The trail had no name on the map. It was a thin gray line that wandered off the main path and disappeared into the trees. Kai had seen it every time his family hiked Ridgeback Mountain, but they always stayed on the marked trail.

Today, Kai was alone. He was fifteen, old enough—according to his parents—to hike the lower loops by himself. He stood at the fork where the unnamed trail began and felt something pull at him, a quiet curiosity that had been building for years.

The path was narrow and overgrown. Branches reached across it like arms trying to hold him back. The ground was soft and uneven, scattered with roots that grabbed at his boots. After twenty minutes, Kai began to doubt his decision. The trees blocked most of the sunlight, and the trail seemed to be fading.

Then he heard it—water. Not a gentle stream, but something bigger. He pushed through a curtain of thick ferns and stopped.

A waterfall cascaded over a wall of dark rock into a clear pool below. Mist hung in the air like silver dust. The rocks around the pool were covered in bright green moss. Kai had never seen anything so beautiful that close to the parking lot.

He sat on a flat rock and listened. The water roared and whispered at the same time. He thought about how this place had been here his whole life, hidden just a few hundred steps from the trail everyone followed.

Kai pulled out his phone to take a picture, then stopped. Some things, he decided, were worth more than a photo. He sat for a long time, letting the sound fill up the empty spaces inside him.

When he finally stood and hiked back to the main trail, the forest felt different. Not because it had changed, but because he had. He realized that the best discoveries were not the ones people pointed you toward. They were the ones you had the courage to find yourself.

Kai smiled and walked toward the parking lot, already planning his next visit. This time, he would bring a notebook instead of a phone.