Mystic Ranch

We arrived at Uncle Phil’s farm about late afternoon.

The drive was a bit more tense than my sister and I expected, but we got over it pretty quickly. Our cousins got us involved in a game of stud in the back seat over a bag of candies, and Uncle Phil’s warning was quickly forgotten about for a while. It wasn’t too much later that we turned down a long, country road. It seemed like an eternity before we stopped, and I heard the familiar click-click click-click of the turn signal indicator.

Uncle Phil had stopped across from a long, gravel driveway. A post on either side of that driveway supported a big sign that read: Welcome to Mystic Ranch. Uncle Phil waited for a big semi-tractor trailer to rumble past going the other way before he turned and passed under that sign.

If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have tried to talk dad out of letting us visit Uncle Phil for a change. You see, we didn’t have internet back then. Most people didn’t, except for the few kids who’s parents could afford to pay ten cents a minute to connect a 9600-baud modem, which was expensive enough on its own, over telephone lines to maybe be able to connect with someone. Today, I know that Uncle Phil hadn’t really escaped the rat race of the big city. He’d just taken what he thought was a good deal on an old ranch out west, not knowing what lay in store for his family at Mystic Ranch. He’d traded one rat race for another, different kind of rat race.

Mystic Ranch is a pretty large place. By that, I mean massive. It’s a good couple of hundred acres, at least. The front half of the property, connected to the road, is all cleared land, its rolling hills a bit of a break in the surrounding mountains. The house sits in the middle, along with most of the barns, workshops, all of the extra stuff needed to run a ranch. The house has a pretty big fenced-in “backyard,” which is what I thought my uncle had been talking about. The back half of the property was nothing but forest that just disappeared to even more forest going up into the mountains. Looking back, it should’ve been obvious to me, even as a teenager, that something wasn’t right about Mystic Ranch.

You see, there was something odd about the transition between the forest and the cleared area of Mystic Ranch. The forest just sort of ended. There wasn’t that long distance of smaller trees and brush that usually marked the edge of the woods. No, nothing like that. It was more like someone had taken a big knife and cut a straight line across the earth with the forest on one side and the working part of Mystic Ranch on the other.

The gravel crunched under the van’s wheels as Uncle Phil guided it up the driveway toward the big ranch house. I thought that my uncle sure had gotten a steal on this place. It was a huge, two-level (not counting the basement) cabin style place with an attached garage and basement workshop. It looked more like a ski resort than a house with its big, front-facing windows, wrap-around porch, and high-peaked roof.

It was hot outside, and we all busied ourselves getting the luggage inside and up to a pair of rooms. I was going to be staying in Tim’s room, and Ruth was going to be staying in Alice’s room. They were the two cousins who were closest to us in age. Two of our other cousins, both boys, were a bit younger. The other two, Becky and Robert, were both a bit older than us.

Aunt Susan finally gave us a bit of a rundown, now that we could all see what she was talking about with the woods and all. “Don’t go too far in the woods,” she told us. “Never any further than you can be back by sunset.”

I blinked at Aunt Susan, confused. “Sunset,” I asked. “Those woods can’t be all that big, can they?”

Aunt Susan kinda laughed. “Oh, honey, life isn’t exactly the same out here as ol’ Appalachia,” she told me. “See, we own some of the woods back there, and your uncle’s done a real good job surveyin’ and blazin’ it. You’ll see the signs if you keep walkin’ west. On the other side of that is all owned by the federal government, and anyone’s allowed in there as can get in. Don’t worry too much, there’s plenty to do. There’s even a swimming hole not far back in the woods, maybe a mile or so.”

Us kids all looked at each other. Ruth and I looked hopefully outside. Late afternoon was something of a deceptive term around that time of summer when the sun doesn’t set until sometime around 9 PM. “Well, let’s go,” I suggested. “We’ve got some time, don’t we? That luggage ain’t exactly goin’ nowhere.”

Aunt Susan raised an eyebrow. “You should at least make sure you didn’t forget somethin’ before headin’ out,” she pointed out. “Just do a little unpackin’ so we can head into town if there’s anythin’ you need.”

“But, mom, that could take forever,” Tim complained in a voice that seemed to bounce smoothly between a baritone and a pre-adolescent contralto. “Besides, most of the shops in town close by eight, so we might not even get there in time.”

The two youngest cousins—the twins, Jonathan and Jeremiah—looked up at Aunt Susan and, in perfect unison, said, “pleeease,” in that drawn out way youngsters tend to do when they really, really want something from their mother.

Becky rolled her eyes in a gesture as old as time itself, conveying in a mere moment that sentiment unique to older siblings who’ve just watched the younger ones weasel their way into something: no way would I ever be able to get away with that. As an older sibling myself…I sort of understood where she was coming from.

Aunt Susan sighed and shook her head. “Well, I suppose unpackin’ can wait a little while,” she conceded and looked up at Robert and Becky. “You two should go with everyone.”

Robert grinned. “I’d sort of planned to, mom,” he replied.

And, so, we kids were off to the nearest swimming hole with Uncle Phil’s voice calling after us to remind us: “be back by sundown!”