That Can Be Arranged Easily!

 

            “You sure about that?” said Dexter. “The first time I ran into him in this office, I nearly fainted. He’s real big. And very hairy.”
            “I’ve seen photos, or drawings,” said Hannah.
            “They don’t prepare you, Hannah,” said Dexter.
            “If you’re really sure. Knowing and believing are two different things! But, if you really want to meet him, I can just call you next time he shows up,” said Rick.
            “I’m sure. I expect to be impressed. You guys know? But I’m not afraid, since you both know him and are his friends.
            “Waiting is hard, but I’ll be waiting for that call. My phone is always in my pocket!” Hannah said. “I’m so excited!”
            Life went back to its sleepy normal at the ranger station. And in the campground a few campers stayed for a day or two, and left. And different campers arrived. Hannah answered questions and gave advice. She never left her phone at home.
            Without notice beforehand, the day arrived.
            One summer morning at about 8AM, when Rick had just gotten to his office, Ralph slipped out of the Forest. Every morning for a week or so, he had been feeling like it was time to go check in on Rick and Dexter, and the camp.
            He looked both ways carefully, saw no one, took about three steps and was at the office door. He knocked quietly, and stepped inside, saying, “you home, Rick?”
            “Come into my parlor!” said Rick. “Sit down. I have a surprise for you.”
            “I’m already surprised, in anticipation!” said Ralph. He sat. The big chair was always in front of Rick’s desk.
            “The camp host, Hannah, wants to meet you,” said Rick. “Good idea? What do you think?”
            “I wondered. I saw her wearing the crown that Cherry made! We were enjoying the fruit and stuff in the jar she left us. Sure. I wouldn’t mind meeting her at all!” said Ralph.
            “The stuff in the jar was peanut butter. She told us. You Forest guys are supposed to just love it.”
            “We did love it. It’s all gone now. Shall I just stay here?” said Ralph.
            “I’ll call her. I told her to wait until you showed up,” said Rick.
            While Ralph had some coffee and three or four doughnuts, Rick made the call to Hannah.
            “Ralph’s here now, Hannah. Seems like right now would be a good time. Good for you?” he asked her.
            “I’ll be right down,” she said, hanging up quickly to finish dressing. She wasn’t afraid, but suddenly felt very shy. She kind of knew that this was a turning point. Life was never going to be exactly the same. And so, it did make her feel all fluttery inside.
            But the ball was rolling and she would chase it to wherever it rolled.
            It took about three minutes to get down to Rick’s door.
            Hannah took a deep breath and opened the door. “Hello…” she called out.
            Dexter had been right. Nothing she had seen online prepared her for the presence of Ralph. He was large in a way that seemed to have little to do with physical dimensions. He was huge in spirit too. She could feel that.
            But, physically, she had never been in the company of such a large person. She guessed his height at nine feet maybe. She had no idea what he might weigh. He was bulky and muscular with a bit of a middle ager’s belly. He was covered in dark espresso brown hair maybe six inches long. He sat quietly.
            When she was able to look at his face, she saw friendly big brown eyes, with a lot of wrinkles around them, though he didn’t look old really. He had a beard touching his chest with some white streaks on either side of his mouth. The mouth was smiling. He looked like he found life to be generally amusing.
            “Hannah, this is Ralph,” said Rick.
            She couldn’t quite muster speech yet, so Ralph said, in a voice so low it was almost pure vibration, “Hi, Hannah.”
            All of a sudden, she was filled with a childish happiness, like she knew the greatest secret in the world. She would speak.
            “Hello! Oh! I am so happy to meet you!” she said all in a rush. “May I call you Ralph?”
            “Of course, yes. We loved the fruit and the peanut butter! Thank you!” said Ralph.
            “Did that big raven tell you they were there?” said Hannah.
            “Why, yes she did! That’s Maeve. She is a Greater Raven, unlike a regular raven. She’s kind of a messenger,” Ralph told Hannah.
            “You said ‘we’, do you have a family?”
            “Yes, I have a Firekeeper, my Ramona, I have a son with his own family, and I have a young daughter named Cherry. My son is Twigg. We have animals too, living with us,” said Ralph.
            “Bears, raccoons? Or?” said Hannah.
            Ralph laughed for a few seconds, “No, two puma brothers, and a white wolf named Blue who is Cherry’s companion. The cats are Bob and Berry, and they talk if they feel like it.”
            “Oh, wonderful,” sighed Hannah.
            “Would you like to come and meet everyone? Ramona would love to see you. Cherry will be a little shy, but still  happy to get to know you,” said Ralph.
            “I want to! But I’m supposed to be working today,” she said.
            “It’s alright, Hannah. You may have the day off, or however much of it you need,” said Rick. “Dexter can check in with the campers, when he finally gets here. Go ahead.”
            “Will Maeve be there too?” said Hannah.
            “She’s probably out there now, waiting for us to get moving. She has a way of knowing what’s up,” said Ralph. “You know your phone won’t work in the Great Forest.”
            “That’s alright. I don’t care about that. I don’t need to call anyone,” she said.
            “OK, then! Let’s go see what Ramona has to say, and maybe Cherry will demonstrate her special gift for you!” said Ralph, standing up. “Shall we go?”
            “Yes! Thank you! This is the best thing ever, after that green crown, which is in my fridge staying cool, Ralph!” said Hannah.
            “See you later,” said Rick, flipping his laptop open and looking down.
            Both Ralph and Hannah said, “Bye!”
            Outside, Ralph said, “I’m supposed to be a secret, so we have to kinda slide through the parking lot quick like.”
            When they got beyond the station dumpster and entered the trees, Maeve was there to meet them.

