VACATION

Story by Sabine Hilding
Colors by Marylou Wilhelm
Web version 2021 Oregon

The boy watched as his mother
drove the car back and forth in tiny increments.
She was trying to turn around in a single lane. It
was a dirt road, single file, an old western
wagon trail in the High Desert, somewhere
south near some paleo fossil beds, very far from
home.
He sat, stuffed in the backseat along with
pillows, assorted food containers, maps, nature
books, ice chest, clothes, games, and good
smelling sage they had gathered for incense.
The road straddled a ridge looking out
over sagebrush and gullies. It had been a dry
summer after a wet spring and the fresh green
cheat grass that had come up abundant and fast,
had now turned beige and dry in August. The
thick mat of grasses strafed the underside of the
car in a scratchy uneven sound with thumps
when the rocks popped up.

They were on an educational field trip—an
end of summer vacation—with a group from the
science museum. His mother had signed them
up for, “Paleontology of the High Desert.”
It had been a rather traumatic last twenty
minutes. One minute, he was riding along in the

backseat of their expedition leader’s Jeep
Cherokee, playing computer games with this
older kid also on the field trip. The next minute,
he heard his name screamed at him by his
mother—she was driving a VW Beetle, the last
in the line of four vehicles—that he was
supposed to get back in their car.
“Seems like your mother wants you back
with her,” said Chris, the lanky class leader and
tireless paleontologist. “You got all your stuff?”
He had grabbed his hat and his pack of
cards, shoved the computer game back at the

older kid, and, heaving open the huge door on
the massive jeep, he had made his way through a
sea of scratchy cheat grass to the side door of his
mother’s VW bug, and squeezed in.
“Hi mom, what’s going on?” he said.
“We have to go back,” she said flatly,
gripping the wheel. “The grass is too high.”
“Yeah...?” He noticed she was frazzled. Her
hair stuck to her face and she had a dirt streak on
her chin.
“Our car can’t do it,” she sounded hot and
irritated. “You have to have a high axle out
here…. Plus, you never know what’s down
there. Sooner or later, we’re going to encounter
something and we’ll be stuck with a lot of
hassle. Plus, I can’t see the rocks. You heard all
those bumps. They’re getting worse.”

“And all this high dry grass. If we continue
driving, we could catch the prairie on fire…not
to mention us.”
That got his attention.
“I hate to cut our trip short, but…. You
understand, don’t you?”
He nodded, thinking about leaving the
expedition, then thinking about getting lost
maybe. There was no cell connection. Lately he
noticed he read maps much better than she did.
“You can only make a Volkswagen do so
much,” she cut the engine. “We’re twenty miles
from the highway. They’re probably going on
another ten. And we have to get back out of here

again, too,” she said. “And alone,” she added.
“And you have that summer art class
starting….”
He winced. That art class had come up so
fast he hadn’t had time to nix it.
“I want to get us out of here safely, you
know?” her voice was dull.
“Yes mom,” he said, not knowing what else
to say. He imagined the grasses on fire from a
spark off the hot car engine. The idea of a brush
fire dawned on him in a more real sense. He had
seen a grass fire burning a prairie on TV. The
quick-moving, earth-scorching swiftness scared
him.
“What do you think?”
“Uh, ok….” he said, hearing the growling
machine noise of the jeeps recede gradually up
ahead. The others were going on and they were
being left behind.
“That guy!” she was talking to herself.
“He’s so disorganized! He could have seen this
coming,” her voice had a note of hysteria. She
meant Chris, their trip organizer. “He knows
what I’m driving. I ought to have known better
than to trust him.”
“Yes, mom,” he said.
“We’re stopping for a while….”

They were on top of a wide mesa, with sage
in shallow valleys and huge empty spaces in the
distance. There were interesting islands of black
boulders and open sandy places in a yellow sea
of cheat grass.
Suddenly, he was eager to get out and
explore.
“This trip is just ruined….” she mumbled.
He waited and didn’t want to strike a wrong
chord. After a minute, she said, “Go ahead.
Check out the ants…”
Yes indeed! He dove happily into the
muddle in the back seat to locate Hymenoptera
of the Eastern Oregon Desert—a museum
pamphlet packed for their trip.
Then, still seated under a pile of stuff
looking at the pictures, he heard his mother’s

sobs. What to do? It wasn’t like her to say only
clipped responsible things. She was usually
pretty happy and liked to laugh a lot. He hadn’t
expected her to burst out crying, hunched over
the wheel, crying.
He climbed over to the front, put his arms
around her from the side, and hugged her.
“Don’t worry, I like it here,” he said,
feeling a little guilty about wishing he were with
the museum class.
The group was driving to a remote
canyon with its paleo fossil bones and
mysterious rock shelters and maybe even cougar
tracks. They would be hiking in the desert with a
purpose. Exploring. And bringing back the
fossils that night and talking about their finds by
the light of a campfire, roasting marshmallows.

