Tree Structures, Canoeing the Ozarks

Raven,

I thank you again for posting these missives. I'll resume where we last let off:

**********

About this time one of my cousins organized a walk around some nearby ponds. This fellow worked years as a mountain Search and Rescue professional. He specialized in  aiding in with helicopter rescues, lowering emergency toboggans down rock faces, ski and rope work on steep slopes. He’s an unbelievably fit young fellow. I remember him training for his job by running up end down our mountains holding a raw cabbage in one hand and carrots in another. He’d go up and down half a dozen times eating these raw vegetables.

Let’s call him Rick. Rick took us to a remote section of the forest where he’d found a tree structure. 

To anyone that has not seen one of these let me describe: Imagine ten or so tree trunks, stripped of their branches and leaned against each other into a sort of a pyramidal Japanese wood puzzle. They are a koan almost, of massive trunks that support themselves unexplainably.There’s a sort of poetic mystery about how it was assembled. Everything rests on another limb, the final support is suspended in air, a massive heavy log dangling off the ground.

Teenagers did this? Impossible. We had a conversation like, “To put that one in place someone would have to do x y and z first, but no . . . wait, that isn’t possible, this piece had to have gone down first . . . wait, that’s impossible because this is holding up that.” And so on. I have a definitive theory on how these are made and their purpose, but would like to hear from your subscribers.

Now hear this. Although I was at this location with a brother and four close relatives, to this day not a single one remembers the trip, even less the tree structure. Not a one. I’ve been back to them many times, “Hey remember that day . . . the pyramid of tree trunks? “ but they don’t remember a thing. It’s as if some external force removed their memories of this event. 

Around this time I was having a lot of what I call “Magic Bear” sightings, particularly when out fishing, I’d catch sight of a bear at long distances across a clearing or beaver meadow. The posture and movement was something different, like a bipedal being running on all fours. I remember demonstrating to my son, how a hominid might fake being a bear very easily, especially if it had longer arms. The magic bear I saw seemed a lot bigger, and way faster, than any bear we have in the area.

When we were many years younger about ten of us kids took rods and creels down to the stream. The older kids had fly rods, and the youngsters all had worms. It’s hellishly challenging fishing because alder bushes are everywhere. Fly fishing there is a real art. Nevertheless, in a fairly short time we caught a mountain of small trout. My younger brother was worm fishing from the bank, and was left to guard the large creel holding everybody's catch. He set the creel behind him, and though he never moved from his fishing spot, when he turned around the creel was still there, but the trout inside it were all gone.

We first reasoned a bear or a raccoon had stolen the fish. Then my brother was blamed.  Everyone agreed he had dumped them into the river. After all when you do the math of either eating or transporting upwards of twenty-five ten inch trout, how does a four-footed creature do that while escaping notice? I mean kids were all over that section of stream. A bear would have been seen or heard.

Now I realize our Sabe saw a free trout meal. After all we were kids. We’d be back fishing another day.

About the same period, I began to hear distant yells, across the lake, and from distant mountainsides, long high pitched screams that seemed too voluminous for any sort of cat and definitely not coyotes or wolves. The Adirondacks do harbor a coyote-wolf hybrid. Its howls are different than the high pitched yips coyotes make.

One early morning in bed asleep with my wife, something slapped the side of our camp loudly just below our bedroom window, and uttered some words that sounded Japanese. I do speak a little Japanese, and loved samurai films, and often imitated Toshiro Mifune talking tough. I first experienced this as the rude end of a dream, but then I realized it was real, and happening just outside. When I heard the Sierra Sounds recording on the web. I realized this was their language, or, as the case may be, one of their many languages.

As young kid growing up in this location, our family compound was so remote, and cut off from technology that we had to evolve other ways to entertain ourselves without electricity. 

After the sun set and grownups lit oil lamps and candles and sat around to play cards, kids of most ages gravitated towards games of capture-the-flag, or kick-the-can for the youngest ones, then later, dark night contests of escape-and-evasion for the older teenagers. Long evenings of dashing about in the woods and bushes were punctuated with parents calling younger ones in to bed. The older team players remained on the field in near total darkness. We combined our knowledge of how to track game with ways of moving noiselessly, disguising oneself with ferns or grasses, etc. these were all techniques we really enjoyed as kids. A few cousins who had returned from the military contributed to our lore of ‘escaping and evading’.

