Have A Cigar?

 

            Ralph didn’t have anything special going on one summery day, and he got to thinking about how he always went to the ranger station when he wanted to shoot the breeze with his old bud Rick.
            Now, Rick had actually not been to Ralph’s locale since the pizza making night. That had been a long time ago. It didn’t seem right to Ralph. He’d eaten a lot of cookies and doughnuts, and drunk a lot of Rick’s coffee in Rick’s office.
            While he was still pondering this situation, Maeve happened to fly down out of the firs and land on Ralph’s shoulder, as usual.
            “You’re thinking pretty loud there, Boss,” said Maeve.
            “Oh, yeah? What am I thinking about?” queried ol’ Ralph.
            “I don’t know! You’ll have to tell me that!” said Maeve. “I’m not actually a mind reader, not much anyhow.”
            “I was thinking that it would be cool if Rick and I sat here on my log and smoked a couple of these cigars,” admitted Ralph.
            “You want me to go get him?” said Maeve.
            “Not exactly like that, Black Leg! Ask him if he’s got the time, etc.. etc., and if he’d like to come down and hang out for a while,” said Ralph.
            “You know Rick and I don’t talk, but I’ll give it a shot,” Maeve said, lifting off.
            Ralph smiled as he watched her fly off low through the tree trunks in the direction of the ranger station.
            It was OK with him either way, but he was pretty sure Rick would show up.
            So then, when Maeve got over there, she found Ranger Rick just exiting his truck. Perfect! She landed right at his feet. He jumped a little, when he saw the great black Raven appear at his feet.
            “Uh, hi, Maeve! What’s up?” said Rick cordially.
            “Hey, Rick! The Boss wonders if you have time to come and hang out with him for a few minutes,” said Maeve.
            “Yeah, Dexter really runs this outfit anyhow,” said Rick. “Let me run in there and tell him to carry on without me.”
            Rick popped into his office, and right back out.
            “I’ll take you in, just follow me,” said Maeve.
            Rick followed Maeve as she flew in short hops behind the station dumpster and into the woods. For a short distance, it was just a path in the woods. But then it changed. Maeve hop/flew into an area that looked a little watery and indistinct. Rick shook his head and followed her right in.
            Inside, it was the Great Forest. Sunlight filtered down in diagonal rays between the massive Douglas firs. The air was sweet with an indefinable almost floral scent. Birds called responsively to each other. And it seemed to Rick that he saw a small flower or two bloom as he passed. Time seemed to stop. He almost heard the very forest speaking to him.
            Suddenly, there was Ralph, sitting up on his big cedar log. He seemed to be humming something under his breath. When he saw Maeve and Rick coming, he waved happily.
            “Thanks for coming! Short notice huh?” said Ralph.
            “Short notice? No, it’s good! Happy to see you at home,” said Rick.
            “I’m going to go see Ramona,” said Maeve, who then took off.
            “I was looking at my cigar box here, Rick, and it seemed to me that having a cigar with a friend is better than having a cigar sitting out here alone, yanno?” said Ralph. “Have a seat, man!”
            So, Rick climbed up on Ralph’s log.  It was a little bit of a scramble for him, but he landed upright beside Ralph.
            “I haven’t had a cigar since college, Ralph. It was a terrible cigar!” said Rick.
            “Well, shall we see how this one stands up to memory?” said Ralph.
            “You bet, “ said Rick. Then there was the whole business of lighting up Ralph’s fairly fancy cigars, sitting on a big cedar log in the heart of the Great Forest. It took a few minutes.
            “Ralph, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” said Rick.
            “Ask away!” Ralph was intrigued.
            “Were your people and the people who lived here before we got here really friends, like they say? And, are those paintings of big mysterious figures they find on rock walls really some of you guys?” said Rick. “Do you know any Indians yourself? I don’t see them around here.”
            “This is what my mother told me. Yes, we have always been either friends, trading partners, or sometimes at war with the native population before the Europeans got here. The funny thing is, we were here before the tribes got here. Most of them don’t say that, do they? Yes, they did paint images of some of us. I'm not sure what else they could be!"
            “But, then, Ralph, I gotta ask, where did your people come from, in the beginning that is,” said Rick
            Ralph smiled, took a puff of the cigar, and winked.
            “Well, Mom didn’t come right out and tell me the answer to that one,” said Ralph. “Ask, yourself, Rick. Where did any of us come from?”
            “It’s all the same, isn’t it?" admitted Rick. “I think we know Who, but we don’t really know how. There are the old stories, and I’m sure they’re true. Mysterious, manifold and deep.”
            “That’s true! How about one of these Heinekens?” said Ralph.
            “Sure!” said Rick.
            They drank their beers and thought deep thoughts for a while.
            “I better go back to work,” said Rick. “Can I just walk out of here?”
            “Yup! Just follow the path. Getting out is easier than getting in!” said Ralph. “Thanks for coming! Let’s do it again! Oh, yes, I do know some tribal types at Tulalip. Nice people. People from several local tribes and some Mexicans all got scooped up and put there together! I should tell you the story of what happened when I went out there a couple of year ago sometime.”
            “I’ll look forward to that,” said Rick as he jumped down to the ground, and headed off down the path to the ranger station on the other side of the dumpster.
            “Say hi to Ramona and Cherry,” said Rick, “when you get down to the fire.”

