The Big Mistake Club, part 11: The Trip with the Wrong Map

The Big Mistake Club, part 11: The Trip with the Wrong Map

Ms Benková looked at her watch. It was exactly ten o’clock, and the gate cast long shadows across the path.

“Is everyone here? Good. First, let’s put our backpacks down for a moment and fix the straps,” she said.

A shelf of leaflets stood by the entrance. Above the gate, a sign said Woodland Park. But Samo mostly noticed a blue patch on one of the leaflets. It looked like a very large puddle.

“A map!” he announced, taking the leaflet. “This could be useful.”

He opened it in front of his friends. The words Lake Park were at the top, but Adam’s finger was already moving over the pictures below them.

“I have a plan. First, we’ll go to this boat, then around the water, and finally… wait, is that a snack shop?”

“Or a little house,” said Ela. She pushed up her purple glasses. “It’s tiny.”

“If there are snacks inside, tiny is fine,” Samo decided.

Then he put his green backpack beside his shoes and opened it. Between his bottle and a bag with a bread roll, they could see the club notebook. A pencil lay beside it.

“We have the notebook. And the pencil,” he whispered to his friends.

“We might not even need it today,” Adam declared.

Ela looked at him.

“I wouldn’t write that down yet.”

Samo covered the notebook with the bag again and zipped up his backpack. He kept the leaflet in his hand. On its map, a tiny boat floated near the edge of a pond.

Meanwhile, their teacher checked another child’s backpack straps. Then she stood at the start of the path.

“We’ll walk together. We’ll stop at the bench.”

Adam smiled happily. A bench sounded like a very good start to his big plan. He had not seen one on the map yet, but there were still plenty of corners to explore.

Soon, the class had left the gate behind. They walked along a wide public path. Small stones crunched softly under their shoes. Ms Benková led them to a wooden bench on a dry patch beneath a tree.

Adam peered over Samo’s shoulder.

“There it is! The boat!”

“Where?” Samo looked up.

“The bench is long. A boat is long too. They draw things simply on maps.”

Ela compared the picture with the bench. It had a narrow back and two strong legs.

“Maybe,” she agreed. “From above, they might look a bit alike.”

Samo thought about that.

“Where do you put the oars on a bench?”

Adam opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Finally, he pointed to both ends of the bench without touching it.

“Probably here. But this is only a map symbol, of course.”

“So it’s a symbol for a boat that looks like a bench,” Samo said. “And it floats without water?”

At that moment, Ela looked around. Grass grew beside the path. Behind the bench were bushes, with branches above them. There was no lake.

“Wait. There’s water around the boat in the picture. There isn’t any here.”

“Maybe we’re holding the map the wrong way.”

Adam took one edge of the leaflet and turned it sideways. Samo still held the other end. Now the boat looked as if it were standing on its nose. The bench did not move at all.

“Now we’d be rowing upwards,” Ela said.

One classmate giggled. Another asked if their teacher would be the captain.

“For now, I’ll stay a teacher,” Ms Benková replied. “That job works quite well on a dry path.”

Adam let go of the paper. Suddenly, his plan did not seem nearly as solid as the bench.

“Ms Benková, our map doesn’t seem to match,” he admitted.

“Neither does my boat now,” Samo added.

A visitor information board stood near the bench. Their teacher gathered the whole class a few steps in front of it. Everyone stayed in the wide space beside the path.

“Let’s find out what we’re looking at,” she suggested.

Samo smoothed a bent corner of the leaflet. Only then did he look right at the top.

“This says Lake Park.”

Ela read the name on the information board.

“Woodland Park.”

Then she turned towards the gate. They could still see it from there.

“And that says Woodland Park too.”

For a moment, all they could hear was the rustle of leaves.

“I took a map for somewhere else,” said Samo. “I picked it because of the blue water.”

Adam rubbed the back of his neck.

“And I planned the route before I read the name.”

“I believed in the bench for a little while,” Ela added.

