Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Saturday’s Solitude #23.
Good morning everyone and welcome back to Saturday’s Solitude! Hard to believe that this has been going for 23 weeks already, almost half a year. Solitude can be found no matter where we are, in our own yard, on the deck, walking in the park, sitting beside a river or lake, or being off somewhere alone in the forest. It’s a good idea to have someplace to go and enjoy the natural beauty around us, if we possibly can do it. It doesn’t need to be a place we go every day, but perhaps once a week would be a good idea. It helps to relieve stress, which we all seem to have now and then.
It helps to renew our energy levels too. Just sitting out on the deck with a cup of coffee and watching the birds and chipmunks is great solitude. Of course, it does work better if there are no bears around. Bears tend to add a bit of stress which is opposite to what should be done. One day I was out at our cottage, which was off in the forest with no close neighbors, no phones, just nice and quiet. Perfect place of solitude. Anyway, I was sitting outside enjoying my morning coffee, listening to all the different birds singing. It was a great place for thrushes and I love their songs. They would sing in early morning and late evening until well after dark.
But there were many different warblers too, a pair of phoebes, least flycatcher, flickers, evening grosbeaks, purple finches and so many, many more. It was a real joy to sit there and listen to them. Of course there were squirrels around too, but no chipmunks, which I thought was kind of odd. But I fixed that situation. Although chipmunks live in areas where there is no rocky areas like we have, yet the chipmunks around here love rocks. We had no rocks on the property anywhere. So every trip out there I brought rocks and put them in piles around the property.
The next year there was a couple of chipmunks playing around one of the rock piles. The following year there were quite a few chipmunks and they were using other rock piles. The rocks give them a safe place to hide and a good spot to dig their underground tunnels and homes, the entrance being under this rock pile. That’s all they needed. Obviously there must have been some chipmunks fairly close by to find these rocks so fast, but they were still a help in getting the chipmunks to set up home close by. I found out later I could have gotten a government grant of $1,000 to do this. So I signed up anyway to get it for putting up brush piles around for rabbits.
We didn’t have any rabbits, but I got the money and put brush piles around the property and sure enough rabbits moved in. Then foxes moved in and owls. The wildlife increased quite a bit just with those brush piles. All of this just adds to the solitude of a place, the enjoyment that the wildlife brings to us. It’s a cloudy, cooler morning. Smoke from a forest fire covered our town once again yesterday, that hasn’t been a problem for a long time. Unfortunately it messed up my pictures of our fall colors. I did get some that were okay. Must be time for more coffee, anyone agree? Have a terrific Saturday everyone and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
The Investigators, Inc. The Search. Chapter 1.
I checked the cockpit, but that man was obviously our pilot and there was no co-pilot on board. The guards had the parachutes out and were putting them on us quickly and soon all 5 of us were jumping from the jet. Well, okay, Kat had to push me out and she followed, each of us holding a cat, or more precisely, the cats were holding onto us, tightly! Fortunately the jet was going to crash far from where we would land, which is on the side of a mountain. Not really the best place to be and I’m wondering how this landing is going to affect my back. Even with the parachute the landing will be a hard one.
Unless I hit a tree, which wouldn’t be so good either. Suddenly my parachute gets caught in the trees, but I still hit the ground, trying not to flatten Muffin in the tumble. But we all survived, Kat came over to me as quickly as she could, I was just lying on the ground. The cats trackers are on so they won’t have trouble finding us. Kat and I left our phones on the jet and for some reason the guards phones are not working at all. Maybe it’s because of where we are.
Meanwhile…Calanthe got the distress call we sent from the jet and she has our position fixed from the cats trackers. “There in a bad spot,” Calanthe said to Baldwin. She was visiting him in the hospital. He was able to get things going for our rescue however. But they were not able to send a message through the cats, their receivers were not working, but at least the distress signal was going out. “They must be out of range,” said Baldwin, “we’ll have to get that changed when they get back.” “If they get back,” said Calanthe, “I just have a bad feeling about all of this.”
“Hey, don’t worry Calanthe,” said Jennifer, who was with her at the hospital, “we’ll find them, we have to find them.” Calanthe looked at Jennifer with tears in her eyes, “yes, you’re right, we have to find them and we will do it.” Jennifer started crying too at that point. “Okay you two,” said Baldwin, “enough with the tears now, there’s work to be done, and it needs to be done quickly. Those tracking signals won’t last too long, so hopefully they will be smart enough to stay put so we can find them easily. Now stop worrying and get back home.” So off they went.
Back to us… Well, we are all okay and checking out the area a bit. It looks like rain so maybe we can find a cave for some shelter, the small tent we have is only big enough for two people and these guards need shelter too. “Hey, here’s a cave,” one of the guards called out. He certainly found that fast, that’s good. We all go over there and that guard who found the cave goes in ahead of us. It’s actually quite a large cave after going through a narrow opening for about 20 feet. Then it opened to a fairly large room. Suddenly a light goes on.
“Welcome Steve,” said a man’s voice. That voice! It’s Baldwin! Then Baldwin’s same boisterous laugh came loudly through to us. “Surprised you didn’t I?”, he said, “things are working out just perfectly. One of your guards actually brought you here, he works for me.” The guard, being in front of us, turned around pointing his gun at us. Kat quickly reacted kicking the gun out of his hands, then another kick to his stomach, then one of the other guards grabbed him and tossed him head first against the wall of the cave.
“Oh come now Steve,” said Baldwin, “do you think you can escape me?” “Let’s go,” I said to everyone and back out of the cave we went. We started back the way we came since it was too steep to climb along the way past the cave entrance. “Be careful everyone,” I said, “that sniper might be around here somewhere.” “Here, you two take these, they can shoot a lot further than your hand guns,” said one of the guards, “and he will likely shoot us first, then you might lose these guns down the mountainside.” He had a point, so Kat and I took the guns and we all watched carefully.
The sun came out briefly and there was a gunshot. One of the guards fell. I looked up the mountain and saw a glimpse of something so I shot several times and the sniper’s body fell over the edge. Just then we ended up being surrounded by men and were brought back to Baldwin. “First, I want you to know I mean business,” said Baldwin. Two men took the cats and gave them to our guard, took them to the edge of the cliff and pushed him over. “That’s a 500 foot drop,” said Baldwin, “not even your cats can survive that fall. Now, I need you for one more thing, then you and your wife can go free, I promise.”
To Be Continued.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 