🍀

Who Goes There? We Know Who!

             This fine rendition of one of Ralph's buddies is called the Mt. Rainier Bigfoot. It was made by sculptor Benjamin Isitt. We found him standing in Elbe, WA, which is near unto Mt. Rainier, well, Tahoma.

            I'm pretty sure Ralph would like to borrow the hat for a little while, but Maeve wouldn't go for it. She would feel that it impinged on her shoulder seating area, and looked ridiculous. Ramona and even Thaga would laugh at it.

            Yeah, it's another open thread. 

            But, when you look at this photo you just know he's out there! Himself, the real Ralph. And you can also depend on his merry heart wishing us all well.

            He says that the standing invitation to visit the Great Forest still stands!

🍃🧡🌿

    

          

In Celebration of Catfurday

 💮Yesterday's Portraits of The Scouts💮

Sweetie in a box. Manic!

Elegant Booker. Near a box.

You can see that their souls are completely different.

Both very fine fellows.

🤍

An Interesting Turn of Events

            There were strangers afield, but of course, Uncle Bob didn’t know that. In his dusty, pouchy way, he was afield too. He had gone up away from his Stump House, near the town where the wild turkeys liked to hang out. They felt safer up there by the haunts of man, away from Ralph or any of the clan. 

            Bob had gotten pretty good at knocking a turkey down with a carefully aimed rock. If that failed, he would pick some blackberries and then go fishing. Hunting and sourcing cooking fuel were his daily occupations.
            Bob was under the impression that he was quite stealthy, but he had a tendency to talk to himself and whistle a little under his breath. An outside observer might have honestly mistaken him for a sort of bear, a dusty, mumbling bear who knew how to whistle.

        The turkeys were evading him, and the woods seemed off in some subtle way. Bob stopped and looked around himself. He saw the usual assortment of trees, and an open sunny area further on. It looked normal. But there was a sound.
            It was a strange squalling noise, like the young of some creature. It sounded distressed. The sound distressed Uncle Bob too. He forgot about turkeys for the moment. He had to find this creature and help it! He plunged back into the woods in the direction the sound seemed to emanate from. It got louder as he went along. His heart beat rapidly and he was breathing hard. Surely he would find this young thing before it perished.
            “Where is its mother?” he asked himself.
            Then there was an alien scent on the breeze. Related? He couldn’t tell. But it was rank! It smelled like all the foolishness of human culture in one sleazy sweet odor. But he still had to find the crying baby, whatever it was. His tender heart was all wrapped up in the search. He wished Ralph was with him. Ralph would make sure it all turned out well. He always did, but Bob was alone this time.
            He knew Suzie was waiting for him, which put urgency in his steps.
            Plunging on, he came upon a confusing spectacle. It was a sheet of shining material hung on a tree, in which there appeared one like himself. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared. He waved a hand. The strange figure moved its hand! He jumped. It jumped! “What magic is this?” he asked himself. He whirled around, to continue searching for the poor young thing which continued to cry out. He feared for its safety here among the trees and all the wild animals.
          When he turned, on another tree hung the same sort of bewitched material as on the first tree. The same image stared out of it with its mouth hanging open, chest rising and falling rapidly. Bob stared, and then whirled around again to face the first piece of the awful stuff, in which the odd person once again did just as he did.
           Then he turned again to check the other one. It was the same again!
           Caught there, turning and turning in amazement, suddenly the sunlight went away, and it was dark. Bob saw points of light, much like stars, and looming dark shapes.
            “Ralphie! Ralphie, I don’t know where I am,” cried Uncle Bob. Tears streamed down his face into his beard. His feet didn’t seem to be touching the ground, and he was spinning faster and faster.
            “It’s a fake portal, Bob,” said Ralph. “Shut your eyes for a second. It’ll go away.”
            The darkness vanished and there was Ralph, smiling at Uncle Bob.
            “How did you know, Ralphie?" said Uncle Bob.
            “I heard the same stuff you did, and smelled the weird stink too, then I found you out here stuck between those two mirrors,” said Ralph.”
            “I don’t hear the crying anymore, Ralphie! Did the baby die?” said Uncle Bob.
            “There was no baby. You were tricked by a couple of Squatch investigators, Bob. They had you running all through the woods following a sound from a machine,” said Ralph.
            “They can do that? I thought it was real!” said Bob, with tears still drying on his face.
           “Well, not anymore,” said Ralph.
            “What was that smell, Ralphie? That was horrible!” said Bob.
            “Somebody told them that we might be attracted to it,” said Ralph, laughing.
            “Somebody lied!” said Bob. “Why did they do all this stuff, Ralphie?”
            “They wanted to meet some Forest People,” said Ralph. “The did too! Me!”
            “Oh! What happened?” asked Uncle Bob.
            “Well. Nothing much. I wandered into their setup and said, ‘Hi!’ They seemed mightily impressed, Bob. I suggested they take their dog and pony show back on the road. They grabbed most of their junk and ran for their truck. That’s the last of them I think we’ll see of them, at least for a while. I wonder if they’ll come back for the mirrors?” said Ralph happily.
           “We could bury the mirrors,” said Uncle Bob.
           “Maybe we should,” agreed Ralph. “Or, we could put them in Rick’s dumpster!”
           “I didn’t catch any turkeys! Or get any firewood,” said Uncle Bob, suddenly remembering why he was away from home.
            “Let’s just go fishing. OK? Fish are easy, and I’ll help you get Suzie some firewood,” said Ralph, patting Bob on his back.
            “Oh, thanks, Ralphie! I’m sure glad you found me!” said Bob earnestly.
            “Any time, Bob, any time. And the look on their faces was worth it all!” grinned Ralph.
           “Wish I could have seen that!” said Bob.
          “It was pretty funny,” said Ralph as they headed back down into the Great Forest and the silver river where the fish were waiting for them.

