If you are on a hike through the woods, following a specific trail, and you come to an area of thick brush, followed by a 10 foot leap across a body of water with a tiny tree branch put across the way, do not continue and proceed to cross it. You are clearly mistaken. This is not the path.

“Jessica, there’s no way around… do you think you can leap it?” my dad shouted from the other side of the gaping hole.

Of course, I’m a 12 year-old girl. My legs are nowhere near as long as his. “Only if I grow wings and fly across!” I yell back. I’m already furious because at least a mile ago I had mentioned that we were going the wrong way.

“Alright, I don’t think this is the right path…” he trailed off.

No kidding.

I should probably backtrack to the beginning; how we wound up in this situation in the first place. My family, my father, mother, brother and I love to travel. So there we were, miles from home in the heart of Grand Teton, Wyoming. We packed up our bags for the long hike around the lake, where the offset Tetons peaked through the sky and reached up to the heavens in the background. The sight was breathtaking and being there felt unreal. The only interruption to this paradise was we hadn’t really anticipated just how difficult the trail would be to follow.

We had somehow lost ourselves amidst the great unmarked outdoors, and had soon found ourselves tangled in swampland. We were beside the lake, bushwhacking on a dead-end path decorated in the abundant deer tracks, we followed as guide. To our surprise, the shores had endless amounts of snakes darting in and out of the water. Overstepping them and feeling as if we were on the set of an Indiana Jones movie, we made our way into an area of tall grass just before the clearing of water. The blades of grass were as tall as my ten year-old brother. We brushed through, unaware of what may have inhabited the grass before we came to disturb it. I felt like part of a secret militia as we crept our way through. Suddenly, my heart flinched in panic and my stomach dropped. Out of nowhere, my dad propelled into the air. He let out the shrillest and most blood-curdling yelp I, to this day, have ever heard in my life.

He yelled, “Something just crawled up my leg!”

My mom flinched. “What do you mean?!”

My brother screamed.

It was complete chaos.

I was tweaking as if I had just discovered the ground I was standing on was sinking sand. “Dad, stop!” As if that would make everything all calm and better. “They are all over! I don’t want to keep going. Can we please just get out of here?!”

Everyone fears something in the world, and my father’s phobia is without a doubt, that of snakes. He used to pay my brother and I a dollar if we found one in the stone wall beside our house and exterminated it. The man brought a weapon or large rock with him when he mowed the lawn. So here he was now, living his nightmares. He brushed at his legs as hurriedly as possible, fearing that snakes were crawling up his legs in the thicket. The rest of us, my mother, brother and I who were panicking as result, feared that there were more to follow, like there had been by the lakeside, earlier. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if we were actually on the right trail and other hikers caught a glimpse at us, flailing around doing the Irish jig in absolute panic. Much to say, I was quite on edge, by the time we had finally made our way to the right trail. Mad at life for being part of this family, I darted ahead of everyone else. After a while of walking, and keeping up the act of tweenager disgust, I heard what sounded like a tree splitting. Again, with my heart thumping at lightning speed, I ran back to the rest of my family. My dad, recovering his manhood, went on ahead to scope it out. Standing atop a rock he looked into the woods and sure enough we had wandered right into the path of a grizzly bear. I have never seen my family dart out of a place as fast as we did that day.
As we found ourselves back at the trailhead, escaping what could’ve been eminent death, I had forgotten why I was angered in the first place. I thought back to when we were just starting the trail and my mom had to convince my brother and I that we wouldn’t cross paths with a bear after we had seen a tree covered in claw marks. It’s ironic how life happens, sometimes. What we had just been through was unreal. I know a regular group of people would have not followed my crazy father through the tall grass and off of the trail. What makes my family different is we don’t need a trail to find ourselves going in the right direction. My family, I think, is best defined when we get off the normal trail. We discover what it means to take the rough path and also deal with the fears. Someone will be there to cease them, or suffer in them with you. It’s the people who are standing next to you willing to leap across a 10 foot hole to reach another member on the other side. I had discovered my family is a bunch of adrenaline junkies off to find the next adventure. Besides that, who else can say their parents have lead them through something like that and then brought them back to safety? My family doesn’t just go the distance, we run it back.