One thing I learned early on is that if one stays well hidden and camouflaged, there’s no way anyone will see you. I got used to the little ones trying to catch sight of me. My technique was to do a massive flanking run through the woods, and seize the enemy's flag from the rear, seeking cover behind the many scattered buildings. I tell you this as background so you get a sense of what else was going on. 

We all know what it’s like to sense another person just around the corner, any corner. This basic instinct is written about in scientific journals. We all have that sense, some have developed it more than others. I know when a noisy eight year old cousin is around a corner and out of sight. All humans have that sense.

I honestly wish I had a dollar for the number of times that deep stinky smell hit me just as I was closing in on the other team’s flag.  I was sensing another creature which magically I could never catch sight of. One summer, this happened in a pursuit around the exterior porches of a relative, and the smell was so powerful the following day I went to that cousin and informed them they had a sewage leak. And often when I grabbed the flag, I learned later that other team members were off chasing me in the bushes where they’d heard a noise. Over time, I realized the game was rigged.

Now I realize the Sabe children played with us every summer, perhaps trying to see how much they could influence our contests.

In the early 1960’s our family built an access road over the property. This put an end to years of riding the train. This expansion destroyed a lot of trees. While I cannot speak to experiences our road builders may have had directly, I do know that one summer morning my first cousin and his buddies, all relatives of 16 to 19 years of age, were upbraided by their parents for vandalizing the road construction equipment. 

The kids admitted they had indeed started the tractor, a big Cat bulldozer, but said they only drove it a few feet then turned it off. But what of the sand put in the gas tanks? What of the ripped out spark plug cables? 

My cousins denied all this very soberly, and I believed them, but they were grounded for a month. Had something else seen the kids messing around, and decided to take advantage? 

Overhearing these conversations made me realize the incredible value of individual testimony. I believed my older cousins. Yet they were being blamed just as my younger brother had been blamed for dumping a load of fresh trout. Testimony is so precious. There’s a sacred contract with existence on this earth in what we tell others, and making up a lot of bunk just isn’t productive. Most people, and I underline the word most, are 100 percent honest. 

Similarly, when our girl cousins came back from an overnight sleepover they claimed their brothers had been sneaking up on them in the night and breaking trees. Get a life! We hadn’t. They even claimed we called them by name and that they recognized our voices!

In the late summer of 2014 after I saw the massive footprint, I was driving back to Connecticut.  Along on our road I passed my father’s first cousin. An elderly geologist and hunter, he stood at the side of the road holding his 30-30 lever action in a very alert manner. When my car surprised him he looked like he was ready to pull up and shoot. Clearly something had made him tense. The date was early September not hunting season. I asked him what he was doing with his rifle so close to the camps, off season. We have clear rules about not discharging rifles within distance of our buildings. 

"What’s up?” I was not trying to upbraid him. I was curious. Was he experiencing some of the same phenomena? He was a very direct man, a geologist, but also very honest. So he didn’t answer. I knew in my gut he felt threatened by something.

His lakeside home was just down the mountain from a pond that is higher in elevation. Let’s call it Charm Pond. He hunted there every fall, on the side of that mountain, and, like my father had reported being stalked as he hunted the area. His wife confided to my mother, “You know Donald was followed by something when he was hunting. It really upset him!” She’d just fret a bit then let go of the topic. All who heard it drew a blank.

Now I'll retell the oldest piece of lore from our family settlement. In the 1860’s a man who used to guide for my great great grandfather, had been hunting on Charm Pond Mountain. He shot a buck and was dragging it back to the lake when he heard a massive scream behind him. He redoubled his efforts, then heard another roar. Then practically running to the lake, he threw his buck into his boat and stepped off into the lake. Just as he did so a creature jumped into the lake chest deep, and screeched at him.

We’d always ask my Grandfather, “Well, what was it?” My grandfather’s reply was always the same, “Not sure. They say it was a panther.” Story over.

Now I recognize every detail, so decidedly Sabe. The huge scream, threatening behavior at the lakeshore, and the total sense of terror.

Was the old guide trying to conceal a life changing experience, from his employer? Had he been specific my grandfather might not come as often to hunt. Local populations need to conceal the reality of these beings from their clients. It’s survival, and it happens, to this day. The political pressure to keep Sabe secret to protect local tourism is tremendous.

