True Story for The Buckeye Lady

 

            Hi, I’ve listened to a few of your stories, and I thought maybe you’d be interested in one of mine. It’s not as exciting as Ha To Hah, or the one where the lady got sniffed as she was trying to sleep in her camper. In fact it wasn’t really very frightening at all. It was just very strange.
            My story happened when I was about 14 years old. It was the mid-60s. It was the summer between 8^th and 9^th grade.
            We lived in an area of second growth timber in western Washington state called North Kenmore Acres. There was no big housing development being build out there. There were just one acre lots with alder and maple trees and the huge stumps of the virgin timber left over from the first timbering.
            There was an Eskimo carpenter building these small two bedroom houses, not very many of them. He sold them unfinished inside. My parents bought one of those on the forested lot. It was cheap! By the time of this story my dad had cleared the lot and finished the house and built three more bedrooms on it. But you can see what kind of a scene it was.
            Basically, we kids grew up in the surrounding forests. There were four of us. I was the oldest.
            At that time, we had heard about the Yeti, didn’t really believe it. Something else was mentioned, but closer to home. None of us worried about anything out in the woods that was going to “get us.” No one was talking about Bigfoot, and I didn’t hear the word Sasquatch until decades later. I may have heard of something called a Skookum mentioned.
            There was a neighbor who had a UFO sighting, a good one. But that’s a story for another email.
            Most of the whispered stories we heard our elders tell quietly were about the doings of regular human beings, not cryptids.
            The point being that we weren’t expecting anything in the woods.
            On the day I’m talking about I was mad at my younger siblings, two sisters and a brother, and my mother for supporting them. My father had gone to work as usual. I decided to run away. Oh, not forever. But long enough to put the fear in them all. Big sister gone missing.
            I slipped out the back corner of the lot and into the undeveloped area of woods that extended for miles to the north and west. I knew the paths and trees and everything that was out there very well. It was sort of like an extended home. Very familiar.
            It was a hot day. The air was warm and sleepy and heavy. Woodsy smells were all around. The sun sifted down through those alder trees in sleepy spots of light. Robins called, and other birds that I didn’t know. I walked a couple miles out from home. I liked a place where there was a white birch tree that stood out in the deep green and shadows like a ghost tree. I always thought that was my own place.
            Well, just like in the fairytales, I got sleepy. I was also hungry. So I ate all the huckleberries off one of those bushes that used to grow out there. The orange kind, not blue ones. Then I sat down. I had long jeans on and a long sleeved shirt, so it was easy and pretty comfy to lie down on the forest floor. I lay there looking at the insect life in the speckled light, listening to bird calls and was soon totally asleep. I don’t know how long I napped there. I was too far from home to hear anyone calling me. If they even did!
            I started to wake because something was snuggled up against my body. Something that had soft fur and wasn’t very big was smooshed right into me. I wasn’t frightened but I was confused and surprised. I didn’t have a dog. What was this?
            I opened my eyes. It was some kind of baby. I  had never seen anything like this. This baby was asleep right up against me. It was like maybe a four year old toddler. I babysat a lot in the neighborhood, so I was pretty used to little kids. But this one was naked except for soft brown fur all over.
            I sat up carefully and looked all around myself. I could see that time had passed since I got here. It was late afternoon. I looked at the little guy, it was a guy, and said, “who are you? Where is your mama?” It was dreamlike. What do you say to such a being? I wasn’t sure what to do.
            He woke and smiled at me. He had brown eyes, very bright brown eyes and a button nose like any little kid. He did not look like a monkey, if anyone is thinking that. He looked like a hairy baby, maybe a little proto-hominid-ish.
            “Do you talk?” I said. He laughed at me and sat up also. He said some things in a soft sibilant language and a babyish voice. I was just beginning to wonder what in the world I should do about him. Should I bring him home to my mother? I found it hard to imagine just leaving him there.
            I was stroking his head and talking some more nonsense at him when someone else appeared. It was a giantess. I didn’t know what else to call her of course. I had no idea. She was way over my father’s height, and he was about 6’1”. She looked like this baby was hers for sure. Brown eyes, not smiling, same color of fur coat. She was built heavily, but not fat.
            She looked me and her kid over for a couple of beats, then she did smile. She shook her head and bent over and picked him up and sat him up on her shoulders. He leaned over her head and grinned at me.
            I didn’t have time to get scared or anything. She turned and said something. I have no idea what. Then she walked off into the deeper parts of the forest. The whole experience was over in two moments. I mean the part with his mom fetching him back. The nap took longer of course.
            What could I do but go home then? Of course I did, and of course I never said a word about it to anyone. They would have laughed for years.
            Well, that’s it. Not very frightening, but sort of enlightening.
            I never met them again.