The Autum leaves crunch under my boots, and the cold air brushes against my skin. The breeze picks up quickly and it gets significantly colder.

I shudder and warm my fingers by shoving them into my jacket pocket.

Suddenly, I feel something rustle against my fingertips. I pull out a slightly worn paper with bad handwriting and markings everywhere.

“This is what I get for letting my little sister borrow my jacket,” I sigh. That’s when I notice something. All of these words and marks aren’t just nonsense-they’re a path. And at the end of the path is a giant x.

“It’s only a call away…” I whisper, reading the words of the map, “It’s only a…” I immediately turn my direction to where the path is taking me, but I face the woods. This path my little sister wrote wants to lead me into the cold, dark woods. I follow.

With each step it gets darker and colder, until I reach the other side and sun is shining on me and the warmth and touching me. “Now,” I say, feeling refreshed, “Where to?”

As I look down at my map I realize something. The path ends here. I’m standing on the x, but there’s nothing here. Should I dig? Climb? Go back?

“It’s only a call away,” I remember. I find the words on the map, but something is wrong. “It’s not a call away-it’s a crawl away!” I laugh at what she did there.

I look around and see a large tree. The wood is a beautiful dark brown, except for one spot near the trunk. It’s almost like half of an oval, and the wood in it is a light brown instead of dark. I lean down and push the wood forward.

I hear a few clicking sounds and gears turning, then it suddenly stops. The small curve opens almost like a door, revealing a hold in the trunk. I crouch down and crawl through it.

“Oh, took you long enough,” says a voice. My little sister is standing there smiling up at me.

“What is this place? And why?” I ask.

“Well, if you must know, I am part of the Forest Ignorance Solution Helpfulness. Our job is to save the forest and stop the destruction and carelessness of it.” Said my little sister confidently.

“Well-I-ya know-so it stands for F.I.S.H?” Is my only response.

“NO, and would you like to join us? That’s why I left the map. You seem afraid of the forest but that fear doesn’t need to last. You can help us and save our world and the trees within in.” She asked.

“I would love to,” I already knew my answer, “But I was just thinking that you guys want to protect the trees yet you carved one out for a base.”

“No, we didn’t,” she seemed very somber all of the sudden, “This tree was one the verge of destruction, but I saved it by making this.” She pulled back a red curtain to reveal a machine with turning gears and buttons. “This keeps him alive.”

I didn’t understand, and still don’t really do, why she called it a him. But I joined F.I.S.H. And by the end of the year I had saved 235,467 trees for destruction. And now their help was only a call away.