When the forest is deep and the fog rises
Chapter One: Lost on the Road
The thick fog, like cotton wool soaked in water, weighed heavily on the treetops of the broadleaf forest, carrying the humid heat of late June. Chen Mo raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead; his fingertips touched not the familiar quick-drying towel, but a layer of sticky moisture. He glanced back; the group stretched out in a broken line, disappearing into the milky white mist, with only the reflective strips on their backpacks occasionally flashing a cold light.
"Wait!" Xiaoya's voice came from the middle of the group, trembling almost imperceptibly. "Kai, are you sure this is the right way? That fork in the road just now..."
Kai, who was walking at the front, stopped. Water droplets dripping from the brim of his canvas hat splashed onto the map, creating a small crease. This waterproof map was one he had spent three sleepless nights marking before setting off. The red-penned loops resembled a winding snake, and the destination should have been the campsite they had reached two hours earlier. But now, the surrounding scenery looked like a copied and pasted backdrop—the same robust oak trees, the same moss-covered humus, even the damp, musty smell of wood in the air was overwhelming.
“I should…” Akai paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing, “I chose the left path at the third fork, and according to the map, it should have been along the ridgeline southeast.” He took out a compass, but the red hand on the dial was trembling slightly, as if it were being disturbed by some invisible magnetic field.
“No, that’s not right.” Old Zhou’s voice came from the back of the group. The retired geography teacher leaned on his hiking stick, his knuckles white from the effort. “Look at the direction these trees are facing. The branches and leaves on the south side are obviously sparser, which means we are heading northwest.” He pointed to a crooked tree on the right, and the moss on its bark was indeed thicker on the shaded side.
A silence, like a thick fog, filled the air. Xiaoya instinctively clutched the whistle to her chest, the distress signal the leader had emphasized before the trip. Xiaolin, the youngest intern in the group, crouched down, pretending to tie his shoelaces, but his shoulders trembled slightly. They were supposed to reach their destination this afternoon on their three-day, two-night hike, but after lunch they had been swept into this suddenly thick fog, as if pushed into a maze by an invisible hand.
"Don't panic." Chen Mo's voice suddenly rang out. He had been observing the surrounding trees and was now poking the ground with his trekking pole. "Do you all remember? Yesterday we passed a bamboo forest, and Kai said the soil there was acidic and there were many wild ferns. The soil we're standing on now is sandy, so we should have reached the larch forest on the west slope."
His words were like a stone thrown into still water, easing the tension in my nerves slightly. Chen Mo was the most experienced in the outdoors, having led a team across the uninhabited areas of western Sichuan last year. He squatted down, brushed aside a layer of fallen leaves, and picked up a bit of soil with his fingertips: "Look, there's a layer of pine needle humus here, different from the bamboo forest soil yesterday. We might have taken the wrong turn at the second fork in the road; instead of going left, we went right and circled into another valley."
“A valley?” Akai looked up suddenly. “The only valley marked on the map is the one on the east side, which leads to the cliff behind the main peak.”
The words had barely left his mouth when a faint sound of water came from the depths of the fog, like some kind of ominous premonition. Xiao Lin gasped, nearly collapsing to the ground: "A cliff? Have we walked to the edge of a precipice?"
"Don't scare yourself." Old Zhou patted Xiao Lin on the shoulder, but couldn't help looking at Chen Mo, "Xiao Chen, are you sure about the direction?"
Chen Mo didn't answer immediately. He took a sealed bag from the side pocket of his backpack, inside which were several flattened leaves. "These are the scutellaria I picked in the arrow bamboo forest yesterday. Its sori are arranged in a 'V' shape on the back of the leaves. The fern I just saw next to it is a hoof fern, which likes shade and dampness and usually grows on both sides of streams." He paused, his gaze sweeping across everyone's faces. "The most important thing now is not to dwell on how far we've gone, but to calm down and recall the route, listing all the forks in the road and landmarks we've passed."
He took the map from Kai and laid it on a slightly flat rock. Mist condensed on the paper, blurring the writing. "Come on, Kai, you go first. Tell me about the characteristics of each fork in the road, starting from when we set off this morning, and how you determined them."
Chapter Two: Fragments of Memory
Akai's finger slid across the map, his voice tinged with the tension of a recap: "We broke camp at seven in the morning, following the ridgeline. At the first fork in the road, there was a pine tree that had been struck by lightning. We went right because the map showed that the right path led to the viewpoint. The second fork..." His finger stopped in the middle of the map, "...near the second fork, there was a patch of wild strawberries. Xiaoya picked a few, and I saw that the terrain on the left was gentle, so I chose the left."
“No,” Xiaoya immediately interjected, her memory still lingering on the sweet and sour taste of wild strawberries. “There are strawberries at the second fork in the road, but there’s a fallen tree trunk next to the left path with yellow mushrooms growing on it. You said those are poisonous pure yellow and white cap mushrooms, and told us not to touch them. And then at the third fork… isn’t there a rock that looks like a turtle at the third fork?”
"Right!" Xiaolin suddenly remembered, "That rock looks just like a turtle with its head retracted, I even took a picture!" He frantically pulled out his phone, but when the screen lit up, it showed less than 10% battery. "Oh no, I forgot to charge it yesterday..."
"Forget about your phone, quickly scroll through the photos!" Chen Mo urged. Xiao Lin swiped through the album rapidly, the mist seemingly seeping into the screen, giving the photos a hazy, watery feel. Finally, he stopped in front of a photo: a rock about half a person's height, with a smooth top that indeed resembled a tortoise's shell, and several plants with small white flowers visible in the background.
“This is wild jasmine,” Old Zhou said, leaning closer to examine it. “They usually grow on mountain slopes at altitudes of 800-1200 meters. What is our altitude now?”
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