Years of missing puzzle pieces suddenly resolve into focus, all at once.

If one passes through life, making dismissive apologies for this or that, along with excuses that explain mysteries according to commonly accepted frameworks of knowledge, then something ‘paranormal' could bite you on the nose and you’d never accept it. Most people have taken note of something unexplainable at some point during their lives. But they let the forces of time wear those memories down.They let time erode the documentary prescience of their own experiences.

We doubt ourselves. We all do it. We are our own victims of thought-erosion. I realized work was needed on topics I didn’t understand and not to waste effort on things I did. We're dumbed down, by the simple act of rehearsing the same patterns, believing a narrow reality that is only a tiny fraction of the whole. Most of what we consider real, is in fact due to faith. The piers of science are secured in the mud of religions past.

By rehearsing that fallacious picture, we block off an ability to tune to another reality. I’d only document the unexplained, and not waste time reconfirming the well-known. As soon as I did this I was put in tune with missing puzzle pieces.

Answers came.

********

In June of 2006. I drove cross across country to visit friends in different states. One friend, let’s call her Light Girl, lived in Tulsa Oklahoma. Light Girl and I decided to explore Arkansas, and canoe along the Buffalo River. 

The Buffalo River cuts through many soft stone bluffs. It’s spectacular country, ridges line both sides of the river. What’s more, one can see caves in the cliff faces along the way. Some no doubt were kept and maintained as dwellings, at some time in the past, and at minimum served as winter dwellings for bears and foxes. During the spring the Buffalo’s current plunges wildly through canyons and ledges of rock. There are sandbars along the turns where one can camp.

We were dropped at the head of the navigable river and agreed to meet our canoe rental guy downstream after a two days of downstream paddling. On the first night Light Girl and I camped, without incident on a sandbar. We did not see any poisonous snakes though we were warned they sometimes crawl onto the sand at night.

On the second day, which was the main paddling day of our journey, I noticed a number of large trees blown across the river. The water was moving fast, so we had to pick a line under the fallen trunks in a manner that was safe and didn't hang us up on the branches. As we cleared the first tree, we noticed another coming up that was leaning out over the water, but hadn’t yet collapsed. I told Light Girl, who was paddling from the bow, to be quiet as we went under, since half-fallen trees can collapse suddenly,. Even a noise can cause them to topple. 

We zoomed beneath, then seconds after we cleared it, there was a loud crash. I turned around and the tree we had just canoed under was floating in the water. That spooked us both, big time. 

We met our canoe rental guy who took us back to our car. He said he had rattlesnakes in the burlap bag in the back of his pickup, so we all squeezed in front. I think he just said that so he could sit close to Light Girl in the front. When we got out she gave him a mouthful! “You're a redneck pervert." She lit in to him big time. Light Girl spoke dialect perfectly.

Light Girl and I decided to camp one more night in the area, so we picked one of the State Forest sites along the river. We were the only people in the place, literally. We chose a camp site, pitched tent and started a fire.

After an evening meal, cooked over one of the ready made fire pits, Light Girl and I turned in. We were dog tired. The sounds of the forest seemed pretty typical. Plenty of insects, barred owls, screech owls.

Early in the morning I suddenly heard voices in the area around the fire pit. The language sounded strange . . . like someone blubbering their lips and speaking Japanese at the same time. Who was that? Then suddenly, very suddenly, I felt a hand reach beneath the fabric of the tent and under my sleeping hip, like it questioned if someone was inside.  The being grunted then went away.

I remember lying in my sleeping bag and suddenly wondered if the creature I heard, also made the tree crash behind us in the water.

Light Girl remembers nothing

Regards,

Postmark Winter Owl

Meeting on the Porch

 

Hello Raven,

One December [see Note 1 below] I journeyed north for a weekend of late autumn relaxation. Through the course of my journey the weather turned from bad to worse, and by the time I entered our local section of forest, the weather morphed to a full-on blizzard, with driving winds. 

Though snow was accumulating fast, our main road had been plowed. I had no trouble driving the eight or so miles to a junction where I turned downhill towards our lakeshore dwelling. This was an unplowed gravel lane, shared by six or so homeowners. 

Rolling treacherously over about 8” of old compacted snow, with new inches accumulating, I realized getting stuck was a distinct possibility. Halfway to my destination something loud hit the rear of my car. I spun out of control into drifts at the edge of the trail. I rationalized I had hit a concealed stone with one my tires.

