Every Beautiful Forbidden Place
We piled into our AC-less, radio-less car, my four daughters, my wife, and I, and drove an hour to hike an hour to a secret waterfall. I suggested my wife read The Giver aloud. She refused. So we all lost our minds instead: my secondborn belting every line from every song in Seussical, my thirdborn staging four intermissions to argue why she didn’t need her seatbelt.
A canopy of eucalyptus trees finally did what I couldn’t. Nobody said a word as we drove the last stretch to the trailhead.
We entered the forest by ducking under a security boom; my oldest pointed out five No Trespassing signs. “Every beautiful forbidden place deserves a visit, at least once,” I said. These words stung my conscience a little, before my wife added, “I bet this is exactly how you spent your summers as a child, Luke.” And that was all it took to continue.
Our first steps sank into deep mud. I glanced back, smiling. “It’ll only be fifteen minutes if we go at a good pace.”
Fifteen minutes later, we weren’t anywhere close to halfway. My youngest whined, “How much longer?”
“We would’ve been there by now if we’d been moving faster!”
We all became friends again at the first glimpse of white water crashing into the chocolate-brown pool. Fountain grass towered as high as our heads: my oldest two charged. I saw myself, in them, and in me, my father.
We swam in the cold water, making sure to stick our heads under the falls, then started the long walk back.
Ten minutes down the trail, a UTV sped towards us. I pulled the girls aside, holding the hand of my youngest.
“What are you doing here? Didn’t you see the no trespassing signs?”
My firstborn glared at me.
“I know we’re not supposed to be here,” I said, “but it’s summer, and I had to show them how beautiful this place is.”
The guard’s face softened as he looked at my dripping daughters, then up at the big eucalyptus trees. “It’s a special place, isn’t it?”
I read “Aloha Security” on the back of his jacket.
“You know they used to ship these trees to China for cement. But not since Covid. There’s about a million dollars worth standing here.”
“Wow.”
“I hope it stays that way,” he smiled. “You won’t come back, right?”
I looked at my girls, mud-streaked and beginning to argue about whose turn it was to sit in the backseat on the drive home. “Not until they’ve got children of their own.”
“Okay then.” He turned his vehicle around, not offering a ride, and for that I was mostly glad.