🌲💚🌲

An Observant Girl

 

 

            Hannah didn’t notice any one thing; it was a constellation of related observations. She kept her eyes open. She had a lot of free time working as the camp host, when no one needed her for anything.
            The first odd thing was smoke. Not dirty black smoke, but a consistent column of light smoke above a certain location in the forest. It was there nearly every day. It seemed peculiar. No one was supposed to be living out there, but obviously someone was. Or, something else was happening out there, something on a daily basis.
            Hannah thought about talking to Dexter about the smoke. But she hadn’t actually brought the subject up yet. She kept looking, without saying anything.
            One day when she was taking a bike ride on SR 20, heading east, she rode past a spot where the verge was very wide and had a lot of tire tracks on it. She noticed that there was a very well-traveled looking path heading out into the forest. Hannah stopped and tried to peer into the trees there, but she couldn’t see very far into the forest. It was hard to see anything because of how close and shady it was in there. As she was standing there holding her bike upright, an extremely large raven flew out into the open, saw her there and then headed right back into the trees, as if it were in a hurry.
            Hannah had never seen such a stunningly large raven before. It must mean something, she thought.
            Then, once or maybe twice when she entered Rick’s office when Dexter was there, the two men had given each other a very noticeable look when she came in. There was relief and a bit of alarm in the look. Women notice such things. She didn’t ask any questions.
            But she began to feel like they were keeping secrets from her.
            Now, Hannah was not completely out of the loop. She had a computer, like everybody else and she had seen some interesting videos about this very part of the world. She wasn’t completely dead set against the stories she watched, but she was a curious newbie. The subject had never come up with either Rick or Dexter, or any of the campers either. The subject was the possible existence of Forest People, Sasquatches, or Wild Men who lived apart from human society.
            The next time Hannah had some free time she went back to where she had seen the great raven. She was there to examine the ground. She was just curious. What she found was tire tracks. Not surprising. But it also looked like there was a scuffed foot print near the tire tracks in an area where there was some loose soil. She looked all over the wide spot in the verge, but she only saw the one possible very large footprint, because there was a lot of rough grass and so on just a little closer to the trees.
            It was too much. Curiosity was getting the better of her. She brought her bike up away from the road, and laid it down out of sight as best she could. She decided to just start walking the path and see what she could see.
            For some distance the path was wide and clear, and then it wasn’t. Looking into the trees, in an attempt to keep following the trail, Hannah saw it kind of fade into underbrush and grass, and huckleberry bushes. She decided to push on. Maybe it cleared out up ahead. But it didn’t.
            Poor Hannah. She shoved her way through thick underbrush and found herself facing SR 20 again.
            Now she knew something special was going on here. She pondered her next step.
            She decided to try leaving something nice, and just see what happened next. So, she hung one of her old Easter baskets with six perfect Delicious apples in it on a broke alder sapling branch. Then she bided her time for a couple of days.
            When she rode out there again, she brought a big jar of homemade peanut butter. She’d heard that they, if they were real, doted on peanut butter.
            The apples and the basket were gone. So she placed the jar down in the grass at the foot of the alder, sort of out of sight from the road. The next time she came back it was gone, slick as a whistle.
            This was becoming fun. Next trip to the unofficial parking spot, she left a nice bunch of bananas. This was kind of a joke because the videos said the Forest people didn’t like bananas or oranges, or carrots! Leaving bananas was like an experiment.
            The experiment was successful because when she came back to check, the bananas had vanished. After a moment’s elation, she saw there among the greenery, hanging on the same little stub was a beautiful, fantastical work of art.
            It was formed in a loop, woven of several types of greenery, and reminded Hannah of a sort of green crown. It had to be a gift. Someone out there in the trees where she couldn’t go, had made this beautiful thing for her. It was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to her. She placed it on her own head, and it fit perfectly.
            Back in the campground she parked her bike by the mobile where she lived when she was working. Then she marched down to Rick’s office. This was going to be fun!
            And it was fun.
            “Hi!” Hannah called out as she stepped into Rick’s office. Both he and Dexter were there, drinking coffee. They gave each other a wary look.
            “Wow, did you make that?” said Dexter.
            “Nope, I did not,” said Hannah, agreeably.
            “Where did you get it?” said Rick. If his face had an expression it might have been called ‘the jig is up.’
            “I found it on an alder sapling over by the wide spot on highway 20,” she said.
            “Cool!” said Dexter. “I wonder who made it?”
            “Oh, come on!” she said. “You two are obviously hiding something from me, and I think I know what it is! Why don’t you just tell me? I won’t cry or run away!” Then she told them about seeing the smoke in the forest, the big raven by the parking spot, and how nervous they looked sometimes when she popped into the office. And she told them about how the basket of apples and the peanut butter, and the bananas had all been taken when she left them there.
            “OK, Hannah. Take a seat,” said Rick. “You’re right. We have been keeping a big secret from you.”
            Then he and Dexter, filling in for each other, and talking over each other, explained to her about the big secret, and why it needed to remain a secret.
            She sat with her hands folded together and listened quietly to the whole story. “I knew it,” she said happily.
            “I want to meet this guy, Ralph,” said Hannah at last.