Ms Benková looked at the leaflet, then at the information board.

“Now we know why the lake is missing. Let’s check whether this map shows where we are. What can you see both on the map and here?”

Beside a red dot marked You Are Here, there was a picture of a bench. Behind it, the map showed a gate.

Ela pointed first to the picture, then beside her.

“The bench is here. And the gate is behind us. Both match.”

“This time, the bench is a bench,” Samo said.

Adam leaned towards the board. With his finger, he followed the unbroken line of the public path forwards from the red dot.

“I have a plan. I mean… let’s look first. This path leads here.”

Ela read the label at the end of the line.

“Animal Tracks Station. We didn’t notice that before.”

“And we have an arrow!” Samo called.

Beside the board stood a sign saying Animal Tracks Station, with an arrow pointing along the same path in front of them.

Ms Benková checked both the route on the map and the sign.

“They match. It’s a short side trip inside the park. We’ll all go together.”

Samo folded the wrong leaflet and put it in his backpack. This time, they would not use it to look for a boat or a snack.

Their teacher led the way. The path curved gently past the bushes, and the morning sun shone through the leaves. Adam walked beside Ela. Samo stayed close to them in the group.

“I hope the tracks don’t leave before we get there,” he said.

“If they have a station, perhaps they’re on duty,” Ela replied.

Around the bend, they found a low outdoor display. Above it were exactly the words they had read on the board: Animal Tracks Station.

“We’re here,” Adam announced. This time, he read the name first.

Ms Benková let the class spread out beside the open display and counted the children. Nobody was missing. Everyone stood on the path beside three solid casts of animal tracks.

Ela bent down just enough to read the small labels.

“Fox. Deer. Duck.”

The fox print had little pads and claw marks. The deer print had two narrow parts side by side. The duck print spread out like a fan.

“Look, they’re all different,” Adam told his classmates. “Try to find the one that looks like two drops beside each other. Just with your eyes!”

The children took turns so everyone could see. They did not touch the casts or move them.

Samo pointed to the last one.

“This really is a duck-track cast. It says so beside it. It isn’t a bench dressed up as a duck.”

“How did you know about this place?” a girl asked.

Adam took a breath, then shrugged.

“We didn’t. First, we had the wrong map.”

“From Lake Park,” Samo explained. “I picked it up.”

Ela pointed back the way they had come.

“By the bench, we compared the names. Then we checked the gate and the bench on the right map. And we found this path.”

“Without swimming,” their teacher added.

The class laughed. Later, the other children kept comparing the duck’s fan-shaped print with the deer’s narrow marks. The three friends stayed with them. An ordinary walk now had a stop that nobody had expected.

During a short break, Samo took the club notebook and pencil out of his backpack. He left the wrong leaflet folded inside.

“This needs a page of its own,” he said.

Ela opened the notebook to a blank page.

“First, the names. Then two points we can see. And if they don’t match, we stay with everyone else and ask an adult.”

Adam took the pencil.

“I have the beginning. This time, we don’t need to turn it sideways.”

He wrote slowly so everything would fit:

“A MAP IS NOT A MAGIC CARPET. First, compare the name on the map with the name of the place. Then check two points we can see. If they don’t match, stay with the group and ask an adult.”

Samo read the first sentence aloud. Ela read the second and third. Adam finished the last one. Then all three looked at the whole page.

“Thanks for noticing the missing water,” Adam told Ela.

“And thank you, Samo, for the name and the arrow,” she replied.

Samo smiled at Adam.

“And thank you for finding the right line to the tracks. I liked looking for it together.”

The pencil went back beside the notebook. Meanwhile, their teacher stayed with the whole class by the display.

“Just one more question,” Samo said. “If a map isn’t a magic carpet, can we at least sail away on a bench?”

Ela calmly pointed at the dry path.

“Only if you pack the sea.”

Samo zipped up his backpack.

“Then no. The bread roll took the last bit of space.”