Anomaly: Chapter 20

"Mountain House"

As the nights grew chilly in the high forest elevation, leaving frost on our tents each morning, my parents knew it was time to find a new place to call home. The logging camp was moving to a new ridge miles away, and if Dad wanted to keep his job, we’d have to move with them. So, my parents set off on a scouting mission. By now, the Johnsons had also packed up and relocated to the logging base camp with the other loggers who lived in travel trailers and followed the company from site to site. They’d recently traded their sleeper van for a truck and camper, making it possible to endure a harsh winter, though space would be tight for their family of seven. I was sad to no longer live so close to Jenny, but I understood why everyone was leaving. Winter in the tents would be unbearable.

AI Generated Image by SARAH CENTRELLA

We drove through winding forest roads, the canvas of pine trees thinning here and there, opening an unexpected, breathtaking vista of mountain ridges and valleys in the distance as we made our way to Mountain House, where—thankfully—Dad had discovered a few deserted cabins in an old mining community about thirty miles from the new job site. He figured we could squat in one, at least through the winter. The cabin had two small bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room with a black wood-burning potbelly stove in the middle that glowed bright red when it roared. The windows were dusty, spiderwebs clung to the corners of the ceiling, and it smelled of musty cedar and stale mold—but it was better than spending the winter in the Sierra Mountains in tents.