🍁

Happy Tootsday! July is Just About Half Over!

 

"Oh my word," said Sweetie. "She got the iPhone out again."

"If you just close your eyes, you won't even be able to tell," said Booker.

"I was just trying to sleep," said Sweetie.

"Shhhh, it's okay. Now, she'll go post it online," said Booker.

"We'll be famous," said Sweetie, dropping off to sleep.

"Yep," said Booker. "In a minor sort of way."

"Zzz," said Sweetie.

🐈‍⬛🖤🐈‍⬛🐈🐈‍⬛🖤🐈🐈‍⬛

Please, enjoy your Tootsday!

 

It Was Bound To Happen Eventually

 

            Apples don't grown in the Great Forest. But there they were. Six of them. Dark, very red, looking like something from a fairytale, arranged in a charming basket.
            The charming basket was hanging from the stump of a branch on an alder sapling near the wide spot on SR 20, so not quite within the Great Forest, but at its periphery.
            Naturally, Maeve saw it first, but she didn’t touch it. It looked a little too good to her, felt like a trap maybe.
            When she got to Ralph, he was naturally intrigued. “Oh, really, Birdy? Let us go take a look and puzzle it out!” said he. He headed right over to the highway, and just as she had said, there was what was probably an Easter basket, with six perfect organic deep red apples inside hanging on the little alder tree.
            “Hm,” said Ralph, and he walked all around the tree, looking for sign of any kind. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared.
            “The Plaidies didn’t leave it here. I know it wasn’t them. I kicked their tiny posteriors out of the Forest for good. Didn’t I?” said Ralph.
            “Yeah, you did. They haven’t been back,” said Maeve, from her usual perch.
            “Cool,” agreed Ralph. “I’ll take them to Ramona, they look delicious.”
            Ramona agreed that the apples looked delicious. She and Ralph and Cherry and Maeve all ate an apple, and noticed no ill effects. There were two left, and they didn’t explode or vanish or anything uncanny.
            It was a couple of days later when Maeve came to Ralph again.
            “Boss, there’s something else at that tree by the road. It’s in a jar. It’s brown," she said.
            “That’s strange,” he said. “I suppose I better go look, might be like bait or something. Who knows?”
            And just like Maeve said, there was a plain glass jar on the forest floor with some anonymous light brown substance in it. Ralph picked it up and turned it all around. He sniffed it, then he screwed the lid off. He sniffed it again.
            “It smells like nuts,” he said. He stuck a big forefinger in the stuff and pulled out a glob of it and popped it into his mouth.
            “Take it easy, Boss!” said Maeve, urgently. "It might make you sick!"
            “I’ve never had any of this stuff before. It’s really good!” said Ralph. “I bet it would be good on a biscuit or something. I wonder what people do with it?” He screwed the lid back on.
            “More to the point,” said Maeve, “why is it here? Better see what Ramona thinks of it.”
            So, back to Ramona they went. Ralph waited and watched while Ramona sniffed it and tasted it.
            “I wonder what it’s good for?” said Ramona. She thoughtfully ate a spoonful. “Maybe I’ll put it in cookies. I bet Thaga knows what it is.”
            Two more days went by. Life in the Forest proceeded normally, the sun rose, meals were made and eaten, work was done, the wind blew, then the sun went down just as it should.
            Yet again, Maeve came looking for Ralph.
            “Boss, It happened again. This is getting weird,” said Maeve. “I don’t even know what these things are, but I sure know they don’t grow out there on that alder tree.”
