Humorous anecdotes, stories of the dark woods, and country commentary
Author Archives: Mike K
Turned 66 in August of 2019, a little over a year into retirement. Now live on my farm in southern Missouri Ozarks. At this point I have 4 daughters and 8 grandchildren and 3 dogs.
Okay, all of y’all who follow this site gotta know by now what to expect this time of the year, so without further ado, here goes:
Determined as one tends to become on sunlit afternoons of majestic October essence to experience peaceful rejuvenation of soul and spirit, these famished eyes set out today to relish an Ozark feast of dazzling color and give thanks and glory to the Creator for the grace that is undoubtedly bestowed upon our existence in these brooding autumn hills. His perfection is on display here for all creation to behold, especially during early fall when gum trees emerge from sylvan dressing halls in gaudy scarlet as they join fallow and orange sassafras preparing for their roles in the celebration of this year’s festive autumnal potpourri.
I shall pause here for a long, deep draught of brilliant, gilded hickory mingled to perfection with silent crimson sumac; assuredly a drink deserving of place in a celestial banquet such as has appeared before me, much to be savored and without brevity. As I relish this event, a fleeting dark realization captures my thoughts – ere long, alas, villainous icy fingers of winter shall steal into this wondrous realm of color and as required in her annual pilferage, pluck the boughs of oak, hickory, and gum barren of hue, casting spidery shadows where autumnal glory does now abound. Today’s walk under slow dancing towers of amber and pastel, nevertheless shall remain unencumbered with notions of tomorrow’s boreal malignity and instead ply with soul wholly enraptured this day’s intoxicating halls of splendor that only the skilled hand of the Creator can be imagined to lovingly endow of all these immaculate tints with His delicate brush.
Moss-darkened limestone escarpments gather along silent rims of the ravine to witness a symphony of windblown amber oatgrass whispering an autumn song played in chords known only to the gentle northern breeze. Fallow shadows find their way down rocky winding creek beds, now long devoid of water and in undoubted reminisce of misty April days when their banks were full. At this stage of the seasonal march, ochre leaves vie with desiccated limestone and agate rocks for places to rest and watch this autumn spectacle unfold. Somewhere above – far above – swaying golden boughs, the Savior undoubtedly watches, indeed it is He who is directing to perfection the extravaganza.
As I appreciatively devour my generous portion of the servings so graciously offered this day, a solitary traveler of honeyed oaken amber in final descent drifts aflutter onto the table before me. Having selected a suitable resting place, perhaps yesterday, perhaps months ago as he held onto the branch that bore him, he chose this day to let go and lend his mote of sublime texture to what is becoming a lush carpet of autumn hue. As he descends inexorably onto the earth, he silently waves farewell to the somber giant oak he came to know. Then he rests.
Pray, beloved child, your prayer in sadness, silence and wonder for He patiently waits in silent and peaceful places where He watches for wholesomeness of heart, even – and especially – on somber mornings of clouded silence. His gaze is ever upon your humility and compassion, for the blessing he desires to visit upon you is predicated on these. Keep your own eyes to those fellow travelers endowed flush with righteous purpose and bestowed with wisdom; emulate such as you may be able and as your spirit allows. Surely the Creator will rest His mighty hand on your hope, for shipwrecked ever become ambitions elsewise, although it may seem not so for now. With purity of heart, keep your sanctuary of solitude in His reach. For it is but with purity of heart that we may behold Him.
Take shelter there and trust your tears go not unheeded, that your despondent mourn is indeed regarded by the Master, whose abundant presence ever awaits your return to that burning bush in your place of solitude. Weep then, loudly if at all – fervently cry for mercy and for justice – for assuredly He gives pause to those hopeless, woeful echoes such as fill the heavenly censer. As surely as the morning star arises from a pale dawn of twilight to beckon your spirit, encouragement such as may be rightfully and fruitfully gained from His compassion and wisdom shall blossom from the very despair you presently endure. From eternity itself, incomprehensible peace shall indeed reveal to you His presence and the depths of His love.
Go then, to your fortress of solitude, that simple haven chosen by you among strewn leaves beneath oaken boughs where your tears as rivulet testimonials entreat His presence into your spirit to lift, to promise of eternal hope, eternal life, eternal love. Consider always your burden as a blessing, through all awaiting sorrow and trepidation to which you must return from this sanctuary of tranquility ere you suffer the beastly conflict once more and with such steadfastness as you are gifted. You need not face it alone. Reap and gather courage here, then embrace it as you return to that life of need and poverty. With passion, regard such destitution as His grace to you, for the wealthy ever deny themselves purity of faith. Consider the patch on your garment as witness of travail you’ve endured in humble determination to remain faithful in the tempest. The wealthy cannot fathom a need of fortress against those merciless winds blowing covetousness and impurity upon the dark, endless paths they travel. Such need is never regarded as they dwell within ornate decadence of realms unknown to you, but trust that unfamiliarity is for your benefit. They have no place to pray. They have no place to weep.
Few souls among the multitudes of the uncompassionate whose hearts are laden with envy and desires of the flesh – sadly so few – shall ever come to know the blessing to be had spending time and tears of despondence in His presence. Burdened with such pursuits of vanity as they carry, they deny themselves the incredible grace that awaits their presence in those humble silent places where Jesus Christ seeks to meet them! To mend them. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Walk upright, holding the hem of His garment through each emerging shadow and understand that misfortune befalls every soul, therefore find that sacred place and avail yourself of an instance to pray. And as need demands, to spend tears.
If the Almighty awaits our fellowship beneath forest boughs in a misty wood or within a secluded glen among rocks on a mountainside – a meeting place where thoughts and tears are spilled before Him, there go I. If we must shun the allure of worldly lust and desire so that we may be comforted in such places where it is meet to tearfully implore the mercy and compassion of Jesus Christ, there go I. If I might find that place where God abides awaiting the piteous cries of the needy and destitute so that there I too may be blessed – blessed indeed to be one with fellow sojourners in poverty and tears in the sanctity of His Holy Spirit – there, in poverty and purity of heart and by any means, go I.