🍁🍀🍁

The Importance of Being Cautious™

 

            “You know, Suzie,” Toots said one night recently, “I believe that being Cautious™, for cats, is analogous to being forensically skeptical, in humans.”

            “What?” Suzie said, somewhat shocked. “I don’t know, Toots. What does analogous mean?” she added.

            “I think it’s like this. We are Cautious™ because anything, or anyone might be a threat. It has to be proven otherwise, after careful assessment. Danger lurks everywhere. Noises herald disaster! Well, likely anyhow. Or they could! You know!

            “Humans had better be Skeptical™ because some other human is always trying to steer them around by what they can get the other human to believe. Humans should also be skeptical about the safety of things like log bridges, medical magic spells, government programs, dogs with wagging tails. The whole shebang!” intoned Toots.

            “So, analogous means the same but different?” said Suzie.  

            “How about this? Cats and humans both have to be watchful and aware! We have to be on the alert for dangers to our fur and whiskers. Some, um, creatures, could consider us prey. Any person could just step on one of us!

            “Human people, those big innocents, for the most part, had better be careful about who the believe. Motivation is the key. Human culture is a morass of incitements, propaganda, and cheap ads. They’d better be Skeptical™!” said Toots, with eyes wide and whiskers forward.

            “Looks to me as if it’s easier to be cautious than to be skeptical. We can see the things that menace us right in front of our eyes!” said Suzie.

            “Like that chick in the Appalachians says, ‘Question everything!’” giggled Toots.

            “It’s a good plan, and we’re sticking to it!” agreed Suzie.

            “Nehhkkk!” agreed Toots!

😹🍁😺

How Big Is The World?

 

