HiHi! Don’t you think that’s an inappropriate first word! How about Sorry You don’t get to say hi without a goodbye! How about an emotion, like a hug, a long one with sweet nothings whispered in my ear.Okay.Okay?Look Jenna, it’s a long story and I’m tired, so let’s just go inside and sit down and I’ll ..No, something is wrong. Nothing is wrong.How’d you get here?By footDid you drive here and park at the mud slideNo, yes I mean, just tired. Lets walk to it and talk on the way. Come on, we’ll talk inside. (He looked mad) What’s wrong with you.Me? You left me after I forced a kiss, didn’t say squat and you want to go into the house and talk, pushing the little red dot of the CROAK. She had five minutes. ‘You’re a stranger, worse than a stranger, my husband who is a stranger. I don’t know who you are Bobby. You hid so much from me ..’‘Did you find the writingOf course, I did and don’t understand any of it. I do understand you are a decorated war hero, kissed a knock out bitch and disappeared. He stunk like week old road kill, a monster with a bobby costume. She could feel him clawing around searching for what she’d done over the last months. If he found anything, she’d have to fight and possibly kill him or be killed. She wanted him sedated. It was Déjà Vu all over again. The first time I produced this scenario, I found him in bed with me when I woke up, the second time in the hay loft writing like a maniac, balling up each page when finished and throwing them over to the workout bench and now this. My just Jenna not so much anymore sees this as fear expressing itself, my other, preparation for a possible encounter with a bad Bobby. This isn’t the first time I’ve imagined a possible future event, but certainly one that I didn’t want to be true. I understand that these projections are my mind searching for order among all the disparate pieces of information floating around in there and if not accurate, a neural visual email of caution. Or maybe just an unresolved important thing that needed closure, a very human thing.No matter what, I wanted to see what my protected space looks like and find out what the sound is a few miles off that constantly changes. I don’t want Fubar to go the first time or even all times so he's house bound. I’ve thought about it enough so there wasn’t too much preparation. The light backpack had everything I would need to last a few days including band-aids, not that I would need any of it but just in case. Bringing the pistol crossed my mind, but the Other held firm. Most of the trip I would be absolutely present to not only marinate in the language of the forest but to stay alert, allowing a quarter mile radius of awareness. To stay in full presence used to tire me out but now, with stamina, a full day. The feeling of entering these sacred woods with a gun was just repugnant.Before I went, I left Fubar enough friskies for a week and water in two large bowls, explaining to him that I’d only be gone for a day this time. I wondered if he did understand, what he thought of so much food. He’s eating the friskies now.I recorded this on the CROAK, a new feature but am remembering it from memory. It was Sunday morning near six and eighty in the shade. It hadn’t rained in over a week and my heightened olfactory app told me the forest was moderately dry to dry. I wore holey blue jeans, a tee shirt and hiking sneakers. For the first hour, everything seemed the way it’s always been except for some large fallen tree tops and branches probably from the wind storm we had right before Bobby disappeared. As I get deeper into the forest, its diversity increases in number, variety and volume. I slow down to inhale it all in, to sense it in total to the limits of my current powers of perception. There is more birdsong, what sounds like cicadas long drawn out buzzing which I believe is a courtship call, croaks in many directions and a tree being scratched. It was enough to make me stop, locating a slight depression with a few inches of water and a five wood frogs. I love frogs. When I bent down, to get closer they all turned and looked at me and then back to taking turns croaking which is a little weird, knowing the normal behavior of frogs but was happy that they felt my presence was cool! Could they sense I was connected? Of course they could! I was there for the morning, loving their company, with a few croaks of my own, totally immersed in surround sound, scent, tactile, visual. The stress on the forest was palpable, not that I could compare it to the old normal but for what my senses told me. It had hung on due the network of underground streams and an aquifer and now with the Dome, finding a little of the old normal.All of these voices of nature that I’ve been missing it seemed for so long made me cry. I sat on a log a few feet away from the frogs and felt a part of everything so long deeply absent. Humans are the only species that aren’t connected, only intellectually with a very few at least trying to connect. I could have sat there all day and called it a day and gone home but I wanted to go a little further. Now I know I have frog brothers and sisters in my secure space! They stopped croaking when I left until I was out of sight then resumed, even louder, probably wondering where I was going. I took off my boots and tied them together and put them around my neck so I could walk like an Algonquin. My soles of my feet were toughened up from all the barefoot walking and running. I practiced being silent and not a human oaf trouncing through, making enough sound to alert the dead. After an hour and selecting my way, the woods had come alive. My heart was beating so fast, not from the walk but pure excitement that at least this hadn’t disappeared, tenaciously held on! The birds or feathered ones had found a sanctuary in the deep woods. There were pileated wood peckers and sparrows and oh goddess, the wood thrush with its beautiful flute like trill that echoes thru the forest. It has always been my favorite!What a find! And to think it’s been here all this time! I stopped again, sat and just marinated in this wildness, unthinking, opening up to the voices of my childhood. To my parents, I was first a nature girl and then a tomboy. When the first boy teased me of being a sissy and liking the woods so much, I told him to take back the sissy part or else. I gave him two shiners that he tried to cover up but made him look stupid. I kept going until I hit a cleared dirt road that looked as though it had been used recently. I decided to return to this road next time because I thought that it could be the back road to the Mill closed ten years ago per decree of all existing standing trees saved, driving a lot of locals away looking for jobs. But it might also be the source of the sounds.When I got back, Fubar was sleeping next to the old tree with the front door open. I mentally ran down what would be the best sweep that assured my safety. The basement steps are partly missing and so it would be kitchen, pantry, main room, audrey, bathroom, spare room, upstairs to bedroom and spare room. But before I did that, I thought I might as well spell it out in case whatever spoke English. ‘This isn’t the time or space to surprise me so please show yourself.’I just sat there in the kitchen, smelling, listening, and searching for anything that was not usual with my familiar space. The scent was human but faint and familiar as though it had been in and out, no breathing sound, movement and nothing out of place in the house. And it wasn’t Bobby.I went to the barn, sat on the weight bench, and ran the same diagnostics. Breathing in the loft.‘Why are you hiding freddie’, I asked in a non-threatening way.‘because I wanted to see how far you’ve come.’‘You knew?’‘Yes.’He climbed out from behind the hay and stood there, hair askew, smudges on his face with eyes wide open. ‘To invite you to my tree fort.’‘Where?’‘On the other side of the road. I left you a map on the wall next to my name.‘I missed it.’‘I know', and then disappeared. A holo with a scent...humm, Not sure that is a good thing! How could he have left a map. So, my thinking is that he was here but deferred to go holo for contact.

  Stolen story; please report.