Eternity is a long, long time. It’s so long in fact, that any concept of time itself is meaningless – and all the words we use that relate to time, words like “before”, and “after”, and “until” – become meaningless as well. There is a YouTube documentary out there, superbly narrated by astrophysicist Doctor David Kipping, the end of which, in my opinion, is the best possible elucidation of eternal darkness (the outer darkness in scripture) one could ever imagine. The link is A Journey to the End of the Universe – – Video Search Results (yahoo.com). In the narrative, he postulates a theoretical trip on an imaginary manned spacecraft to what becomes the literal end of the universe. As expected from a proper scientist, he does not mention God, but nevertheless exhibits a near spiritual vision of what awaits his travelers, who I take the liberty to consider analogous to unbelievers. Indeed, the situation in which they find themselves at the end has definite spiritual ramifications. If you watch it with that in mind, it should be a definite wake-up call. Somewhere deep inside, one cannot help but believe Dr Kipping has (unintentionally?) encountered the profound realm of spirituality as may be ascertained from the conceptual, near poetic language with which he relates his story. What a powerful messenger for God he could be!
Today I’ve been 70 for two days. With the notable, yet unsurprising exception of humans continuing to determinedly expunge decency from the world, nothing overtly dramatic has happened since my birthday the day before yesterday. I’ve received Happy Birthday messages from people I love, and that means a lot and I thank all of you. This post is about some of the things I’ve learned during all those trips around the sun, as my dear niece so succinctly put the notion.
If you as a reader have paid attention to my ramblings on this site, you’ll have realized that I believe a healthy relationship with the Lord is of utmost importance in this phase of our existence, both for you and me. I’ve learned that growing in the knowledge (maybe familiarity is a better word) of Jesus is, as it should be, the consummate purpose of our lives whether or not we regard it as being so. So far, I’ve had seventy trips around that big ball of fusion to try and get that notion through my thick head. Sure, I think cognitive processions of life, scientific lore, world events, and history are important within their respective priority levels, but at the end of the day, having a clear conscience and coming to realize we have a friend, king, savior of unimaginable power, grace and love is by far more important to our existence than learning about the dedication with which Colonel Chamberlain defended Little Round Top or whatever level of strength our planet’s magnetic field has left.
We are each given a span of time here during which we have ample opportunity to seek our Savior. In the maternity ward when the nurses turn their backs, just imagine that an angel hangs an invisible tag our toe with a number on it. That figure is the precise number of heartbeats that particular body will attain, and it’s absolute. (I don’t remember if that concept is something I’ve heard before or if it’s just another thought that has rolled like soggy driftwood through this muddy old river between my ears, so I apologize if I’m plagiarizing someone else’s analogy). The only possible exception to this preset number of which I’ve ever heard was when King Hezekiah was informed of his impending demise and he prayed that God would extend his life for a while because evidently, he wasn’t quite ready to surrender, and God granted him more time to feed mosquitoes and remain captive to gravity. But even with God’s bountiful grace, I wouldn’t count on that deferment – He knows when it’s time for us to go. In short, and just as the flowers in the field, we have a set time to spend here, and we desperately need to get in touch with Jesus and learn of Him while we have opportunity.
As you know quite well, the world has become a massive tangle of confusion and it’s getting progressively harder to negotiate. (Try it at seventy). Most people have consciously chosen to proceed with their lives in purposeful ignorance of (and too often in contravention to) God’s ways. Especially with all of the distractions purposefully set out there. Life is comparable these days to a giant soap opera. It’s much more entertaining to keep up with nonsense like the financial adventures of the president’s relatives than to read up on prophecy or instructions on living a Godly life. Kids’ brains are progressively being turned into jelly from all the time they spend on Redditt or Instagram – and don’t even get me started on video games. We’re swamped with pornography and immorality of every imaginable sort. The days of Noah are indeed upon us.
War is raging in Europe with thousands of people dying weekly. France is burning; Africa is looking to come apart at the seams. Israelis are protesting by the tens of thousands. Germany is going broke. We continue to tiptoe on the edge of the nuclear razor. Kids watch half-naked girls dancing seductively to electronic music while their parents endlessly message each other with all the bizarre garbage that passes for information nowadays. Trust me, if ignorance is truly bliss then we are at the apex of paradise here in the USA! The whole world has gone absolutely insane! I gotta be missing something!
I walked outside this morning to a sultry August sunrise and spent some time watching beautiful little goldfinches leisurely feeding on my daughter’s sunflowers. There is a misty veil slowly drifting through a verdant Ozark calamity of woodland brush and vines. The silence is only superficially injured by birdsong; an indescribable fortune of Providence of which we here in the Ozarks are blessed to be part! I can but feel pity that so many souls with whom we share this planet are not so fortunate as to exist among, nor indeed to participate in, the grace of creation which we here in the country are daily blessed to enjoy. As I reflect with genuine sorrow on the horror of war, famine and other misfortune befalling so many people in this world, people just like you and me with wants and needs just like our own, but so unfortunate as to be in piteous situations not of their choosing, I thank God our neck of the woods is not visited with such horror – yet. I also harbor no doubt that it’s coming – how could He allow this iteration of Sodom and the sacrilegious behavior that today is so unabashedly propagated in our country to go unchallenged; unpunished? Do you think it is an accident that the very symbol of God’s promise – the rainbow – has become so perverted as to represent such indescribable abominations as it has today? Alas! And yet the little birds sing on…
Most all of our problems are the result of Satan’s taking advantage of human greed, lust – and pride. As the scriptures tell us, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the pride of life do not come from God, but they are of this world, and those things are diametrically opposed to the way our Father expects us to think and behave. There are people in this world right now who spend all their time working (not real work, just in the scheming, greed-driven sense) to put more zeroes on the numbers in their bank accounts; the poor and hungry of the world be damned. These same people do their master’s bidding by promoting obnoxiously decadent and deviant behavior, smug in the knowledge that they have yachts and personal airplanes and “own” vulgar amounts of property – for now. Their execrable lifestyles will surely testify against them on the inevitable day of retribution, but for now they either simply ignore their fate, or they act as though they believe their dedication to Satan will carry the day. When the time comes, he will surely turn on them and even now tosses them their beloved lucre while laughing at their naivety.
For the rest of us – well stand fast in your faith in Jesus Christ with full confidence that He will return to this world bringing justice – and reward – for our patience and our love for Him and for each other. He even admonishes us to love those with whom we don’t agree. We don’t have to love their sinful behavior though. Do not lose hope; He said He would be back to claim His own, and He absolutely and forever will do as He says. And as for our journey among the current ills of the world – what a wonderful alternative we have the capacity to choose – peace of mind in the assurance of everlasting joy and comfort, and above all the incomprehensible and unwavering love that is the Lord in His blessed, glorious and mighty presence, forever!