How had I let this happen? None of the tires were damaged, in fact there was no trace of hitting any hard object at all. So what had made the loud noise? I could only speculate. With just an eighth of a mile to walk, and sunset nearing, I set out, realizing the importance of getting inside, and starting a fire.

Shouldering a pack, handbag and other belongings I headed down the trail to the camp. I set my cooler of food in the snow by the car. There were a few crucial turns to make, all navigation I was intimately familiar with, in clear summer weather.

Just yards from our property, I couldn’t be sure of where I was. The driving snowflakes made my eyes burn and squint. Snow goggles? In my lower bottom drawer, lot of good they were doing me now. I bumped into piles of lumber, trees, even a neighbor’s propane tank. I struggled for thirty minutes or so until I saw the side of a building. Wrong building, the garage of a cousin neighbor. I’d gone too far. 

I backtracked my own footsteps in the ten inches or so of total accumulation. My trudging around left a clear record of where I’d walked. Yet the amount of footprints I’d made seemed excessive as if I had been dragging both my feet. I hadn’t because I was wearing my downstate shoes. To keep snow out of my socks,  I'd been walking like a stork. So how had those deep furrows been made? Bizarre.

Truly freezing, I opened my stride and retraced steps to the other turnoff, then descended via the only alternative. Fumbling, I found the rear door to our small home. My fingers were numb. Finding and using the right key was a monumental task. I hadn’t kept gloves or any winter clothing in the car, I thought let this be a lesson. I kept having this internal dialogue about keeping winter clothes in the car.  Lot of good they did me in the bedroom of our camp. I mean, who ever imagined the last five minutes of a car journey could turn so deadly.

Note I was thinking about winter clothes in the bedroom.

I readied a pile of kindling in our frozen fireplace. My match struck, a tentative flame rose, the kindling caught, and I heaped on cordwood in an attempt to get warm. It was then that I heard an animal rattling about in the bedroom down the hall. We’re used to squirrels, mice, birds, they all work their way indoors at different times. During this storm, some large critter had worked its way indoors. No matter. I heard the sounds a few more times. They were loud. Bigger than a squirrel or rabbit. The noises seemed human, bureau drawers opening and closing.

I ran into the bedroom end of the camp and threw open the door. Nothing. Holding a flashlight I rummaged around, found my winter overalls, parka, and boots.

Braving the snow again I opened the valve on our propane tank, then headed back towards my car, hoping the cooler of lettuce and milk hadn’t frozen solid. A few meters from our camp I saw the cooler, sitting where I couldn’t miss it. Someone had carried it a distance of a hundred yards or so through the snow.

“Whoever you are God bless you!” I shouted, and brought the cooler indoors.

I laid on the couch by the fire. Our building was designed for summer use, so I dragged a sleeping bag and a soft mattress, close to the fire. I had no intention of opening the bedroom again. Too cold.

Suddenly more sounds emanated from that bedroom. Someone was messing with bureau drawers, organizing stuff in the closets. Who the hell could that be? Cousins? Something told me not to interfere. Literally we are on a lake where there is nobody this time of year. 

Nothing good could come from challenging another person back there.

My father taught me always to leave kindling, matches, and some edible supplies in any remote dwelling. During ancient times, a stranger seeking shelter is entitled to a warm reception. In times of inclement weather, one was entitled to enter a vacant building. Furthermore, any homeowner was required to provide food and shelter to a stranger. This was known as Zeus’s law.

I shouted out loud, “Whoever you are, stay warm. It’s terrible out there."

Then from my vantage on the couch in front of the fire, I saw a see-thru outline in light, of a human-like being, pass by my feet at the end of the couch. It entered the dining room, then I heard it exit the kitchen door. Not tall, perhaps five-foot five The only detail I observed was a outline around its form, that seemed to match the color of the fire. Otherwise it was invisible.

We had been in possession of this property just three seasons, bought from cousins after it sat vacant for nearly twenty-five years. Trees had grown up around it, the roof had sprung leaks. The building, though beautifully sited, was a rescue job. We’ve made great strides, but there was a heap of work left to do.