He patted his mother’s shoulder
automatically, thinking about how the guys were
digging and finding and sifting, and what they’d
be up to in the morning. He wondered who the
older kid was playing games with now that he
wasn’t there. Did they miss him?

His mother stopped sniffling. “I’m going to
take a nap,” she said blowing her nose on a T
shirt from the backseat.
“We’ll drive on later.”
She settled herself against the cushions,
levered the seat back, removed her shoes, put
her feet on the dash, and closed her eyes.
Eagerly, he jumped from the car.
An afternoon breeze rustled the grasses that
were interspersed with silvery Artemisia
tridentata. Three toothed Artemisia. Big
Sagebrush. Chris had told him the name came
from Artemis, the Greek goddess of wild nature.
He liked the sound of the five separate syllables
and repeated them to himself, “Ar-te-mi-si-a.”

There was still the annoying scratch from
the cheat grass in his socks as he clambered over
the rocks, but the mesa was a delight.
A jack rabbit sped from under a golden
blooming rabbitbrush. A beige, half-buried
horny toad moved just enough to show the little
brown tips of its horny horns. A collared lizard
sat in the shadow of a boulder. A faintly rustling
rattle snake. Wild bees zipped between yellow
sage flowers. A hawk sailed overhead.

High up and far away swirled some black
buzzards. He counted fifteen. The breeze carried
a faint smell of carrion. “Something large and
recently dead,” he sniffed the wind the way he
had seen one of the graduate students of the
group, and another member of the expedition,
sniff—a quiet, shallow inhalation.
He looked down. Ants were running
around everywhere.
In an open circlet surrounded by sage, he
found a hill of evenly textured small gravel and
chert with a crater and a hole in the middle—an
ant colony’s main access to their nest. Chris had
talked about the gravel hills, how the ants dug
deep and brought up small stone flakes chipped
by Northern Paiutes when they made stone

tools. He scrutinized the pebbles and chert
flakes, some bluish, some reddish, most were
bright, light sand.
As he watched, an occasional black ant
journeyed forth on the duties of the hive.
“Find food, patrol and repel invaders, eat
but don’t get eaten, avoid parasites when you
can.” Mr. Zeller had taught them about ants in
fourth grade. By good luck, his favorite science
teacher was being promoted to teach the next
grade up. He was looking forward to having him
for science class again and raising his hand and
answering questions—“Good job!”
Black ants crawled in and out of the gaping
hole to the hive. They struggled with leaves.
They teetered and tottered. He dropped a small
stick on the hole and watched the workers
swarm out and instantly move it aside.
As he sat on his haunches, observing, he
noticed that a large reddish ant, maybe a scout
from a neighboring colony, had wandered into
the black ants’ sphere. It was really russet-brown
with long feelers. When it ran into a black ant
from the colony, the larger red ant instantly
turned the black ant over by tripping up the
worker ant as it scurried down the path.
He thought of his computer games. The
russet-brown one had initiated combat….
Then, the big red stranger acquired a grip
on the smaller black ant’s abdomen and they

wrestled across the pebbles. Suddenly, one of
the smaller one’s black compatriots ran up
behind, grappled the red stranger’s neck with its
black pinchers, and cut his head neatly off!
The two black victors ran away, one still
bearing the red trophy attached to its head.
He had heard about ants walking around
with the dead heads of their enemies still
attached to their bodies. He was amazed to see it
for real.
He thought of Mr. Zeller counting seconds
on his stop watch, measuring time intervals to
plot animal behavior. He counted over a minute.
“One minute ten seconds!” until a worker
came and carried the headless body away.

He crouched for what seemed like hours
hypnotized by the comings and goings of the
ants.
After a while, he got up and stretched.
Shadows had lengthened. The sun was now a
huge red ball closer on the horizon. A chill wind
made gooseflesh bumps on his bare arms. A few
tweaking bird sounds and otherwise silence.

He looked around and felt alone. He was
hungry and uncomfortable. The cheat grass
seeds hurt and his ankles itched painfully.
When he got back in the car, his mother
was dozing in her seat. She woke up, blew her
nose, and offered him a smushed peanut butter
sandwich.
Then she started the engine and they drove
slowly out, night coming down on them as they
hit the asphalt highway.