My daughter Mel said she heard a whippoorwill a couple of nights ago. Seems like it’s a bit early, but we’ve had a pretty warm spring, so maybe they think it’s already summer. I sure do like to hear those little guys – gotta be one of the most beautiful of all bird songs. At least I think so, and it just puts you in mind of a nice warm summer night. I write songs for a hobby and I try to come up with lines about whippoorwills and jasmine. In fact, I think I already have some of that, probably in more than one song, but in this day and age with all the electronic noise that passes for music, I doubt if a night bird song would interest many of us. And the poor bird is bad ugly if you ever see one. It sort of looks like it’s part toad – big gaping mouth. I always wondered how a creature that ugly could make a sound so sweet. But I suppose that lady whippoorwill to whom he’s singing doesn’t look ugly to him. Oh yeah, and if you hear a whippoorwill during the daytime, it’s not a whippoorwill, it’s a mockingbird. And the mockingbird has the song down – you can’t tell the difference.
The pond frogs are out in force. That’s another nice relaxing night sound here in the south. And crickets and cicadas. It seems like the woodland smells also come alive at night. Even though it’s technically the south, we’re still too far north to have wild yellow jasmine, and I sore miss having it around because that little frail vine with fragile little yellow trumpet flowers it the sweetest smell you’ll ever enjoy wafting through the silence on a summer evening. If you are in the deep south and live near the woods, it would be well worth the effort to go out and find one. They are definitely odiferous – (is that even a word?)! And try not to feed the ticks while you’re out foraging for jasmine. Our ticks in the Ozarks are especially voracious and come at you hungry – seriously, they bring a bottle of bar-b-que sauce and wear a bib. I have a special place in my heart for ticks. I got one of those tick-borne diseases and it was a miserable two years plus – extreme pain. Never mind – just wear insect repellent.
And enjoy the red buds, too.
On some late evenings, we are treated to acappella gigs by coyotes – those little fellows know how to take the stage, too. I get game cam pictures of coyotes pretty often. But we can’t boast too much about our coyotes, because from what I see and read about, those little canids make their selves at home just about anywhere, so everybody has probably seen them in the wild – or maybe in the not so wild. Being a big-time dog lover, I really like coyotes, and wolves too, but wolves are really scarce in this country anymore. Ranchers didn’t want to compete with them, so they got slaughtered. I think it’s a shame – it’s one of those things that if it had got a little higher priority, we could have figured out a way to allow them to survive. I’ve heard them in the woods at night before and their song is beautifully eerie, and when you think about how few of them are left, the song is also kind of sad. Coexistence seems to be such tree-hugger tendency, and I guess I’ve grown in that direction as I’ve aged – no one takes the time anymore to pay attention to the needs of our fellow creatures and we continue to lose them and we’re going to miss them terribly.
Did I just hear a chicken?
It’s a rainy April morning, a little bit cool but not uncomfortably so, and the birds are singing the “Our yard needs to be mowed” song. The day before yesterday I noticed the first of the bummingbirds scouting around where I normally have their feeders hanging, so I filled them and they are starting to show up in scant numbers, but that will increase soon. Those little fellows can get vicious too! Once in a while they slam into each other – on purpose – and you can actually hear the thump. One or more of them will eat their fill, but not leave. They light on a nearby wire or branch and watch the feeders and when another bird approaches, the watchman will attack the poor unsuspecting hungry bird. Thump! That’s why I call them assassin birds. Sure, they’re cute and all, but everything’s not always what it seems.
We have a few what we call wet-weather creeks on the farm. I guess they are called that due to the fact that they never have water in them unless it’s raining. Some of us like to go rock hunting in them when it dries up. So, we get to feed ticks and find interesting rocks at the same time.
My old girl Dusty likes to help me and usually tries to get between me and the particular rocks I’m trying to look among. She’s pretty good at it, too, and if there are any water puddles, she goes swimming and then always gets close enough to me before she shakes the water off to share it with me. She’s a very thoughtful little old gal. She has a flea and tick collar, and those things work well. I need one for me.
Don’t even ask – no telling what you’re liable to find in these spring woods.
The dogwoods are in bloom right now, and they are spectacularly beautiful! A couple of years ago we were treated to what I believe was the prettiest dogwood show I’ve ever seen. This year they are nice, but not as showy as they were then. I think dogwood blooms like that only happen once or twice in a lifetime. What a treat it is to see!
I found an acorn that had a tiny oak tree being born out of it. I guess it’s the first time I’ve ever seen (or at least paid attention to) one at that stage.
Just think, someday this little guy is going to be a mighty oak tree looking down at us walking in its shade with a spring breeze stirring in its boughs. The shell it came from is lying there discarded like a pair of boots someone has outgrown. In case I forgot to mention it, I’m not a photographer so just ignore that shadow in the picture.
There are lots of little wildflowers growing everywhere. I couldn’t start to name them all, but if my late brother Paul was still around, he’d probably be able to tell me what they are. Before you get all excited, I do recognize the dandelion.
Some of the oak trees start out with colors that almost look like fall when they first start to bud out.
There’s a whole nuther world outside your door. Get out there and see it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little walk in the woods as much as I have.
How much longer do you think this can continue? You see the headlines every day, and every day something worse happens than the day before. Human beings are dying at the hand of other human beings on a scale unheard of, or at least only heard of in wartime. People are dying in the Ukraine by the tens of thousands every month. It’s hard to get a read on just how many, but great numbers of people are dying at the hand of other people in Sudan.
There’s turmoil in the Middle East – Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon have all been burning for some time now. People are on the streets by the tens of thousands in Israel, France, Germany, and other European countries because they don’t agree with their governments’ untenable positions on many pressing issues. Terrible earthquakes continue to ravage diverse places in the world, killing tens of thousands. All the while, fingers edge closer to the big red button…
The big cities in the US are not safe, nor have they been for some time, what with all the homeless people trying to survive on the streets, and rampant crime. We have serious drug problems, and they aren’t going to magically go away – there’s too much money to be made. People need help and no one is offering it. Our government itself has been taken over by criminal elements – the very servants of Satan are in control of the US, and to be fair, they’re also in control of most other governments. Here in the US, we have armed militias waiting in the wings for a spark to ignite a conflagration which would consume the whole country. The world anxiously watches for this to begin. Unless we get a different kind of conflagration like a nuclear exchange, rebellion will likely happen.
