Haunted Hiking

Saturday Halloweens are the best. I don't have to worry about leaving work early or running over dozens of miscreants on my way home. This year's was particularly nice. Knowing that after dark the world would be filled with demon spawn and other fell creatures of the night, we chose to stay a step ahead of the hellions and venture out bright and early for some family time. Stacy had found a hiking trail up on the Palos Verdes Peninsula that was short and easy and she'd been trying to get me to take everyone up there for a while. It was a beautifully clear, crisp Saturday, so it was a great day for it.

Our kids don't get out much... literally and figuratively, so any time we suggest hitting the great wide open, they spazz out in hyperactive glee, as if we'd told them we'd let Christmas come a month early. L immediately started packing snacks enough to sustain us on a four-day Amazonian bushwhacking and N started gathering all the appropriate toys and stuffed animals needed to accompany such a trip. Once Stacy and I decimated the luggage to manageable levels we headed out. (We now probably would have survived no more than one day of Amazonian bushwhacking.)

The trail is actually only a couple of miles from our house and I was surprised I hadn't heard about it before. It is a short and simple one - a 3/4 mile ascent up a canyon bottom to an overlook, and then the return down the same trail. We got there and unpacked the backpacks and prepped to set out. As we fitted L to her backpack we noticed it dripping suspiciously. We opened it to discover that L thought it overkill to put a top on her water bottle. The bottom of the bag was the remains of a mostly-dissipated alpine lake which was slowly seeping through the fabric. Thank goodness she'd triple wrapped the trail mix we'd made for journey. We set it in the car while we bailed out the backpack. Another near-victim of the flood was a blank notebook and pen L had packed away. I asked her what she planned to do with the notepad and she told me she planned to take notes on all wild animals and natural phenomena she encountered, just like Jack did in her favorite Magic Treehouse book series. I chose not to remind her she couldn't write yet.

The Mighty N,
Slayer of Rabbits

As I mentioned, Stacy had taken the kids on this trail before and kids squealed with excitement over telling Daddy what adventure we'd come across next. They prognosticated the little mile markers and benches with surprising accuracy. L wanted nothing to do with her soggy backpack, though she would not abide leaving it in the car, so guess who got to haul it up the hill. Meanwhile, it took no time at all for N to find his prime and prized hiking possession: a good stick, although he was nearly in tears several times because L kept examining his early finds and declaring them not good enough. (It would have gone so much better for N if she hadn't always thrown them in the gully.) Finally when he'd found a stick that passed L's muster, he held it up to me and proclaimed boldly, "Now I can kill a rabbit!" Not exactly sure where that came from. We generally don't give him much opportunity to impale woodland creatures.



As we ascended and began ticking off the markers the kids would recite what we would find at the next one and we were dutifully compelled to sit at each bench and over look each overlook. Our sites were set on marker 10, because that marker, claimed the kids, two-thirds of the way to the top had a particularly nice bench that would suit us perfectly for our mid-march snack and rest. The countdown (or up, in this case) heightened the anticipation considerably. I kept trying to show L and N the aromatic wild sage and sweet fennel growing along the side of the trail, but they were too hungry to pause for such trivialities and pressed us on to get to our rest-spot. Finally we rounded a bend and found the bench, just as predicted and L and N were all a glow in the flush of their navigational success. We removed all our still-dripping gear and sat down on the bench to indulge in our well-earned snack. As I poured through the backpacks, however, my heart sank. We'd left the trail mix back at the car! Much crying ensued.

Resting at "Starvation Bench"

Not sure we could complete the final 1/4 mile so famished and bedraggled, I nevertheless rallied the sulky troops and we proceeded up the hill. It was a discovery by Stacy that quickly changed the mood -- a good ways up the trail, sitting peacefully in the sun, was a little brown cottontail bunny. N whipped his stick around and sprang into action, but fortunately we were able to catch him before the innocent bunny had a chance to taste the sting of N's blade. We spent a little time with Brave, Brave Sir N, convincing him the bunny would do better un-shishcabobed and he eventually consented to spare its life, but the tight grip he kept on his stick told me his consent was reluctant and he was reserving the right to change his mind at any point. As an alternate plan the kids decided to pet the bunny instead, but the bunny had evidently seen their like before and waited just to the point where they thought they were actually going to get some cuddling in before maddeningly darting like lightning through a hole in the brush. L was halfway through the hole before she realized she was considerably bigger than the bunny.



We continued on our walk to the top and got to see a vista of LA in all its smoggy glory. N, denied his right to rid the trail of ferocious bunny rabbits, took up his second favorite hiking pastime - rock collecting. He quickly amassed quite an impressive collection of gemstones that looked suspiciously like chunks of asphalt. He was allowed to carry one and only one piece of blacktop back to the car so as to not unduly deplete the natural wealth of the area.



As we returned we passed a sign I had noticed on the way up. It amused me no less on the trip down. I had a little verse running through my head the rest of the way down the trail.

Pois porridge hot,
Pois porridge cold,
Pois porridge on an oak
Nine days old.

We eventually made it back to our car and our long-lost trail mix and we wolfed it down like ravaged expeditioners that we were. I tried to illicit some discussion of the hike we'd just taken, but realized that that was old news; the ghosts and goblins and the promise of evening candy was forefront in their minds, so we wrapped up our Halloween hike and headed home to brave as best we could the evils that were to come.