Years later that I put together the sudden slamming of my car into the snowdrift, with the rattling noises in our bedroom. I now believe that our building housed other occupants during the twenty-five years it stood vacant. Our off-season occupants were surprised when I suddenly arrived for a winter weekend. One fishtailed the rear of my car to buy time, so the borrowed room could be neatened up. It left deep furrows in snow for me to backtrack after I became lost, and again, assisted me by carrying my heavy cooler of food down the trail. From the evidence, they made great pains to vacate and give me my space, without being discovered or confronted.

I wondered about that light outline. What sort of being was it?

The next summer I was up again.  During that trip I was followed back from a nearby lake, and though I saw nothing concrete, I played the game of 'pine cone tennis' over the full distance. I've reported that incident in detail with another blog entry. That occurred over the 4th of July weekend. Subsequent to that weekend, the contacts continued. Most of our family had left the park during the last three weeks of July, and it was during that period I heard loud footsteps on our roof, then a cadence of small stones thrown against the camp.

I went to the back door. “Please!” I shouted. “Don’t throw pebbles because you'll break a window! Use pine cones!”

The cadence of projectiles continued, this time the sound was softer. The building was subjected to a barrage of pinecone artillery. I stepped outside and verbalized a request. “Come out and show yourself. Let’s talk this over.”

By now my Sabe run-ins had piled up. Mostly secondary evidence,  prints, help moving stuff, being followed along a trail. The sightings I'd had were distant, some might have been of bears, though I was always suspicious of certain types of bear encounters.  I’ve written of these 'magic bear' run-ins in other communications.

Never were any of these confrontations frightening. It seemed these beings wanted to communicate. So when pinecones hit the camp, I verbalized a desire to meet my adversary, and engage in conversation.

“Come on”, I shouted out the back door. “Show yourself. Let’s talk about this."

To demonstrate, I threw open the porch door and took a seat on the furthest of metal chairs and angled it to face the woods.  

“Come on!” I shouted. I scrutinized the trees for signs of a large hairy being. 

Suddenly, I became aware of someone sitting comfortably in the other chair immediately behind me, less than a foot away.

An enormous older but very muscled man, with charcoal black skin, and long black hair covering his entire body, sat slumped in the chair just a foot behind me. One leg was crossed over the other, one hand propped his head like Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker”. He was significantly taller than me. Allowing for his slumping, he might have been seven feet tall, but I estimate his height closer to six-foot six or eight. Definitely an older guy. A bit of a belly. His posture disguised his height. He resembled one of my closest friends, but his nostrils were much broader. His intelligence gave off a diffident air that seemed to say, “We gotta talk.”  My first thought was, is this man a family member?

His massive head, somewhat conical, was covered in glossy black hair. The dark black hair was streaked a bit with grey on his body, except around his eyes nose and mouth. He sat in that thinker pose, forefinger to forehead, legs crossed waiting to see what I would do. Coal black eyes. I did not observe any whites in those eyes.

All of a sudden I felt betrayed. Fooled. I mean I had invited him to meet me - but again he had snuck up behind me. 'That’s not on', I thought.  I stood up, feeling emotionally bruised. I was handling heaps of new information all at once, and felt the need to set boundaries. Perhaps my indignation was concealed fear. Whatever.

“Flanking me like that isn’t on if we’re to be friends,” I thought, fully appreciating he understood my state of mind.  I noticed no smell, , I got the feeling he had worked on that, in order to make an impression.

Like a peevish diplomat, I left. I needed to digest all this.

I stood up slowly, kept my eyes on his, as I stepped around his long crossed legs and walked indoors, then closed the door behind me. It was an action I’ve regretted many times. I was not frightened, rather flustered, annoyed and concerned. I had to let him know - if relations were to move forward between us, there had to be rules. 

In a desperate flash, I wondered if it made sense to go to sleep with my rifle. Naw. I didn’t feel threatened. Two more steps into the living room I turned around to look and he was gone.

Best regards,

Postmark Winter Owl

Note 1: I now shamefully admit that autumn trip up may have occurred as late 2018 or 2019, (not in 2015 as first reported in this blog) and the encounter on the porch happened during the subsequent summer, of 2019 or 2020]. My son Arjun is verifying dates in his journal that will let me be sure. One of the problems not writing about these experiences immediately, about a place where the setting remainw exactly the same from year to year, and the people as well, that without a new births, deaths, or construction project to tag an 'experience', the feature of each year recedes or advances one year to the next.

