A Soldier's Heart

The Secret Place (Beth)

Travis decided to join the Scouts. He said he would learn things that could help us, "survival skills" he called them. He wanted me to learn the same things by joining the Guides, but of course Pa wouldn't let me. So Travis tried to pass on what he learned, little by little. I thought most of it was stupid. Learning all those knots, for instance. How was that going to help us survive?

In the summer between grade school and high school, Travis and me went out of town a little ways so he could teach me a little bit about finding my way with a compass and map. That was kind of fun. The map was kind of hard to make sense of, though. It didn't look like the kind of map you get at a gas station. It had all kinds of squiggly lines that Travis said were elevators or something. That made no sense at all. And there was a dotted line bending and twisting all over the place. I had no idea what that meant. I asked Travis, but he said I would figure it out later.

Travis marked a big black X at one spot near the top corner of the map and another near the bottom corner on the other side. He stabbed the first one with his finger and said, "This is where we want to go" and then touched the other one and said, "This is where we are now. We are going to use the map and the compass to get there."

He showed me the compass sign on the map, and set his compass on top of it.

"See how the needle on the compass doesn't line up with the one on the map? Now we turn the map until it does."

He showed me how, then handed them both to me. "You'll need to check it again every little while. Now, which way do we go?"

I picked the direction I thought was right, and we set off. We walked for a little while until we came to a path. Travis stopped me.

"Check your bearings again."

"What? What are bearings?"

"Do what we did at the start. Align the compass with the map."

I did that. Travis tapped the map.

"We are about here. Now do you know what those lines mean?"

I looked where his finger was pointing, and looked around us.

"The path?"

"Yes! Well done, Beth!"

That was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was far from home, in the bright sun, out in the wilderness, and Travis was pleased with me. What more could I possibly ask for?

"OK, Beth, now see if you can figure the best way to get where we are going. I have a surprise for you when you get us there."

I looked at the map. It was still confusing, but I could see the path led in the general direction partway to the X, so I started down it. Every time it twisted, I would check where I thought we were now. When the path took a deep bend away from the direction we were going, I looked at the map and realized this was as far as we could follow the path. I looked at Travis for guidance, but he just looked back at me and said, "Now what?"

I really, really wanted him to be proud of me. I was so afraid of making a mistake. I looked at the map again, and could see some of those elevator lines in the direction I thought we needed to go, but I couldn't see anything around us. Just a steep, rocky hill. I started climbing it and Travis followed. I hoped he would say something if we were going in the wrong direction, and I kept looking back at him, looking for some clue, but he would just smile and not say anything.

We climbed for a few minutes. When the ground levelled off for a bit, I sat down and took a sip from my water bottle. Travis did the same. I checked the map again, trying to guess how far we had climbed by measuring with my thumb the distance from where we had left the path to the previous bend, and comparing it to the distance we had travelled upward. If I was right, we just needed to climb a little higher and then go to the right a bit. Travis watched what I was doing, but didn't say anything other than to suggest I align the compasses again. When I did that, I realized we were closer than I thought. I got up and moved diagonally along the hill. That was easier than straight up, and if I was right, we should end up close to the place we were looking for.