I write from a mostly uninformed part of the country here in the US, namely in the Missouri Ozarks, but thanks to alternative news sources, we even get word here of all the troubles. I spend a lot of time outdoors trying to enjoy the beautiful spring unfolding here and praying a lot. I cannot for the life of me understand how people can ignore the appalling events and go on with their lives expecting things to work themselves out, when it’s pretty obvious that’s not going to happen.
The Bible warns us of these times – they were predicted hundreds, even thousands of years ago and sure enough, they are rapidly coming upon us. We are also admonished not to fear what is happening. That’s why I’m writing this post. We live in a time of unparalleled threats to ourselves and our fellow human beings, and it has to happen for the intended plan to unfold. To most people, myself included, it doesn’t make sense, but we can only see events from a human perspective. The correct perspective is one of spiritual discernment. The naysayers speak of the God-fearing among us as if we are fools, and maybe in a sense we are, but then so was Noah, and look who survived the flood. It was even more catastrophic than what we’ve seen so far, but things are in process that will make the casualties of Noah’s day seem unremarkable. And this time, it’s not about physical survival. The physical world will not survive intact this time.
Our warnings include the prophecy that an event will occur in which one-third of all humans will be killed. There are somewhere north of 8 billion people in this world and one third of that number will be a lot of people. Several scenarios could possibly account for deaths on that scale, but the way it looks, we’re going to suffer a massive nuclear war. I’ve written stories like this and this about some of the probable savagery of what life might be like for anyone who survives such a cataclysm – to try and get people to turn to God, as He is the only path for survival. Spiritual survival. Otherwise known as salvation. There’s much hope there, for Jesus Christ stands ready to save as many of us as will turn to Him. He’s the ONLY way out of this mess for us.
If you think about it, say you happen to be at ground zero of a nuclear blast, you’ll feel nothing. You won’t know it’s coming and it’ll be over for you in a millisecond. Not even enough time for your brain to register that you’ve been killed. The people who get eliminated like this will be the fortunate ones, at least as far as this life is concerned. The ones who do survive, and there probably won’t be many, will be the ones to suffer an existence of horror never before experienced by humanity, and the longer you live, the more suffering you will endure.
If you do a little research in the scriptures, you’ll find that we’re warned that Satan is rampaging in the world and creating madness and chaos, like a “roaring lion” because he knows his time is short. Now, for real, how hard is it to see that very thing happening in the world right now? Leaders of the nations, all in subservience to Satan, are absolutely mad, and are trying their best to spread their madness to the people over whom they have control. Sadly, through the use of their media which Satan has given them, they are having a great degree of success. There are precious few who are able to resist believing what the media is telling them. Alternative places that offer truth are being stamped out, so fewer places are out there for people to find out what’s really going on, but for the vast majority, that’s ok – they don’t want to know the truth – it upsets their world view. As long as they can get their bread and circus, they won’t seek the truth, which necessarily would require turning to the Almighty for guidance. I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but things like the Satanic rituals of the CERN and Gotthard Tunnel opening ceremonies, and the devil-worshipping Brazilian parades are simply open affronts to everything Godly – people and the demons who control them are absolutely daring the Almighty to destroy them. And He will – you can bet on it.
These people will be the worst affected when it all comes tumbling down – they will not have prepared, physically or spiritually. It will be a completely unexpected shock to their systems, if they survive. They won’t be able to turn on CNN, FOX, or MSNBC to get whatever government narrative is being served up – those entities won’t exist anymore. If they survive the cataclysm, the people who do not fear God of whom I write will be completely lost, sick and starving with no help coming. The conditions mentioned here are described in biblical prophecy – a time of desperation never before experienced by humankind. However, as long as they are still alive, it won’t be too late to turn to God, but by waiting until such an appalling time to do so, they will have allowed themselves to be overcome by horrific world events to the degree that things will be a lot tougher.
I’ve brought this subject up and have received comments from those who claim to be unbelievers accusing folks like me of fearmongering. There are those who seem to take pride in proclaiming their unbelief in our God, they must think they sound brave to their fellow unbelievers. Imagine those same kinds of people clinging to logs and other flotsam as they watched the ark sailing off into the distance with Noah and his family high and dry inside. They most likely had been the ones to loudly proclaim their unbelief and mock old Noah as he pleaded with them to turn from their wickedness. With this in mind, it would behoove everyone to repent of their worldliness and wickedness and seek Jesus now while He can still be found. For what it’s worth, I implore you to do so – the clouds are gathering and the storm is going to be horrible.
There’s still some good news. God has people in strategic places in this world even as the threat of annihilation descends upon us. There are Christian preachers hard at work trying to help save as many people as possible. But as prophesied, there is a great falling away from the faith going on too. These are people who didn’t have their hearts in it to serve God. It’s not that hard to do, but the one thing that threatens people is their dreaded loss of money and status in the world. When the world comes tumbling down, believe me, money is going to be the last thing on people’s minds. How many millions of dollars would a starving person be willing to pay for a can of beans?
This will indeed be our last war. You have to be willing to fight in order to win. Find a preacher or other Christian to help show you the way to the Lord. Open up your bible. Be willing to repent for your sins and turn your life over to Jesus to lead you to the Life He has promised. He’s waiting for you, but He isn’t going to wait forever – this thing is in motion, Noah is closing the hatches right now, and before long the rain is about to come down – HARD! Don’t wait until it’s too late.
Forlorn she lies– alone but for bedraggled spirit of helmsman eternally clutching fast to rotting wheel, and ghosts of able-bodied crewmen drifting unseen across ancient deck planks now claimed by urchin and prawn. Upon her bed of ancient sand in silent darkness hence besieged by clutching barnacles and starfish with bonds of rueful memory bears she of daunting breaker, of ravaging gale, yea of merciless night without moon dared she ply an angry ocean darking and fearsome. Sails became naught but billows of trepidation lashed onto masts of terror broken by courage abandoned in blackness of merciless winds come screaming on a night of terror and loss. A sorrowful midnight of lightning did shew once a hellscape painted with black mountains of brine sent to rest her here, now rests she.
No more laden of goods bound for ports afar, nor resourced with wherewithal to challenge that dark foe aweather, nor rests upon her further need. The darkness and serenity concerns not with cargo for a distant port sought. Merchants in harbors of yesterday grieved their loss. Mothers that time ago grieved lost sons, bones forever bound in bucklers and lanyards, no more to carry smiles and embraces proudly down the fresh painted gangplank, alas, no more lamp lit nights spent in breathless stories of adventure in mysterious lands abroad.