 
            Once, a very long ago, there was a thoughtful child with open eyes.
            He, for in this case the child in question was a young fellow, was sitting on a nice smooth rock of just the right size to sit on, and he looked out over a vast landscape as he ate the bit of something his mother had made of corn meal and some sort of seeds. Chewing thoughtfully, it occurred to him to wonder about the nature of the place where he found himself.
            From his vantage point he saw the whole open arc of the deep blue sky like a bowl overhead. He saw that it reached clear to where it met the land at what we would call the horizon. Between himself and this horizon he saw the familiar landscape of his home, with its corn and pumpkin and bean fields nearby, but further out stretched an unimaginable depth of desert, rocks, and in the far distance some low hills.
            He went back to his mother where she was plucking the feathers from some fowl. She sat outside the doorway of the stone house where they lived.
            “Mother, what is this place called?” he said.
            “Village,” she said, in whatever language they spoke.
            “I mean all that I can see. All of it, not just our village,” he said. “There must be a word for all of it.”
            “See your father in the cornfield? Why don’t you run to him and ask him about this?” said the mother, who was busy, as always.
            His father, muscular and brown, not very old nor very tall, was stooped over encouraging a small stream of water to run between the stalks of corn.
            When the small boy found his father there, he said, “Father, what is the word for everything I see here, the sky and the land? The must be a word for everything.”
            The father regarded his small son, who was always asking questions, with sharp but kind black eyes. “We call it the world,” he said in whatever language his people used for all that they saw around themselves.
            “Father, how big is the world? If I walked to the furthest things I can see, like those hills which are the furthest away, is that the end of the world? Or does it go on?”
            “Our people walked from a place we can’t see from here, so the world is bigger than we can see,” he told the child.
            “Does the world go on forever, or does it end?” persisted the small boy.
            “You must ask the eagle, if he will speak with you,” laughed the father. “Eagle sees from the sky. Maybe he will tell you.”
            The child left his father to his work and walked the path to the top, above the village, clear out of the canyon. Looking into the empty sky he called, “Eagle, will you speak with me?” And then he waited. The sun beat down on his small black head and his narrow brown shoulders. After a while he saw something in the sky and it was coming closer and getting bigger. Soon he saw wings beating the air as the eagle flew.
            Eagle landed right beside the boy, and said, “I will speak with you. Do you have a question?”
            “Thank you for speaking with me, Eagle. Yes, I want to know if the world goes on forever, or if there is an end where it stops,” said the child.
            “I see,” said the eagle. “I can tell you this much, but no more. I have flown over the desert until it was forest land below me. I have followed rivers; I have seen the great deep waters from afar. I have seen no end to the world. But, you must remember that I have only seen as much as I have seen. You must ask one whose wisdom is deeper than mine.
            “There is an oracle of the great creator spirit in your very own village. She is a tiny little old woman married to your village elder man. You must ask her,” said the eagle, gaining altitude as he flew on his way.
            So, the child walked back down into the village. He was very happy to go back down into the shade in the canyon. It had been a long time since he had eaten his piece of cornbread. He was hungry, but he went anyhow to the elder man’s house. The old man was sleeping inside on his bed of woven hide and branches.
            The very tiny white-haired woman was sitting cross legged before a small fire. Sitting near the fire was an earthen pot of goat stew, with peppers and corn.  It smelled very good to the child.
            “Are you hungry, Grandson?” she asked when her bright eyes saw him approaching.
            “Yes, Elder Lady, I am,” said the boy.
            So, she served him some stew in a gourd bowl, and she watched him eat it all down. Then she said, “Do you have a question for me? There is a question all over your face, Child.”
            “Elder Lady, how big is the world, and does it go on forever, or does it end somewhere?” said the boy. “Eagle said that he has seen very far but he has not seen the end of it.”
            “Ah, three questions, within one question! Very good!” she chuckled.
            “You are the first to ask me this question. I will think for a moment,” she said.
            “Yes, Lady, I will wait,” said the boy.
            “Grandson, our village is a world, and it is inside the world of all that you see. All that you see is a world in a greater world. This greater world lives among the worlds of the heavens, and there is no end of worlds, dear boy. As to how big the world we stand on is, well perhaps some day it will be known,” she said.
            “Now, go back to your mother. She is looking for you. Also, there are some questions which you must ask the creator spirit. Then you must listen carefully for the answer in your heart.”
            “Yes, Elder Lady, I will remember,” he said.
            Then he went to his mother, who had been calling his name, and sat beside her while she worked at her cooking, for soon his father would come home and he would be hungry.

🌎

Writing on The Walls

 

            Talk about more questions than answers! I do have questions.

            The top photo is of Newspaper Rock, in Utah. Of course. The bottom shot was also taken in Utah I am pretty sure.

            Once you get used to seeing those images, they are everywhere.

            Things I wonder about:

            Same as everyone else, I wonder what was being expressed. Exultation of the hunt. Hopes for the hunt? Bragging rights?

            Soft goods. There had to be ephemera. What about that? What was it? Some of it we've seen and even have some samples. Clothing, sandals, baskets or pots, depending, weapons. 

            I try to guess why they inscribed footprints. Number of toes didn't seem to matter a lot. All the animal images make more intuitive sense, to me.

            More or less, all humans need some form of the same things. So, I try to apply that mindset to my imaginings. For instance, where did they bathe? Wash their clothing? Or did they wear more or less disposable stuff? What did they talk about in the evening? What did they feel or know about the rest of the world? Did they know much at all about the rest of the world?

            Just a few things I was thinking about. Please tell me what you think about writing on the walls. Was it an essential part of their lives, or just the last stuff to disappear?

🤎🌵🤎