            “This I gotta see,” said Ralph. “What do you think it is?”
            “I don’t know. I can’t tell if they’re some kind of weird flower buds, or something like a fruit. They’re yellow and long and fingerlike, held together in a bunch,” said Maeve, with one eye squinted up.
            “Let’s go, “ said Ralph.
            Hanging from the same little branch was a cluster of things which Maeve had described well. We know what they are, but Ralph and Maeve had never seen such things before. They studied them, Ralph poked them, like maybe they were alive. But nothing happened.
            So, they removed the strange fruits from the tree and took them to Ramona for a consult.
            “I don’t know,” that lady said. Then she squeezed one and it popped open. There was a pulpy whiteish substance inside. She carefully tasted the pulp, then smiled. “It’s sweet. You have to take the skin off of them. I bet Thaga knows what they are,” she said.
            “I don’t know who is leaving us these nice gifts, but maybe we should put something there to say thanks,” said Ramona. “I wonder what to leave though. It’s kind of like a game! Let me think.”
            So, Maeve and the family thought and thought about what to hang on the tree for the mysterious generous person. Ralph suggested a fresh turkey. Ramona vetoed that. “That’s like giving them work to do,” she said.
            “How about…,” said Maeve, but just then Cherry spoke up.
            “I could make one my crowns for them,” she said. “I would make a really good one!”
            “That’s just right,” said Ramona! “It would show intention and it would be the only one in the world!”
            Ramona and Cherry went out to gather materials for the crown. They concentrated on plants that keep well, such as Salal and Oregon Grape, though that one is prickly and she would have to be careful with it. They picked some long grass stems, and a few immature alder cones, little green ones.
            Cherry spent the rest of the day working on the green crown until it was just perfect. She didn’t put flowers in it because they wouldn’t last long.
            That evening Ralph and Cherry went out to the alder sapling and hung the green crown on the branch that had held the basket of apples. Then, they went on back to the Home Clearing hoping that the right person would find it there.
            It was fun, like being part of a mystery. They couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next.
            Most of a week went by. There were no further developments, except that the green crown disappeared from the sapling.
            Cherry was pleased and excited, wondering who had her gift.
            One morning Ralph decided to drop in on Ranger Rick, just to check in on camp news and have coffee and maybe some cookies or something. He was always very careful to be sure that none of the campers could see him. He didn’t want to cause any trouble for Rick.
            As he was standing still and silent among the fir trunks by the path behind Rick’s station dumpster, someone walked through the parking lot. Ralph didn’t move a hair or a muscle.
            The person strolling through the station parking lot was Hannah, the campground host. On her head, worn proudly, was Cherry’s green crown of leaves.
            “Well!” Ralph thought to himself, “that solves one mystery!”
            He smiled, there in the dim light among the trees. “But it sure opens up another one!”

🍃🍁🍃

Just A Suzday Morning Greeting!

 

I hope your Catfurday was as lazy as mine!

Even the Bengal Bros were lazy.

There's one now!

Chock full of latent energy!

🖤

Bless all your liddle hearts!

