Compass

After my father had passed away I began to look

through his personal belongings and found some

thing I hadn't seen since childhood: his compass.

I was twelve when we went hiking to a forest about

an hour out from the nearest town. We started

early in the morning and walked until our hunger

forced us to eat. We ate some of the trail mix my

mother had prepared along with a can of beans.

Green and brown covered everything. The rays

of light coming through the forest canopy made

me feel like we were in church, not the phony

church everyone goes to on Sunday mornings

because they have to but, church as it was meant

to be. Aside from the sounds of our steps all

you could hear was the wind, creatures scurrying

at our encroachment, the bird songs calling back

and forth. As night began to fall I asked my dad,

"Are we going back home now that its getting

dark?" He said we were since we didn't bring

anything to sleep in. "As soon as I find my

compass we'll make our way back." He dug into

his pockets and into his bag, his movements

became frantic. "Do you have it?" I asked. "I'm

sure I do. Let's not worry about it. We'll make

it back just fine, I'm sure of it." We started back

in the kind of silence that you can only find in

the forest. New sounds surrounded us in the

coming darkness. Every stick and twig that was

trampled underfoot sounded like the cracking

of bones. We founds ourselves back at the car

beneathe the full gaze of the moon. I had never

felt so relieved. I fell asleep as he drove us back

home. When I woke up the next day I asked him

if he ever found his compass. He placed the brass

object with a cracked lense in my hands. As I looked

more carefully at it I saw that the arrow had broken

free and sat uselessly on the face.