Encounters in the Adirondacks

 

Dear Raven,

Thank-you for publishing these chapters. I wonder if I'll ever exhaust my supply of memories.  The experiences continue to this day, and it's all I can do to group similar events into clusters that somehow make sense. 

A few days after I seeing the 14” footprint in the mud, I noticed an outline in light, of a bipedal being exiting the back door of our house. It walked into the island of trees behind. The light outline was pale yellow, exactly the color of the declining sun at that moment.

I’ll describe in my next email a similar light being in our living room at night. At that time I was relaxing in front of the fire. The creature’s outline was the color of the fire I had going in the fireplace. No other lights were on.

At the time of both instances, I thought I was witnessing some sort of ghost or spectral paranormal entity. Now I realize these were Sabe, whose visual shielding was betrayed by a uniformly colored surface behind them. 

It took me years to put this all together. The tail of my car had been sideswiped, to buy the occupants of our building time to pack up and vacate. These humans enjoy living in abandoned buildings, particularly during the winter. Details of all this will be included in my next email.

Were the outlines, colored like the predominant light source at that time, a clue to Sabe’s light cloaking technique? That is what I now believe. These outline figures seem visible only when viewed against an even background, such as the wall of an interior or exterior building, or evenly lit sky.

I noticed this form from a distance of two hundred feet. It exited our back door towards the trees opposite, where it disappeared. This one wasn’t tall, seemed female, about five foot eight in height. She was gone in a few seconds.

Had she been inside our building? At the time this made me more than a little concerned.

A few days earlier after returning from our mushroom seminar in the forest, two of my pottery bowls went missing without payment from a table I'd set outside our house. Instead, a small pile of little brown mushrooms, a fern bent into the shape of a bow-tie, and a small piece of polished stone laid as surrogate compensation.

My first reaction to these gifts was that a young female cousin coveted my work, but was unable to leave a check. I felt embarrassed, and defensive. What would my wife think? This bizarre transaction seemed to invade my privacy, forces I clearly did not understand.

So I put the entire load of gifted materials, stone, folded fern, and mushrooms, into a paper bag, and hid them at the bottom of our kitchen recycling. It was the sort of knee-jerk reaction one makes when one is embarrassed, or confused. I realized I wanted this interaction to end. I was fearful, but only to the extent I was confused.

My wife would have asked, who left you this stone and pile of mushrooms? Where are your two best bowls?  So I pretended I was hiding the cache from my wife, when in reality I was hiding it from myself. My logical mind struggled to overthrow a new dimension of truth. 

I learned the small stone was Labradorite, and that Sabe actually use Labradorite in trade with each other. I spent a long morning discussing Adirondack minerals, with my geologist uncle. We held conversations outdoors about Labradorite, magnetite, gneiss, and granite. These discussions may have been overheard. Was my mind read? 

Was the light shadow woman recovering the gifted stone?

It took time to accept that Sabe cherished my pottery. I felt flattered, and along with that, angry at myself for not accepting their existence much much sooner. The gift of small mushrooms mirrored our mushroom study group's audible conversations about an elusive Adirondack psychedelic fungus. This was the same being that followed our jeep along an internal road at high speed, as we made our way happily to another mushroom ecosystem. 

As an adult clutching the spare tire at the back of my cousin’s Jeep, I heard the giant footsteps crashing through the woods, keeping pace at a pretty good clip too. We drove at least 30 miles an hour and given the condition of the road it was all I could do to hang on. But despite the noise of the jeep bouncing over the road, and my cousins inside talking all at once, I still heard the crash of branches and twigs as our follower kept pace. Yet he, or she, remained invisible.

I knew nothing about Sabe gifting. Labradorite, according to my uncle, is “a long distance traveler from the north east, brought down by the glaciers.” He told me how certain black Labradorite boulders are scattered across the Adirondacks, like the mystery spheres of South America. The stone I’d been given was about an inch across, but was creamy yellow in color verging towards blackish green on one edge. It definitely has a crystalline structure.

I read somewhere that Labradorite was a cherished stone by Native Americans and Sabe, and that the crystalline stones, held the knowledge of the rivers, and provided guidance to tribe members as they made journeys across our continent. I’m paraphrasing.