Some hours later, they were again driving
down a dirt road off the highway, this time
following a sign to Crystal Crane Hot Springs. It
was a last-minute find and his mother had at first
driven past, but then turned around. There were
no motels for miles. Too late to camp and they
were both tired. The interior of the car was a
mess.
“We’ll never be able to find things in there
in this pitch dark,” his mother said, meaning the
backseat and trunk. “Honey, why don’t we just
try this place and see?”

The Crystal Crane Hot Springs wasn’t
much, just a row of tiny cabins with a concrete
walkway snaking between them. They pulled
into the parking lot alongside only one other car,
a huge black SUV.
An old woman in a pink nightgown came
out of a trailer to give them a key.
“Number One, out by the Dressing House,”
she said.

He helped unload the car. Then he
undressed and put on his swim trunks. What a
relief to remove the prickly shoes and socks.
And to run.
He felt the grit of the concrete, heard the
slap of his bare feet as he ran to the pool. Then,
the enveloping warmth of the water.
The Hot Spring pool shaped a round wet
place, maybe a hundred feet across, clear as
coffee with bits of flimsy mud particles that
floated and sank as he paddled around.

A flood lamp teaming with moths sparkled
on the dark water. Bats whooshed back and
forth. Overhead stretched the Milky Way.
“Swim at Your Own Risk,” a sign read. He
was glad to be swimming, though this differed
from the pristine chlorinated pool back home at
the Recreational Center. Here, it looked slimy in
spots. The water had a chalky taste and smelled
like rotten eggs.

Across the pool, hanging on to a wooden
walkway, two other people were treading water
and drinking beer. The man was big and talking,
and the woman was buxom and giggling.
The dark water and the whole scene
seemed kind of weird.
His mother, who had sent him ahead to
explore, now came up enveloped in a towel. She
had brought an extra towel for him.
He stoked out to the middle, feeling the
jiggling of the goggles around his neck.
“Put ‘em on, you might want to see the
bottom,” she encouraged.
“It’s too muddy,” he said.
Then, he was shocked to hear a rumbling
voice apparently addressing him. “You, boy!

Don’t make me have to dive down after you!
That water’s deep here.”
“I can swim,” he said softly, forced to look
up and notice the big man’s rugged face and
scarred neck.
“He is a good swimmer, he’s on a swim
team,” said his mother. Her voice was defensive.
She got in the water and moved closer in his

direction. In a friendlier tone she added, “Thank
you for your concern.”
“No telling how deep this pool is,” the man
rumbled. “Hard to rescue a man in murky
water.” There was a pause.
“Have you rescued quite a few people?” his
mother asked.
“Oh, he’s saved a whole lot of people. He
was a Navy Seal,” the buxom woman said.
“You’ve saved many lives….” said his
mother.
“And recovered quite a few too,” said the
Seal.
“A courageous thing,” said his mother.
“Oh ma’am, I don’t even want to begin
telling you.” The old Navy Seal or Special
Forces Diver or whatever he had been in a
former life looked frightening, but the woman
trusted him. You could tell since she snuggled
closer. The man had one arm around her and
held the beer can in his free hand.
Later, when the boy ran back to the cabin,
still steaming from the hot spring, he heard
murmuring and low laughter from the two still
in the pool.
That night, he lay on the dusty cot tucked in
his sleeping bag inside the tiny cabin. His

mother lay on a cot close by, wrapped in the
cocoon of her bag.
He could hear coyotes yipping out on the
desert. He thought of the museum group sitting
down now to roast wienies and tell campfire
stories. He wondered if they had found any
fossils. Chris had warned them about cougars.
He wondered if they had seen any tracks or
heard a cougar scream.
Distantly, he heard the coyotes accelerating
to a yipping frenzy. They must have cornered
something. Maybe a rabbit or a ground squirrel.

He imagined animals hunting in cold and
snow as well as on clear, balmy nights. The
desert out there carried on and didn’t sleep just
because he did. It came alive at night. And the
wind and dust would be blowing even when he
was back in town in the summer art class.
He thought of the desert ants out foraging
for food in long lines, grabbing any insect they
could find, raiding other colony nests in
tremendous battles.
As he drifted into sleep, in his mind’s eye,
he saw a black ant with a red ant head still
attached to its mandible, and then all the animals
he had seen that day, their lively shapes like cutout
puppet shadows, the grasses moving to their
striving.

Copyright: © 2012 and 2021 Sabine Hilding, Marylou Wilhelm
Text copyright Sabine Hilding. Image copyright Marylou Wilhelm
Art-made book 2012, web & print book edition 2021
(Back cover inside, see below)

(Back cover outside on the back of the book)

Back of book description.