🐈‍⬛

The Girls Conduct A Little Inquiry

 

 
            I was sitting here communing harmlessly with the internet, typing away at something, when I noticed that Suzie was at my elbow waiting to be noticed as she does. Her eyes were squinched shut, like she was trying to gather her thoughts, and she had those small toes lined up tightly together.
            This looked serious.
            “Hey, what do you hear from Toots lately,” I said, by way of acknowledging her presence.
            “She didn’t need to tell me anything, I was there,” she said, with those green eyes open now.
            “Oh? Was it another excursion? What happened?” I said, turning to her, all attentively.
            “It started out as a very big idea. See, Toots believed in the Wild Man of the Woods. She’s seen things at night. You know, right? But, I wasn’t so sure, even though we are supposed to live in Wild Man Headquarters,” she said.
            “OK, what was the big idea?” I asked.
            “Somebody said the Wild Man isn’t from Earth, but some other planet. Toots was unsure about that. I had no opinion.
            “We decided to find out if that was true, or just more of the stuff people say to feel important. The deal was how to research that. Nobody on that window thing you guys look at all the time knows. They just say stuff. We had to discover a way,” said Suzie.
            “I see. You’re right about that, people just say anything they want to say,” said I. “So, what did you determine?”
            “Toots thought we should talk to somebody who knows the answer, right? Now, who would know the answer? Well, you can imagine who she wanted to talk to! Yeah!
            “She thought that if we got into Purrception Mode™ like we do when we go places, um, planets and stuff, that we could pick up like a signal, a beam or something and follow it to its source,” said Suzie.
            “How did that go?” I said.
            “You know we wanted to talk to a friendly Wild Man. So, um, last night we kind of drifted around, like looking over a lot of America. We like tasted a lot of places and finally we found ourselves in the mountains pretty close to home. There was like a nice friendly message in the air. You know, not really wild, more like a dad or something. It was like an invitation. Come and talk to me, sort of. Look, I know this sounds seriously crazy,” she said.
            “No. If it’s true I can handle it. Go on. What happened then?”
            “We knew we were safe, because nobody can do anything to a point of vision, so we went to where he was. Oh, that’s when I stopped  having no opinion! He was huge, and brown, and hairy! He was sitting on a big dead log in a forest, smoking a cigar! I know how this sounds! But it’s true!
            “He knew we were there! He couldn’t have seen us! How did he know?” she said.
            “What did he do?” I asked.
            “He grinned, kept puffing on his cigar, and said, ‘Howdy girls!’ and ‘What can I do for you?’” she said.
            “So, since he was so nice, and we weren’t a bit afraid of him even though he was so big, Toots said, ‘We are here to ask a question, maybe two questions, depending.’ You know, he could have been scary looking, but he was all warm inside, if you know what I mean?
            “I couldn’t talk, but Toots said, ‘We came to you to find out if you and all those like you are from Earth, or somewhere else. Some people keep saying that you and your kind must have come from somewhere else, like some other planet, through a portal.’
            “He said, ‘As far as I know, from our myths, and old stories our mamas told us, passed down forever, we were made here on this planet, just like every other creature, including Man. I don’t understand why men say things they have no proof for, or authority to quote.
            ‘You two little souls, cats if I’m not mistaken, have done better than all the experts and investigators in the world!’ He puffed some more on his cigar. ‘I wish the big experts would come out here and ask me, if they have the courage! But, I’m afraid they are afraid’, he said.
            “We said thanks, and told him our names, and said that yes, we were cats. Toots told him that we were very glad to have met him, and that he wasn’t scary, like they say. Then, I was right here, on the back of the recliner, and Toots was back with Sammie. We had only been gone for a little while.
            “Does that sound completely crazy to you?” said Suzie. And she did look a little worried.
            “No, Honey, I believe every word! Did you ask this big guy on the log his name?” I said.
            “No! We must have been so excited that we forgot our manners! Why?” said Suzie.
            “Oh, I just wondered,” and I laughed a little.
            Having gotten all of that off of her furry little chest, she hopped down and went over to the nearest chair to snooze a little.
Why, it’s just amazing what those girls get up to! As they say, those who say such things, “Will wonders never cease!” I doubt it!

🍀

A Ticket To Evermore.

It's not really the feather.

It's what the feather signifies.

The sky, if you will it.

Love, Maeve

 🖤