Realizing the gifts were not from a secret girlfriend,  I went into the woods and apologized “It’s taken me a while to put all this together. Please forgive me. I’m happy you have my bowls. Take as many as you want."

A few days later, another light being observed me from high in a tree as I sat outside working outside on a lawnmower. Again, visible against a uniform sky, the outline was the color of the midday sun at that moment. Though each sighting had me perplexed, seen later through the lens of memory, these experiences seemed benign. I realized we were sharing our dwelling, with either a family of ghosts or demons, or oversize hominids. I wasn't afraid because the energy they left felt benevolent, and welcoming. I never forget them, despite long periods of absence, yet thinking of seeing them again never made me afraid.

This figure hung on by one hand thirty feet up a young maple, of about 20” diameter at the base. I squinted to view this creature against the sky. The sun was not far off, maybe thirty degrees, from the sun. I had to squint.

It stood feet on the crotch of an upper branch, steadying its body with an extended hand on the much tapered trunk. The entire tree bent and swayed from it’s weight, yet to me just appeared as a see-through cutout, of light. I looked away, but when I looked back, it was gone.

A side note: We had been in possession of our home just two years. It was an old building, new for us, but needing massive amounts of work, repair of roof leaks, etc. It hadn’t been lived in for twenty five years. After we bought it I did a massive cleaning job. We repaired and replaced a lot of mechanicals in order to make it useable and start enjoying the place. It runs, but the roof, the frame structure, and porches still needed major work. 

Mid-March of the next year I was up for some late winter tree cutting. An entire crop of maples, beech and spruce had prospered very close to the house, during the twenty five years of vacancy. The large trees growing close to the building needed to be cut out.

The weather was clear and cold and sunny, the ground, frozen. I awoke to a foot of dry fresh snow. Across the yard out front, across a flat  of berry bushes shaded by hemlocks, I noticed large footprints crossing the snow.

The length of the stride was six or so feet apart. It was impossible to examine the bottom of each print due to the depth of fresh snow. There were just the pristine indents, crossing the yard, way farther apart than I could stride myself. 

A picture was building. Definitely bi-pedal footprints. I tracked them three hundred feet or so to the edge of the clearing, where they disappeared, literally vanished.

Mulling on this new mystery I applied myself to the work at hand.  The weather turned warm, and made the hard exercise a pleasure.

By day’s end I had rounds of maple and beech to split, with denuded oversized spruce trunks lying in the snow. I hesitated dicing up the sappy trunks since they gum up the saw. 

The limbs that were too small to dice into firewood, I’d dragged around the building to a forested area at the back of the camp. I was more fatigued from hauling this detritus than manhandling the chainsaw. The thought occurred to me to try and drag one entire spruce trunk all at once.  It was way too heavy, couldn't even budge it. I felt foolish for trying. I thought, I'll just let it dry out, cut it up in the summer.

The next day I awoke, and found the heaviest trunk had been carried around to the back of our property. Some being was watching me and helping me do my work!  Something was in the forest that I could not see. I needed other evidence.

That following summer I walked through the woods to a remote section of pond-fed stream a couple of miles to our north.   The stream is deep and full of holes and ideal for trout.

As I entered the stream area, a blown over spruce lay with its root ball standing vertically. Any who have seen this phenomena know how a full diameter of ten or more feet of earth may be lifted up by the roots of a blown over tree. Sometimes the ball is mostly earth, other times the rain washes the root structure so it becomes a fine steel wool of rootlets, supported by a more massive structure of root members. When they get old, the primary roots get dry and textured, like driftwood.

As I passed this fallen spruce I thought, it wouldn’t it be incredible if a Sabe could hide in plain sight, especially if he was dark and hairy, to begin with. He could just scrunch up and pretend to be the root ball of a fallen tree, like those octopuses camouflaging themselves in jagged coral reefs.

I still had no real proof to myself that Sabe existed, At this point I was thinking conventional hide-and-seek techniques. Old school stuff, like the art of concealment, use of fractals to hide well, match the land in color and shape.

The idea of invisibility is a tough one. We believe that we’re the top hominid, and that nothing surpasses us in skills or abilities. We believe we see everything we turn our eyes towards.

Let’s dispel that last notion first. Astronomy is done with a variety of telescopes, many of them, including radio telescopes, UV telescopes, and infrared telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope. All these machines exploit wavelengths of light that are not visible to the human eye. Yet birds and insects see these other wavelengths. 

