Returning from My UBS (Unexplained Blogging Silence)

Hello. It’s been a while. I’ve no good reason for my long absence—not one I can easily articulate anyway. But let me tell you a story…

Eons ago at a motel in California, my five-year-old self left two very tired parents in their room and set off to explore. My parents’ exhaustion now seems understandable to me. Who wouldn’t frazzle while traveling cross-country with two contrary teenagers and one youngster who ceaselessly asked questions?

So I was on my own on a clear, sunny afternoon. I surveyed the area—a playground for motel guests, a neighborhood of houses in the distance, more families checking in to their rooms, the symmetry of the motel exterior, the sameness of every room altered only by the numbers on the doors. Nothing remotely interesting to me. In fact, the afternoon was looking so bleak I wish I hadn’t left my parents. And then a flash caught my eye.

I looked skyward, only to be blinded by glaring sun. After focusing, I saw it: an oblong, silver metal vehicle encircled by slender, perpendicular cylinders each ending in a colored light. What was it? I looked around to see who else had noticed, but no one was looking up.

The vehicle came closer to the motel and glided slowly overhead. I HAD to share this with somebody! I raced back to the motel room, threw open the door, and burst in with my news. But before I got the whole story out, I realized that the people listening to me were NOT my parents. I was in the wrong room—so embarrassed I never wanted to leave my parents again (assuming I’d be able to find them). By the time I got back to them, my humiliation far outweighed my cosmic experience and I couldn’t wait to get on the road again. I was ready to leave this dismal place in the dust.

Of course, between my UFO tale and my accidental exuberance with strangers, my parents enjoyed a good laugh at my expense. But I know what I saw.

Years on, my UFO encounter well behind me and never mentioned again, I was trying to verify something I was editing. A newspaper article led me to a book chronicling unexplained occurrences. I found more than I’d anticipated.

Several pages of one chapter were devoted to the same shiny, colorful vehicle I saw on my first family vacation. The descriptions matched mine, the vicinity was the same, the time of year synced as well.

Hmmm. Other people saw it? You mean I wasn’t suffering from heatstroke or an overactive imagination? Cool. I could reshuffle my brain a bit and recategorize this memory without shame.

Fast-forward to April 2013—a month during which I should have had LOTS to write on Lull. A month celebrating poetry, honoring trees, raising awareness about animal cruelty. Yet I remained strangely silent. Honestly, I don’t know why. Lacking a better excuse, I offer this: That shiny hovercraft with colored lights came back for me.

Yup. I was abducted by aliens.

[Photos by N J. Jackson (palms at top) and NASA.]

A Dog, A Cat, and A Cabin

I learned from my mother this week that the Festival of Trees (as in Christmas trees) is already over in my hometown. Here in the Bluegrass, some of my neighbors have already erected Christmas trees inside their homes—not to mention wreaths, lights, and miscellaneous decorations displayed outside—and set it all alight in the evenings.

Now I like Christmas as much as anyone, but this is a wee bit early for me to get into the holiday spirit. I haven’t let go of October yet! Autumn is one of my favorite seasons and I try not to cut it short.

Autumn brings memories of a handful of long weekends spent with my husband in Door County, Wisconsin. Each time, we stayed in a utilitarian cabin at the northernmost tip of the area, away from the quaint of the touristy villages nearby. Each time, we attended a fish boil and ate enough buttery white fish and potatoes and onions plus homemade cherry pie to tide us over until we could return some other year. Each time, we bought sour cherry preserves, experienced something new (an artists’ retreat one year, a self-guided scooter tour of Washington Island the next), and each time we pined for our pets.

So one year we decided to take them along. We figured they’d be thrilled not to be left behind with a sitter. We couldn’t wait for them to smell the woods and the lakes, taste the buttery fish, watch a few wild turkeys.

Before we even reached the state line, though, we were reminded why we always left “the girls” at home. Traveling made the pooch sick and nervous, even with her best feline pal beside her. The more she fretted, the more the cat talked. The more the cat talked, the more the pooch fretted. Soon the cycle escalated into howling and vomiting; we were still four hours away from our destination.

Thankfully, once we settled into the cabin, the payoff of including our girls on our mini-vacation began to materialize, though not quite the way we’d anticipated.

Precious, our 18-year-old special-needs kitty, was in exploration overdrive. She LOVED the cabin—ran from one corner to the next as if they were Disneyland rides. She was ECSTATIC to be included and HATED when we left her alone to go somewhere. She embraced the warmth of the fire in the fireplace and “helped” with every kitchen chore.

The pooch, on the other hand—who looked for all the world like a typical country hunting dog—woofed and whimpered at every new sound. She never slept, which only exacerbated her lack of courage. The fire was evil and she couldn’t fathom why her white pal wasn’t picking up on the sinister atmosphere enfolding them. We thought some playtime in a small field would get her mind off her worries. Things went well until her face made contact with the Kong we threw for her and her eyebrow swelled. So we thought a jaunt through a wooded area would take her mind off her swollen face—the scents, the critters, the new terrain. We encouraged her to explore, but she wanted us to go in first and clear the path of the goblins she was sure lurked beneath leaves and travelled on breezes. This became difficult to manage because the pooch didn’t want to wait by herself at the edge of the woods nor did she want her people separated from each other. Clearly, our 70-pound “country” dog would have preferred to experience this alien territory in our arms rather than on the ground. Have you seen that Subaru commercial where the group of dogs go camping and end up locking themselves in the car at night after hearing the local wild animals? Our pooch should have been cast in that commercial—no training or acting necessary.

Oh, how we wished our pooch had more courage. But we didn’t hold it against her or push her to do more than she could handle. We were delighted that our elderly cat, at least, took such pleasure in her vacation environment. Her increased interest and activity alone made the entire trip worthwhile. Of all the Door County experiences we fondly remember, the weekend with our four-leggeds will remain the standout.

[Top pic is Miss P ready to go; photo of Mertha’s Cabin at The Clearing by Denny Moutray.]