Deep is the sand where feathers of rust claim fittings of iron in endless dark, silent the pulleys that once sang comforting melody to captain and crew. Sea birds no longer watch from rail and crossarm for minnow or scrap of doughcake, nor do soar through unblemished marine sky with endless song of cheerful seabreeze and sunlight, no, forsooth; her fate became to languish henceforth and evermore among melancholy recollections and brooding creatures of profound darkness. Whether the sun smiles upon the world above or a fresh tempest sweeps new breakers across the sea, she no longer gives thought. Her mission is never to be fulfilled, unless it be that of accompaniment to other hapless vessels laden with lost cargo and unfortunate souls who have in their turn found the briny path to that oblivion where resides a mysterious existence of odd fish and quiet damnation.
(Note: The following post is not by a preacher, just a regular person who reads the bible and tries to apply prophecy to what is going on in the world and share it. There is a tremendous blessing in store for those who turn away from this world of evil – and come to God. Anyone who has their eyes open can see some pretty awful times ahead, and there’s only one Way to be prepared for what’s coming.)
Try and imagine, put together in your mind, all of the confusion and chaos in the world right now. At this writing, there are serious riots going on in France – those have graduated to fires and violence. The French have for a long time served as a barometer of the level of tolerance of free people, or people who would be free, in the world. Now the nation of Israel is seeing streets filled with people who have had enough of their government. Germany seems to be following suit. There’s little more that can be said for the open rebellion against God that is going on with the parades that celebrate abominable behavior, madness in the form of gender lunacy, and in-your-face Satanic performances like the opening ceremonies of the Cern collider and Gotthard Tunnel.
Man-made affronts to God are not the only things to consider as the earth reels toward destruction. The earth’s magnetic poles are wandering away from the positions where we’ve always known them to be toward what appears to be a complete reversal of the earth’s polarity, and as it happens, the whole magnetic field is growing weaker. There are charts out there that show the decreasing strength of the field over time, and it’s getting much weaker now. That field is our protection from solar and cosmic radiation, and just over the last few days the earth has endured a significant solar storm, the severity of which cannot be explained from recent solar flares, because those flares were relatively insignificant. The only explanation that seems to account for the magnitude of the disturbance (auroras were seen in Florida!) is the weakness of the earth’s magnetic field. There are several science outlets who are saying the same things, one of which is an especially knowledgeable scientist at the YouTube channel, Suspicious0bservers – Earthquakes | Space Weather | Cosmology – Your Mind is Your Weapon who does a much better job of describing what is happening than I can, but I’m sure it’s another serious wake-up call from God for us to get prepared for some bad times. This is a very intelligent scientist who I’m sure is able to connect the dots all the way to God, in spite of his “scientific” background. He seems to have a growing understanding of God’s hand in things that are occurring, if I’m reading him correctly. He also observes that inexplicable psychological aberrations are becoming a major issue due to the effects on our minds being bombarded with radiation – look at the craziness in the world, especially among our leaders!
The earth is experiencing storms, floods, earthquakes, landslides, and other natural disasters of inexplicable ferocity and frequency in the last several years, and these are only the beginning of sorrows. For crying out loud, the Mississippi, Euphrates, Colorado, Danube, Nile, and other major rivers of the world are going dry! It’s obvious for anyone who has open eyes, that our God is not pleased with our conduct. There have been many times in the past when God brought devastation upon humans of this earth when their behavior became so egregious as to bring His wrath down upon them. The slaughter of the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf (think Wall Street bull), Sodom and Gomorrah, the flood of Noah, the earthquake at Christ’s crucifixion, and other instances when people who suffered the wrath of God who were supposed to acknowledge God’s preeminence and His commandments – all happened. We are at such a time now!
Back to our own insane determination to bring destruction on ourselves, there is a discussion going on about Russia sending nuclear weapons to Belarus in response to the recent threat of UK sending depleted uranium ammunition to the Ukraine. This is significant! The nuclear genie is slowly but surely being squeezed out of the bottle, and it won’t go back in. According to an increasingly accepted interpretation of Revelation 18, and as I wrote in A Time of Unimaginable Sorrow is Upon Us – Folk Potpourri the United States (the modern Babylon?) will be utterly destroyed in a horrible and devastating fire event. A nuclear bombardment fits the description, although there are other things which might also cause the destruction described, such as an asteroid hit, or solar ejecta from a massive coronal mass ejection, which would get to earth essentially as a type of devastating meteor shower, but the way things are shaping up, and because of the mention of kings of the earth standing at a distance for fear of her torment, which I believe is referring to radiation, I think it will be a nuclear strike. (author’s note: kings of the earth standing at a distance for fear of her torment might also mean leaders of other nations putting distance between their policies and Babylon’s fearing their own destruction by the same enemy). Either way, whatever remains of Babylon, she will be utterly alone.
The world that was described in the above mentioned post probably wasn’t accurate though, because the bible speaks of such total devastation of Babylon that there will be no survivors at all. For those of us who live here and face annihilation, the way to survive is the same – we must repent of our evil ways and ask for forgiveness through Jesus Christ. It’s the only way through this terrible time that’s surely coming upon us! Think about the days of Noah – he had been forewarned, so he absolutely knew what was coming and tried to tell those people to change their ways, and they laughed at him until it was too late. It’s sad to imagine those hapless souls finally coming to their senses and wading out through the deepening water only to find the doors of the ark were closed. Jesus told us the world will be the same just prior to our own destruction. Will people at last come to their senses only when they see the huge mushroom clouds?
There is a serious war going on in the Ukraine in which hundreds of thousands have been killed and injured. Only a precious few people actually know what that is really all about, but from the way all of the western leaders are prostrating themselves, it is obvious they have been given their orders from the real leaders who themselves serve Satan and operate behind the curtain. The whole of them are beasts with no concern for human life. More on them later.
Think about it. There have been train wrecks, contaminating vast areas of the country but largely ignored by our leaders and their equally conspiratorial media. At this writing, the state of Mississippi has just endured massive tornado damage with dozens of people killed. Hundreds of thousands of American citizens are living on the streets of major cities in drug-addicted squalor. And our “president” is only interested in whatever more he can authorize to send to the most corrupt government in the world in Ukraine. What is sent there is solely intended to increase the death and destruction. Does that make any sense at all to you?
