Shahd and the Red Thread in the Cedar Forest

In a high mountain village whose houses were made of stone and whose roofs were covered with red tiles, Shahd was spending her autumn holiday with her grandfather, Abu Nabil. Shahd was seven years old. She loved maps, compasses and stories about explorers, and she always carried a small notebook in her pocket to write down what she saw. Her grandfather was a tall man with a white moustache and a wooden walking stick, and he had known the mountain since he was a boy. One clear morning he said to her, "Today I'll take you to the old cedar forest at the top of the mountain. There are trees there that are hundreds of years old."

Shahd was delighted and began to pack her little backpack. She put in a bottle of water, two apples, a wrapped piece of cheese, a small flashlight, and her notebook and pencil. Then she stood in front of her grandmother's sewing basket and saw a big ball of red wool in it. "Grandma, can I take a little of this thread?" she asked. Her grandmother said, "And why do you need thread in the forest?" Shahd said, "I read in a book that explorers put marks along the path so they don't get lost. I'll cut little pieces of thread and tie them to the branches." Her grandfather laughed and said, "What an explorer you are! Take it. Being careful never hurts."

The two set off along the dirt path that climbed between rocks and oak trees. The air was cool and fresh, the smell of wild herbs filled the place, and birds sang above them. Every time they reached a fork in the path, a big rock or a special tree, Shahd cut a small piece of red thread, tied it in a little bow on a low branch and wrote in her notebook: The first thread is by the rock that looks like a turtle. The second thread is by the little spring. The third thread is by the broken tree. Her grandfather smiled and said, "This is the first time the mountain has had a red map!"

After an hour of walking, they reached the cedar forest. Shahd stopped where she was, amazed. The trees were enormous. Their trunks were so wide she could not wrap her arms around them, and their branches spread out flat like layers of green umbrellas. Her grandfather said, "This big tree here, my grandfather used to sit under it when he was your age." Shahd touched the rough trunk, smelled the pleasant scent of the wood and said, "It's as if it's telling old stories." They sat under the tree and ate the apples and cheese, and Shahd wrote a description of the forest in her notebook and drew a small cedar sprig.

After they had rested, her grandfather said, "Let's head back. The sun is starting to sink." But Shahd asked to wander a little to see another tree farther away. They walked among the trees, and Shahd tied a red thread at every tree they passed. Suddenly her grandfather noticed something. He said in a calm voice, "Look at the valley, Shahd." Something thick and white was slowly rising from the valley, like a sea of cotton. "What is that, Grandpa?" asked Shahd. "It's fog," he said. "In the mountains, fog sometimes comes very quickly in autumn."

Within minutes the fog reached them and wrapped around all the trees. Everything turned white and gray, and Shahd could no longer see more than a few steps ahead. The distant trees disappeared, the sun disappeared, and the path disappeared. The air became cold and damp. Shahd held her grandfather's hand tightly and said in a frightened voice, "Grandpa, where is the path? I can't see anything!" Her grandfather stood still and thought, then said calmly, "Even I, though I know the mountain well, can't see the landmarks in this fog. All the trees look the same now."

Shahd closed her eyes for a moment and remembered what she had read in the explorers' book: The first thing to do when you are lost is to stay calm and not run. She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes and said, "Grandpa, the threads! The red threads!" She took out her little flashlight, switched it on and pointed it at the nearest tree. There, on a low branch, she saw the little red bow shining in the light, very clear against the white. Her grandfather said joyfully, "Shahd! Red shows up in fog better than any other color! You're a genius!"

The two began to walk slowly, hand in hand. Shahd pointed the flashlight left and right until she found the next thread, then they walked to it, then she looked for the one after. She also opened her notebook and read: After the broken tree comes the little spring. When they heard the sound of water trickling between the rocks, she cried, "That's the spring! We're on the right path!" Her grandfather walked behind her, saying, "Easy, my explorer, step by step. Don't rush."

Halfway down, Shahd could not find the next thread. She searched to the right and to the left but found nothing. She felt the worry coming back. But her grandfather said, "It's all right. Let's stand here and not move away from the last thread we found. Think: what did you write in your notebook?" Shahd opened the notebook and read aloud, "The fourth thread is by the rock that looks like a turtle." Then she pointed the flashlight downward and saw a big round rock with a small stone on top like a turtle's head, and the red thread was tied to a little bush beside it. She had not seen it because it was so low.

They kept walking, thread after thread and mark after mark. Little by little the fog grew thinner and the trees began to appear again. Then a distant red-tiled roof appeared, and then they heard a bark they knew, the neighbors' black dog. "The village!" cried Shahd. "We made it!" At the door of the house, her grandmother stood waiting, pulling her shawl around her shoulders. "Thank God you're safe!" she said. "I saw the fog rising and I was so worried about you."

Everyone sat around the stove and drank hot milk with honey, and her grandfather told her grandmother the whole story, patting Shahd's shoulder and saying, "Our little explorer saved us today. I've known this mountain for seventy years, but the fog hid everything from me. Shahd's threads, though, it couldn't hide." Shahd said shyly, "But it was you, Grandpa, who taught me to stay calm and to stop at the last mark and not wander off." Her grandmother laughed and said, "Then you two make an excellent team."

The next day, when the weather was clear, Shahd and her grandfather climbed to the forest again and collected all the red threads from the branches, one by one, so that nothing foreign would be left in the forest. Shahd said, "We'll put them back in Grandma's basket, and on our next trip we'll use them again." On the way back, Shahd pointed to every place they had passed in the fog and said, "Here is where we stopped, here is where we found the spring, and here is where the turtle rock nearly hid from us!" Her grandfather laughed and said, "From today, we'll call this path Shahd's Trail." Then, on the last page of her notebook, she wrote a sentence in big letters.

Shahd wrote: A clever explorer does not rely on luck, but prepares before starting the journey. That day Shahd learned that a little planning before an adventure can make a big difference, that staying calm in danger is stronger than fear, and that listening to the advice of grown-ups while thinking with our own minds helps us find our way even on the foggiest days.