Don't judge a lumberjack by his truck

The best thing about the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia – just after the breath-taking landscapes that usually follow an even more breath-taking climb – is the wonderful solitude and a feeling of entering a place completely pure and unharmed by human civilization.
The bad thing, on the other hand, is that there really is no one around to help you with the map. My parents and I, after a taxing but incredibly satisfying day in Rohace, Western Tatras, were dragging our feet along a concrete road without a single clue where we were. As for the direction we were going in, my parents decided to place an uncomfortable amount of trust in my tingling feeling of where Zuberzec, our destination, was. After more than a few attempts at thumbing a lift and after what our feet perceived as millions of kilometres of lumbering, we decided to take a break on the long logs near the road. The sun was going down. We were sitting on the log and swinging our aching legs in resignation. We ate all our sandwiches. And then we heard the car engine so loud it could pass for the beginning of the apocalypse. The small truck stopped by the logs and a middle-aged man in a flannel shirt got out. My mom – relieved that someone has noticed her lost family – jumped off the log and, in a flurry of apologies, tried to ask if the driver would show us the correct directions. To her surprise, the driver did not bother to answer and, in a deadly serious voice, asked me and my father to get off the log. All the kidnapping movies that I have watched suddenly flashed in my memory. The driver reached into his pocket. “A gun”, I thought. “A knife. A blood-thirsty ferret”. The driver drew a tape measure from his pocket and started to measure the logs, whistling like a real lumberjack. We watched him. No one said a word. We were still a little bit scared. The driver finished, his flannel shirt stained with sweat. He looked at us and asked: “Where do you want to go?” He smiled. And it was the warmest smile in the world.