All you hear from our congress is also whatever more can be done to support the murderous regime in Ukraine, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons, and our citizens continue to look the other way, waiting for suspicious balloons or the latest Hollywood sex scandal. Maybe we should be in the streets like the French, the Germans, and the Israelis. Frankly, I’m starting to believe we deserve what we have coming, and that isn’t going to be pretty.
The earlier post mentioned above attempted to get people’s attention to what is actually going on in our world, and what it is leading up to for some of us. It was posted on other websites and it actually was viewed by readers in many countries, so at least it got out there, but I’m afraid the message might have fallen short of what the post was trying to get across. The word “unimaginable” was not in that title for no reason. This world is careening toward the edge of an abyss never before experienced by humankind! How do we know this? It’s in the bible! That sacred text so many of us claim to believe, to honor; now listen with your heart to what it says, (Rev6:8), “So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.”
With the sword: The sword mentioned in the verse obviously includes all of the ways humans will be killed by the ravages of war, especially nuclear war. With hunger: The aforementioned post attempted to provide imagery of how horrible the rampant starvation will be in a post-apocalyptic world, but I fear it doesn’t come close to describing the actual horror, both of suffering devastating hunger oneself, and watching fellow citizens, family members, pets, etc., starve literally to death! With death: How, you ask, does an entity kill with death? Ever heard of typhus? Look it up. I’m not a doctor, but I’d wager there are plenty of other risks associated with being around, and drinking water contaminated by, a lot of rotting flesh, of which, with some portion of a fourth of humanity already dead, there will be plenty. With the beasts of the earth: It’s arguable here that John is speaking here of murder by human beasts. In chaotic times of anarchy with no law and order. Murder, which is already rampant, will undoubtedly be commonplace. Human life, scarcely valued now, will become totally worthless to these beasts. Second and third-tier nations whose hostilities were held in check by threats from “superpowers” (who by then will all have suffered some degree of devastation), will also be free to settle scores with now unprotected enemies. There will be mass death and murder on a scale never before experienced. We already hear of many people being killed so their organs can be harvested to keep such beasts alive. One fourth of the people of the earth today is around two billion souls!
Forewarning of macabre days of unimaginable sorrow is handed to us in the bible and will be a time of unprecedented tribulation. In all of our lives we endure some degree of hardship, so we have an idea of what the word means, but “unimaginable” means we cannot conceive of the terror and despair of the great tribulation that is about to be visited upon us. (Matthew 24:21), “For there will be a tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.”
This was spoken by Jesus Christ himself, so its veracity and the weight cannot be questioned, nor indeed fathomed by us mere humans, who have never had occasion to envision the horror of existence that this world will suffer during such a time. A time of incredible darkness, despair, not knowing where the next bite of food will come from, or if there will even be a next bite of food. At that point, people won’t even know if there will be a next breath! Overwhelming stench of death and sickness, poisoned water – people dying of thirst will know that to take a drink of it will be to die an agonizing death – will be rampant. Once beautiful forests dying, along with all of their creatures, everywhere eyes of the dead staring vacantly into that next world. It will indeed be sorrow on an unimaginable scale…
When the angels start pouring their bowls of affliction and sounding their trumpets, things are going to degenerate into horror of which humanity has never witnessed. But if one refuses to give in to fear and despair, there’s hope:
Revelation 14:14,15: Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat one like a Son of Man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Thrust in Your sickle and reap, for the time has come for You to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.”
There is one body of believers who believe and hope that Jesus will return to collect His people in what is scripturally described as the Rapture, and that body believes it will happen prior to the great tribulation. Many others share in that hope, but aren’t all in agreement of the timing. Exactly when the rapture will occur in relation to the tribulation is one of the scriptural issues that has been debated seemingly forever. The one thing we can be certain of is that “The Rapture” will occur; He will harvest His people from this place of despair and trouble for that next life, the real life – of wonder, peace, and joy, which will itself be unimaginable. Scripture says so, (1 Corinthians 2:9) “For eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
If it has never entered into the heart of man, that means it has never been imagined. If it has never been imagined by all of the billions of people that have existed since it was written, that suggests that it’s truly unimaginable. Nevertheless, it will be a joyous time for those who have decided to trust Jesus!
For now, we live in a world where a time of great sorrow is indeed upon us. We are moments in cosmic time away from the abyss of nuclear catastrophe designed by the enemy of God and mankind, to throw all of God’s creation into a morbid chaos of death and despair. A time is coming of unparalleled fear not experienced by human beings in all of history. Nothing can be done to stop it, it’s infallible scriptural prophecy – and Satan is in charge of all the people in place who could prevent it. Their minds are taken, and anyone with eyes can see their total insanity. They are drunk from the cup of madness. (Isaiah 29:9), “Pause and wonder! Blind yourselves and be blind! They are drunk, but not with wine; They stagger, but not with intoxicating drink.” (Jeremiah 51:7) Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord’s hand, That made all the earth drunk. The nations drank her wine: therefore the nations are deranged.
The good news is that there is a way to get through it! Though we often stumble as if we walk in darkness, not seeing the things over which we trip, we have a precious Helper. In this world of darkness, there are many clever obstacles laid in our paths that we cannot see without a Guiding Light to reveal such things for what they are. Situations constantly arise in our lives in which we do not realize at first will lead us to distraction from God, but Jesus is always there to show the right Way to His beloved.
In the 14th chapter of Matthew there is the story of Jesus walking on the water out to the boat where the disciples were, and Peter, astonished at what he was seeing, asked Jesus if he could walk on the water and come to Him. Jesus permitted him and as he began, he was able to walk on the water toward Jesus, but at some point, Peter lost his concentration on the Lord and began to sink into troubled waters and fear. Jesus then reached out His blessed hand, in an act which should take a preeminent place in the mind and heart of every Christian, to take Peter into His care, preventing him from falling from His grace, in the passage represented by sinking into the dark water of the sea. That’s what He does – that’s why He’s Jesus – Yeshua, our blessed and beloved savior! When we lose our concentration on Him because of all of the turmoil and despair of the terrible events taking place in the world, He reaches out His hand to take and hold us in His care and protection. He loves us with an UNIMAGINABLE love! We must focus on Him through whatever of these hard times we have to endure, and we will be just fine! It’s also important to remember that Peter only started slipping into the sea after his faith weakened. Why that happened is not made clear, but if Peter could have kept his focus on Jesus, it’s doubtful he would have gotten into trouble. Another lesson for us to hold onto and cherish!
