A Holiday To Remember

this was actually my english homework (bleh! :P) and i am so so soo oo oo bored that's why i add it in here (bleh! again). well what.e.ver.

            Forest. It is a lovely and green place for camping and more. And fortunately, when I was seven years old, my dad dragged our family to set our tent in an old, safe forest, called Halo Woods for a holiday. Many said the forest was lovely, and enchanting, but packed with stories of families trapped and lost and never to be found again. But dad was very wise, brave and adventurous man who would take risks for adventures.

            So, we packed our suitcases and bags and some utensils and first aids, and drove to the forest with mom carrying her heart full of worries.

            The forest was damp and smelled like rain and wet leaves. The air was misty and foggy and a bit dark. It was located near the mountains, no wonder the air was cold that made me rub my arms for heat. Dad parked our minivan under a tall old tree with a dark big stalk. I looked up and can see the leaves and branches of the tree way up high.

            We found a suitable spot to set up our beige colored tent, and the place was situated near a slow flowing creek, which had several sloppy and slippery stones popping up on the surface of the creek. Dad gathered up firewood he found nearby, and started to light the fire. He said he should make it quick, because the sky was darkening. Mom set up the tent, and I sat on the edge of the creek, bathing my tired legs in the cold icy water.

            It was already dark, and the golden light of the bonfire was the only thing that could make me brave. Imagine you’re in a real different place and the only light is the fire. We gathered around the bonfire, and sat on logs dad found. We stuck marshmallows on sticks and burnt them in the fire. It tasted quite funny, with the burning thing on the marshmallow, but I just threw them in my mouth and waited for my tongue to curl.

            Suddenly, dad told us he needed to pee. We told him not to pee in the creek, or else we have no water to drink and have a swim. So he stalked off to the nearest bush and silently did his business.

            But after a long, long while, dad didn’t come back to the camp place. Mom didn’t even worry at first, and she decided to place a pot on the fire and cook spaghetti for our dinner. Mom didn’t look the least worried at all about dad’s missing; in fact, it was me who had lingering eyes at the spot where dad had left us.

            Twenty minutes became thirty minutes, and dad was still missing. The stories of families missing in this place hung in my mind, and I stopped from thinking and kicked away those thoughts.

            It was already one hour, and by then mom frowned towards me. “It doesn’t take us humans one hour to be in the toilet, yeah?” mom asked, and I nodded quickly, surprised of how long it took mom to notice what I’ve been noticing.

            She took out a couple of torch lights and two jackets out of the tent, and covered me with one of them. She put out the fire and covered the pot filled with already boiled spaghetti. She was about to cook the sauce when she noticed dad had gone too long just now.

            We switched on our torch lights, and directed the rays of light on everything in front of us as we walked within the trees. It was bit scary, thought, but my hand was safe in mom’s grip.

            We called out ‘dad’ many times, but received nothing but crickets singing and howls hooting and flying by for a response. It seemed so scary to be in a place so different than I am accustomed seeing. We kept searching for dad, with me praying he was not to be lost in this forest. Well, my dad always knows how to walk back to his tent, for he had always been a very wonderful adventurer. But why did he take one hour to do his business?

            “Look!” mom’s shouting startled me that made me gasp. Mom was indi-cating her index finger towards a tree, tall strong one, which got nailed planks on the stalk, leading up, up and up, to a cute tree house.

            “A tree house,” I exclaimed. This was certainly off the limits of what I’ve been expecting to be seeing.

            It was made of worn out woods and planks and I was sure it looked quite ugly. The roof was made of woods, also, and that made the tree house look more like a box than a house. There was a beam of golden light coming from it and the light struck out of the pane-less windows. There seemed to be a living thing in there.

            “Hello?” Mom called out. “Robin?”

            There were sounds of loud footsteps to be heard from the tree house, and I took a few steps backward.

            “Jane!” It was dad, looking so happy and exhausted, standing at the door of the tree house. “Oh, Jane.” He climbed quickly down the tree, and ran to us. “Oh, sweethearts.”

            “What is happening?” Mom asked, eyes widened and glancing quickly.

            I steadied my gaze back to the tree house, and saw a man, tall, steady one with tousled beard, and next to him was a girl of my age, her long, black hair was so messy until I can’t describe her facial expressions. Who were they?

            “Why did you say you wanted to pee, but instead you’re meters away from the camp place?” Mom looked terribly worried.

            “No,” he chuckled. “Look, I’m safe and sound, okay? I think you guys should meet these people,” he brought us to the tree house. The people were smiling and looking at us, so excited about something God knows what.

            Now I can see what they were wearing. They wore torn jeans and dirty tops. They looked so ugly.

            “They are the lost family,” mom shouted out. How could she know they were the lost family?

            Well, by the way they were dressed, surely they looked like the ones from the Stone Age.

            “They’re looking so pale and starving,” dad said. “It has been three months since they last ate baked beans.”

            Mom invited them to the camp place to have dinner with us. They agreed so quickly that they just jumped off the tree house instead of climbing down. And so we walked quickly to our tent and mom quickly cooked the sauce and served the pasta to us. I watched how the girl gobbled the pasta so fast that she nearly choked. She told me her name was Rose Allen, and she had written a book about the days she spent in the forest. She showed me the book and it stated of everything that they have struggled.

            Dad decided that we should wait until the breaking of dawn so that it is easier to send them back home.

            The girl gave me her book and I kept it till now. We sent them back to their home the next morning, and I kept reading her book again and again, and didn’t even feel the slightest of boredom.

            It was a holiday to remember.

Author's Note

enjoy.