When I was 14, I would spend the summers with my cousin Ashley and sister Tiffany, we would divide our day by going to the creek to swim, walk trails through the mountains, ride our bicycles to the store, and ride four-wheelers through the paths.  

This particular day, we decided to ride four-wheelers from my cousin’s house to my Nana’s. We were zooming through trails when we noticed a path we never saw before. As I was the oldest, I stopped the four-wheeler and jumped off. My cousin and sister followed my lead. We were puzzled by the path and started to worry that maybe we took a few wrong turns.  The woods were quiet, eerily quiet. There was complete silence, no noise, no chirping, no sounds of leaves rustling. I looked at my sister, and before I could say anything, we heard Ashley’s dad’s voice yell, “Girls, get out of the woods. Now.” we looked at each other panicked, jumped on our four-wheelers, and drove as fast as we could, backtracking the paths we took.  

We arrived back at the house, and we did not see him anywhere. We ran into the house. He was sitting there eating a sandwich. We frantically told him what happened, and he looked us dead in the face and swore he never yelled for us. My sister was becoming hysterical, yelling, “Yes, you did. We all heard you!” As we yelled at him and fussed and began to cry. Allen just looked at us again and said, “I’ve been inside this entire time.”  

To this day, as we are all very grown, Alan swears he never yelled for us, and our granny told us it was a protection warning.