As we anticipate terrible things coming our way, and terrible times are coming, you can count on it! It’s imperative that we find Jesus Christ and hold fast to Him to lead us through the perils we face. There’s no reason to fear – though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need fear no evil – we shall get through it with Him.
Today is a mixed bag of weather here in the Ozark woods. A few years ago, my grandson Matthew and I built this really cool little cabin up on stilts out here on a wooded hillside and it has a nice roof so if the rain starts, Dusty, my faithful old border collie mix girl, and I should be able to stay dry if we get the forecasted cloudburst today. I went all out and ran electrical circuits so I can plug the building into a small portable generator and have a porch light, interior light, and receptacles for temporary low power loads like this laptop I’m writing this post on, and the music box.
I started out with this thing as if I was just going to make some sort of lean-to for a deer stand, but my daughter Casie, Matthew’s mom, got wind of what I was doing and decided to apply her engineering background; she started by making “helpful” suggestions, and the next thing you know Matthew and I are up here hanging plywood sheets way up in the air using the backhoe bucket as a crane, eventually building a Marriot Hotel. We put these neat little windows complete with screens in the walls, double walled and insulated it, and as mentioned, ran wiring and installed lights and receptacles. It’s a wonderful place to retreat and get away from the house and noise.
Retreat in the Woods
During construction as I was putting up the interior walls and before installing the door, a little mama wren found herself a nice cozy spot inside what was to become an insulated space between the interior and exterior walls. Of course, once I realized she was interloping on my cabin and had brazenly claimed my wall for her nest, I had to halt that part of my construction, and before you knew it, there was a lot of raspy screeching going on in the nest, and that poor little girl worked as only a loving mama can, fetching grubs and grasshoppers for them, and somehow, she managed. I had other areas of work to do, so I got used to hearing them and watching as she, at first kind of apprehensively, darted in and out to feed them and take out the trash.
Mama checking on the little ones
I managed to peek in the nest once, and thought there were three gaping little mouths, but I tried to stay away as much as I could. Mama got to where she didn’t mind me being in here at all. This all went on for a couple of weeks, and then one day she flew in, and it was a bit odd that she used a different entrance than she had been using. She didn’t go to the nest but stood on the very top of the wallboard in the opening under the roof and chirped until the little ones came out of their nest one at a time. She flitted outside to a nearby tree and continued to chirp and call for them until there were four (I didn’t see all of them when I peeked in earlier) little fledglings in a row on the wallboard trying to work up enough nerve to make the jump out into the unknown. One by one they clumsily jumped out and flitted and fluttered into the tree from where she had called, banging into the trunk, but somehow hanging on. Before long, she was flying ahead of them as they all found their tiny wings and within just a few minutes they mastered the art of flight!
Mama, with babies in tow headed down toward the wet-weather creek, and that’s where they were when I heard the last of her chirps and flight training instructions. I never saw them again, at least that I know of. I came back inside and started to remove their lodgings, but not knowing much about wild birds, I decided to leave the nest in case they needed to come back, maybe to sleep in the night, but they never did. They were gone for good. When I started removing their little nest, I found myself thinking and wondering if they might have memories of their infancy there and resent having their childhood home torn down, but I realized that wild critters don’t necessarily have attachments to things like us people do. At any rate, I quickly found that I really missed their fussing and mama coming and going – I didn’t realize how attached to them I had become until they were gone, but my consolation was that they were out in the wild as nature intended, chasing their own grasshoppers, and finally I could finish that wall!
Empty and quiet after the squatters left
I’ve been posting about spring lately, but I just can’t get enough of this nice warm weather and green shoots are just beginning to show up on most of the trees. I get just as excited when the fall colors burst onto the scene, but for now we get to anticipate springtime and it looks like there’s going to be quite the dogwood show, maybe as beautiful as we had in 2021. Maybe that little mama wren will find another cozy spot nearby to raise more babies.
Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these…
* We are where we are because we haven’t tried hard enough to be somewhere else.
* If you don’t like your situation, as long as you have breath in your body you are free to change it.
*People who conduct their lives in obeisance to desire for riches are the saddest and yet harbor the potential to be the vilest of all creatures.
* Keep in mind that this body we inhabit causes us much despair and grief and is surely to be discarded on that day when our spirit is freed – like an animal that has only known life in a cage. The face I see in the mirror is not me, it’s simply a part of this container in which my spirit dwells until that freedom arrives.
I walked out into the woods yesterday to take a long drought from a new cup of God’s creation – it was a beautiful early spring morning with a plethora of songbirds singing like they demanded to be heard. Indeed, I spent a lot of the morning listening to them. They sang of greenery beginning to transform twigs and limbs, as heaven is about to reveal a majestic dogwood bloom. Their song welcomed a gentle breeze from somewhere south that has come to visit our obscure Ozark hollow. The song indeed brings with it a gift of warmest elation that only a morning of God’s springtime grace can provide, but mostly it allows me to understand and appreciate that I am truly a blessed soul to be in the hallowed company of the Lord Jesus on this glorious day.
An aged crow came near and watched as I pondered events going on in the other world. This modern time in which we find ourselves has brought the ability to hear of and see things happening in faraway places which people never could do before. Sadly, nowadays most of this news is not good. The old crow behaved as though he knew what I was thinking. Did he share my sympathy for those who cannot enjoy the rapture of a fine spring morning because they are ensnared in conflicts over which they have no control? Was he wishing, as I was, that there was some way to make peace in places devastated by war and end the needless death and destruction? Maybe a way to bring food to the tables of the destitute and hungry?
A lemon-yellow butterfly gently wafted by on the breeze in search of early flowers, at first glance seemingly oblivious to the vanity and evil of the travail we humans bring upon ourselves. It further reminded me that there is another aspect of this existence, one that is served to us from another place – a place of peace, of wholesomeness, and of serenity where God-given wisdom demands that we should seek to be, a place where the spirit can prosper. I wondered what, if that beautiful little insect could talk, it would say to me, but then I became astonished to realize that it was talking – saying profound things I could indeed hear, but only when I listened closely, for it was actually my own heart speaking without words, of things I already knew, but to which I hardly gave deserved thought.