David Attenborough did a wonderful series on what animals actually see. After analyzing light reception on the retinas of prey mammals such as deer, it became obvious that tigers to them, are virtually invisible. The orange stripes of the tiger are perceived as green by the deer, since deer are red color blind. Their cone receptors cannot see red. So the tiger appears green with black stripes, which mimics the blades and shadows of tall grass. I advise you have a look at this series, backed by novel scientific research into how animals see.

Other evidence is in that Sabe can see infra-red, whereas we can’t. Sabe eyes are also a source of infra-red as well as visible red ligh, hence the many reports of glowing red eyes at night. These beings possess total night vision. They can see in total darkness since their eyes function dually, as sources of infra-red light and infra-red detectors.

Why haven’t we been taught about these people? Why the sudden rise in Sabe consciousness? Humanity has known for years, but have decided as a dumbed down civilization not to believe. Despite reports dating back to the first settling of this continent, and a myriad of consistent descriptions by Native Americans, we constantly reject reports their reality. Upsetting the myth, that we are the most powerful, and can see everything, cannot be allowed. 

My father, used to set up a little game around Christmas, a game of hiding things indoors in plain sight. As an artist, he was a master of concealment. He would say, “First to find a pencil, a thimble and a tiny bird wins.’ Dad was an artist and could always place things in plain sight where most of us would completely overlook them. The whole while he’d be there watching, so intently that I started to suspect he was broadcasting thoughts into our minds in order to prevent us from seeing. 

After a while he’d release us from his thought spells. He’d say, “Use your eyes. Look hard! Really Look!” And then all of a sudden we’d see a yellow pencil lying against a yellow stripe on the rug. It always occurred to me that despite his ingenious concealment techniques, he influenced the way we saw things by suggesting mentally that a particular item was not there.

I remembered these past experiences while passing the rootball. Just the kind of place a Sabe would hide. Unfortunately this time there was no Sabe, just a big old toppled spruce.

I fished for a good half hour then left following my incoming tracks back out. When I passed the fallen spruce I noticed the rootball seemed much diminished. In fact it was utterly destroyed, most of it having rotted away entirely. There was neither mud, nor stones or gravel, nor big roots to hold it all, nor little black hairy roots. The root ball had lost about a thousand pounds! Yet I had seen a toppled spruce with mud and gravel and root hairs lifted in the air. Or had I imagined it?

Had he camouflaged himself by smearing mud and grass on his own black hair? Or did he disguise himself by thought alone, suggesting the idea of a root ball, planting that thought in my head as I walked by? Could he have used mind-influence to change the way I perceived reality?

I couldn’t think of any alternatives. If indeed, he works this way, he obviously has a variety of techniques to make you see whatever he wants, especially if you’re not vigilant. This means you’ll never spot him unless you really look hard, . . . or . . .  unless he wants you to see him.

I kept this evidence, light beings, gifting, work assistance, outdoor concealment to myself. I mentioned nothing to my wife and kids. The list of my experiences was getting long, I worried about how to walk them into my growing sense of realization.

When finally I sat beside the old guy on the porch my dam broke, I told my son, He listened, but would have none of it. My wife shut me down immediately, still does, if I mention any of it. My son listens, says reserved things. He knows I never lie, but cannot believe in an order invisible beings living alongside us.

Nevertheless, I advised them both, "Get with the program, otherwise you might have the shock of your lives". My son’s an ecologist, so I implored him to avail himself of what seemed like an irrefutable body of fact. An irrefutable body of fact, yet no hard evidence of any kind. 

As a scientist, he's a natural born skeptic. He needs to be so, to do his work. So we’d be walking in the woods and suddenly catch that scent, and I’d say, “the big guy is nearby", or see a fresh broken pine bough across a trail and then I'd tell him right there, ”These are signs.” Then I’d say something aloud to the big guy, like, “Meet my son!". And then my son thinks I’m nuts. I know all will be resolved soon, it can’t not be, and I know my son is much further along in taking this on than my wife. I think out of respect for me, Sabe will not shock her into admission, because she’d never come north again.

The absolute gulf, that they, like most human beings simply cannot cross, is taking testimonies such as mine on faith, without any corroborating first hand experience. This puts a wall dividing our population. into those that know, and those that can't believe.

More later,

Postmark Winter Owl