Winding Roads to Friendship.

Winding Roads to Friendship.

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## **Winding Roads to Friendship**

If anyone ever tells you the road to friendship is straight, smooth, and lined with cheerful sunflowers, please pat them gently on the shoulder and inform them that they are either lying or have never interacted with another human being. Because my own road to friendship with Caleb was about as straight as a snake on roller skates.

It all started on a Tuesday—because disasters always do—when our office announced its annual “Team Bonding Hike.” The phrase alone should’ve been suspicious. “Team Bonding” is usually code for “We force you into the wilderness so you can rediscover trust, teamwork, and which coworker sweats like a malfunctioning showerhead.”

I, of course, tried to fake a cough. Unfortunately, my cough sounded like a dying goat performing opera, so my boss suggested I attend the hike “for fresh air.”

That’s when I met Caleb.

He was the kind of guy who wore sunglasses even when the sun was shy, and he walked with the confidence of someone who had watched three motivational videos that very morning. I planned to avoid him. He planned—apparently—to save my life.

About a mile into the hike, the group split. The athletic people marched ahead like they were chasing a gym membership. The rest of us, the “mortals,” drifted behind, sweating and negotiating with our internal organs. That’s when I, in a heroic display of grace, tripped on absolutely nothing and tumbled down a small slope that led to what can only be described as a misleadingly gentle-looking ditch.

“Don’t worry!” Caleb shouted, sliding down after me like a rescue dog who had watched too many action movies. “I’ve got you!”

He did not.

He landed directly on me.

So there we were, two grown adults in a ditch, tangled like rejected spaghetti.

We climbed out, bruised in both body and ego, and discovered the group had moved on. The trail forked in two directions, both equally winding, suspicious, and probably home to judgmental squirrels. Caleb, naturally, insisted he had an excellent sense of direction. I, naturally, insisted that his confidence was concerning.

We chose the left path, because why not begin a friendship with a shared mistake?

For the next two hours, we wandered through curves, twists, and slopes that seemed designed by a cartographer with a cruel sense of humor. Caleb talked the whole time—mostly about survival strategies he had learned from documentaries. These documentaries, I later learned, were animated films involving talking animals.

At one point he declared, “If we get lost, we can build shelter.”

“With what?” I asked.

He pointed at a single confused shrub.

After wandering long enough to begin questioning whether civilization was a myth, we stumbled upon a small wooden sign: **TRAIL ENDS — TURN BACK.**

We stared at it.

The sign stared back.

The universe laughed.

Our only option was to retrace our steps. Except the steps were winding, identical, and full of aggressively mocking birds. Caleb, determined to be helpful, tried to use “landmarks” to guide us. Unfortunately, all his landmarks were things like “interesting rock” or “tree that looks like it wants to tell you a secret,” which narrowed things down to roughly *every rock and tree in the forest.*

But somewhere between debating whether moss grows on the north side or whichever side Caleb happened to be standing on, something shifted. We started laughing—first awkwardly, then genuinely, then so uncontrollably that a passing jogger gave us the kind of look people reserve for unstable forest spirits.

Eventually, and perhaps miraculously, we found the main trail. Our coworkers were already at the picnic area, eating sandwiches and bragging about who had seen the prettiest bird. When we emerged from the trees—dirty, scratched, and bonded by mutual suffering—they stared at us like we had returned from a war documentary.

“Where were you two?” my boss asked, frowning.

I looked at Caleb. Caleb looked at me.

“Team bonding,” we said in unison.

And somehow, through the winding roads, the questionable decisions, and the shrub Caleb considered a survival tool, a friendship had taken root. Not a perfect friendship—he still gives terrible directions, and I still trip over air—but a real one.

Because the truth is, the winding roads are the ones that make the best stories.

The straight ones?

They just take you where you expected to go.