.
Finally, Robert answered Dan. “I don’t know how far up we’re going to go. I just thought I’d climb up to the top of the ridge up there and take a look around. That canyon just kind of goes up the mountain a ways, right?”
“Yeah,” Dan answered while he continued to guide the plane back around towards them to fly in low above the trees surrounding the meadow.
“That’s all?” Ricky grumbled. But he too was still mesmerized by the small shape buzzing around the perimeter of the meadow.
“Why don’t you go up to the top of that valley where it cuts in from Loafer Mountain?” Dan suggested.
“Yeah. We might.” Robert was trying to sound cool and knowing, but he was still curious. “What’s up there anyway?”
“Well, there’s the springs up there.” The RC controller dodged left in Dan’s hands as if he were willing the plane to do the same rather than by the sticks on the controller. “That’s where we get our name, see?”
“Whaddya mean?” Ricky asked in his overly-loud voice.
“Maple Springs. Get it?”
“So there really is a spring in Maple Springs, eh?” Robert asked, still trying to go for casual.
“Of course,” Dan continued. “There’s the springs up in that cut, and there’s caves. There’s all kinds of stuff to do up there. Even some smaller boulder faces you can rock climb on and stuff.”
“Hmmm,” responded Robert.
Ricky was looking back and forth between their two faces, hardly understanding why they were sitting so coolly staring at the plane when there were rocks to be climbed and springs and streams to be dammed up.
“Can we go there?” Ricky asked.
“I dunno,” said Rob. “I don’t know how I’d carry you home if you broke an arm or a leg or something.”
“Good point,” Dan added. “Actually, they say some ugly monsters live up there too, so it probably wouldn’t be safe for the doofus here.”
Robert thought Daniel probably meant well. He guessed that he was trying to help Rob keep Ricky from going up the cut to the top, but if he had the plan was sure to backfire with the little squirt.
“Oh! We gotta go, Robbie!!” Ricky exclaimed.
“Nnnhuh,” Robert tried to disagree. There would be no convincing Ricky to give up on the idea, so it was better if he just prep himself for the trip and avoid having him run off on his own to attempt the climb.
All in all, every bit of planning or change of plans on that Saturday morning had directed the two boys towards their destiny in the troll cave, and it was well that Robert stopped trying to change it. They lumped their packs back on their shoulders and bid Daniel goodbye. He nodded in return, and as they were leaving he directed to Robert to come back sometime this summer without the doofus and he’d let him fly his plane.