by Maggie Downs posted in Life

Three years ago, when I found out I was pregnant with a boy, one of the worst-case scenarios I imagined was this: Alone in the woods with my potty-trained son, far from any bathroom facilities, and he needs to know what to do with his penis.
And that?s exactly what occurred last weekend.
It happened on one of those days ? a day when everything is falling apart, and the cracks seem to spread faster than you can spackle them ? and it had already been one of those nights. The air conditioner broke around 8 p.m. on Saturday, and even sleeping in the breeze of every fan we owned, it was hot. None of us slept well, we were cranky, and everything felt slimy with sweat.
The Sunday forecast was 107 degrees, so I took a tram up into the mountains with my son, while my husband stayed at home and waited for the repairman. The top of the tram consists of 54 miles of hiking trails and 14,000 acres of wilderness. Like, mountain lions-could-eat-my-face wilderness, not San Diego Zoo Safari Park wilderness.
There?s a small, looping nature trail that?s less than a mile. It?s easy, and my son and I have walked it together dozens of times, even when he was a baby.

Last Sunday, though, I don?t know what happened. We were busy scrambling on rocks and finding good sticks and watching tiny frogs leap into a meadow ? and then I realized nothing looked familiar anymore. Somehow I missed a bend on the trail, and I had taken us far from the tram station. There was ...