Ginger knew almost every path around her grandparent’s place. She knew the dusty one that led toward the old fence, the narrow one that wandered past the fields, and the one that seemed to go on forever.  She eve new the one that cut through the weeds that grown-ups insisted wasn’t really a path at all.

But there was one she had never taken.

It began behind an old wooden gate at the far edge of the property. The gate leaned sideways on one hinge, and beyond it a thin trail disappeared between tall grasses and tangled bushes. Ginger had noticed it before, but there had always been somewhere else to go.

That morning, there wasn’t.

She stood at the gate with her hands on her hips. “Where do you go?” she asked the path. The path, being a path, said nothing.

Ginger pushed the gate. It gave a long, complaining squeak and dragged through the dirt before opening just wide enough for her to squeeze through.

At first, there wasn’t much to see. The trail was dusty and narrow, and dry grass scratched Ginger’s legs as she walked. Grasshoppers sprang out of her way, sometimes startling her so badly that she jumped too.

“Stop doing that,” she told them. They didn’t.

The farther she went, the less familiar everything became. The sounds from the farm faded behind her. Ahead, the trail curved around a mound of dirt and vanished.

Ginger stopped. She looked back. The gate was gone from sight.

For the first time, the adventure felt slightly less like an adventure and slightly more like something she might have to explain later.

Still, the path was right there. So Ginger followed it around the mound.

On the other side, she found a dry creek bed filled with pale stones. The path seemed to end at its edge. Ginger frowned and searched the opposite bank until she noticed a narrow opening between two juniper bushes.

“There you are.”

She climbed down into the creek bed.

The stones shifted beneath her shoes. Halfway across, Ginger noticed something white wedged between two rocks. She bent down and pulled it free.

It was an old piece of pottery. At least Ginger thought it was pottery. It was curved and smooth, with a faded blue line painted across one side. She turned it over in her hand.

Who had dropped it? How long had it been there? Had someone once carried a whole bowl along this creek? Had it broken here, or had rain carried the little piece from somewhere far away?

Ginger slipped it carefully into her pocket.

Now the path felt different. It had a secret.

She scrambled up the other side and squeezed between the junipers. Beyond them, the trail climbed steadily until Ginger had to lean forward and use her hands in places. She nearly turned around twice, but each time she looked ahead and wondered what might be just beyond the next rise.

At last she reached the top. Ginger stopped. Below her was a place she had never seen.

A shallow valley stretched between the fields hidden from the road and the houses. Tall golden grass moved in waves beneath the wind. Dark rocks rose from the ground here and there, and near the center stood the remains of an old stone wall.

Not a house. Not anymore. Just three short sections of wall with empty spaces between them.

Ginger hurried down the slope.

The stones had been stacked carefully once, but time had pushed some of them into crooked piles. Inside the walls, weeds grew through the dirt. A rusty hinge lay near one corner, and beside it was a round piece of metal that might once have been part of a bucket.

Ginger walked slowly through the ruins. Someone had been here.

A long time ago, someone had stood inside these walls. Maybe there had been a roof overhead and a door that opened and closed. Maybe someone had cooked supper here or sat outside when the evenings cooled. Maybe children had run through the same grass Ginger had just crossed.

She touched one of the stones. Then something moved behind the wall. Ginger froze. There was a scratching sound. Then another.

She took one careful step backward. A small gray head appeared between two rocks. Ginger held her breath. The creature climbed onto the wall. It was a lizard.

Ginger stared at it. The lizard stared at her. “You nearly scared me to death.” The lizard did not appear sorry.

Ginger laughed, and suddenly the mysterious old ruins didn’t seem quite so lonely.

She explored until the sun had moved noticeably across the sky. Then she remembered something important. She had to find her way home. The return trip seemed longer.

At the creek bed, Ginger almost followed the wrong opening through the bushes. She stopped just in time. That one didn’t look right. She studied the ground until she found the marks her shoes had made earlier in the soft dirt.

“This way.” Across the stones she went, around the hill, through the tall grass, and finally, there was the crooked gate.

Ginger squeezed through and pulled it closed behind her. Everything on this side looked exactly as it had before. But now Ginger knew what was beyond it.

She reached into her pocket and wrapped her fingers around the little piece of blue-painted pottery.

The next morning, Ginger returned to the gate. She stood there for a moment, thinking about the hidden valley, the broken walls, and the lizard who had nearly scared ten years off a six-year-old girl.

Then she noticed something she hadn’t seen yesterday. A second path. It branched away from the first one almost immediately, disappearing in the opposite direction beneath a tangle of bushes.

Ginger looked at the path she already knew. Then she looked at the new one.

“Oh,” she said. And pushed open the gate.