The gravity of events in the world is beyond the ability of most to comprehend, but the pain of those on the receiving end of such terrible events, who often lose their (often piteous) earthly possessions, their cherished homes, but most of all their loved ones – taken from them by untimely deaths at the hands of other human beings – must be unbearable. Their grief consumes all of us whether or not we choose to acknowledge our part in it. As the blood of Abel cried to God from the ground, so the blood of murdered innocents in diverse places cries to any and all who might join, or at least empathize with their pleas for justice, that is every member of the human experience, including those who understand nothing beyond foolish celebrity gossip, sports, or decadent fast foods. The question my butterfly asks is, “Are there any who will listen?” Sadly, I do not have an answer for him. Do you?
A poor carpenter’s son once said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” That’s the same God who creates crows and butterflies, and with His mighty breath, sends us a springtime breeze. He’s the One who continuously beckons us with subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle messaging that urges us to listen to our inner selves where dwells the heart on which He has written laws by which He intends us to live. If we all could find the courage and determination that also comes from Him, we could work together to put an end to those conflicts and bloodshed would undoubtedly cease. What an incredible honor – to be recognized by all of heaven and earth as a child of the Great and Almighty – the Most High God!
The creatures and forests of spring ever bode a hopeful time, a time of joy and reverie heralded by new sunny days of warmth and optimism. We have opportunity, as tiny green shoots emerging from dormant twigs, to seek the Creator from whom all blessings flow so that we might blossom into the beings that He has always intended us to become. We have for now, the opportunity to seek Jesus Christ, whose sovereignty, love, and friendship we would do well to invite and to inculcate in our lives. He is the only answer in these troubled times. The ONLY answer. I know this because of all the springtime creatures, the birds and butterflies, that kept screaming it in my ears this morning. And because there are horrible things happening in this world that would not be happening if we only listen to the wisdom God put in our hearts. That wisdom can be understood and appreciated by actually living in and taking our rightful place as part – indeed the crowning essence of – His creation, among the birds and spring flowers, and our fellow human beings which we should regard as nothing less than precious, according to His own wisdom and grace.
Men of ill repute have arrogated to themselves unmerited authority, and vast earthly fortunes. They gather in dark halls to shuffle the cards and deal misery and Godlessness to multitudes, even nations, of the less fortunate who can only attempt to play the miserable hands they are dealt. Needy and destitute people in faraway places, even in our own country, plead for relief and yet they suffer and starve, because the “gods” to which they plead are not gods at all.
God, the Father of Jesus Christ, to Whom I pray gives relief in the form of peace in my heart – peace and comfort which is multiplied and displayed in its fullness upon the majestic arrival of springtime!
Get right with Jesus and enjoy the spring and His abundant love while there’s still time!
So the day finally arrived; the first day of hunting season, and to say Earl was excited would have been an understatement. He wound his way back to the old driveway he’d used to go to the old woodsman’s house, and this time he went further on down the overgrown road past the place. He noticed as he went by that it didn’t look like the old timer was home. In fact, it looked as if no one had even been there for a very long time.
It was a fine, cool autumn afternoon with sunshine that seemed to portend a good hunt. The weather forecast that morning had predicted a cold front would come through the area, and although the wind might cause the deer to lay up and not stir, if there would be any rain, the dampness would at least quieten the leaves he’d have to walk through. The old road was getting muddy, and even though it had been fairly dry of late, this was one of those areas where the ground just never seemed to get completely dry, so his truck did a lot of spinning in the ancient ruts, especially going up the many hills through the woods.
He found a bit of a clearing where he parked, and grabbed his pack and rifle, and set out to look for deer signs. Finally he was walking on what he was sure was a game trail through the ever-thickening brush, and for the first time he began to get a weird feeling, almost like he was being watched; like he wasn’t alone in those creepy woods. After what seemed like miles of that overgrown trail, he began to notice an area of unusual darkness in the thick woods up ahead. Was it some kind of dilapidated building out here in the middle of nowhere? It sure seemed to be, but what? As he approached he could make out the dark upright remains of what used to be a house, and it looked as though it had once been a big, two story building, now rotting and in disarray. The windows upstairs were all broken out, leaving black portals that felt like eyes watching for unsuspecting intruders into its domain.
The place gave Earl the creeps, it had an evil feel, and as he saw the old road, now only a trail, went on past it, he trudged ahead, trying not to look, but there seemed to be some irresistible attraction that kept drawing his gaze to that horrid house. As he was passing the closest point to the house, he saw a couple of aged crows complaining to each other in a huge sycamore tree. A few ochre leaves fluttered in the light breeze, and as Earl looked up into the tree, he noticed that clouds were starting to drift in ahead of the cold spell. He picked up his pace, both to try and get where he was going before the weather got bad, and to get away from the spooky place. A few starlings fluttered from the brush and finally! He was past the old house! He knew the weather was about to take a turn for the worse, but his attention was spurred back onto the hunt when he came upon a tree rub, where bucks rub all the velvet off their antlers which takes the bark off small saplings; it diverted his thoughts from the eerie woods, at least for now, and back to the big buck for which he’d come here.
As Earl stealthily walked further into the vine-infested darkness, he remembered the odd way the old man looked at him when he asked for permission to hunt there, and he remembered that he’d wondered what that was all about. It wouldn’t be the last time he gave it thought. A quarter of an hour after he passed the creepy old house, the wind started to pick up and the air rapidly began to cool. The cold front had arrived, and with it, the sky began to darken as the first of the rain began to come down. Earl’s hunting clothes were fairly weather resistant, so the light rain didn’t immediately bother him, but he knew it would soon get muddy, and walking would become difficult, but of more immediate concern, the gathering darkness of the woods seemed unusual, even for a storm, because it wasn’t all that late. He could still see fairly well though, and after all the trouble to get here, he wasn’t ready to give up on that deer, besides with the rain soaking the woods, his walking through the leaves was, as expected, much quieter.
About the time the game trail he’d been following played out, he noticed something odd – a very old moss-covered concrete wall, or what was left of it. It was out through the dark woods, and he could see that it was high near a corner and irregularly eroded as it stretched through the darkness until it reached the ground. If Earl had known it, he would have recognized this as being the last trace of an ancient drying oven for lumber, but he had no idea of the sordid history of the Duff Mill that once operated in the very place where he now stood.
A crack of thunder rumbled off to the northwest, and Earl started to grow concerned that he’d get caught out in the coming storm, hours away from his truck, and there was no way he was going to take shelter in that creepy old house he’d passed earlier. He wasn’t necessarily superstitious, but there was something extremely unsettling about that house! He began to look around the concrete wall to see if there was anything resembling cover around it. It had indeed become very dark for that time of the evening, but as he searched for shelter, a sudden flash of lightning revealed a tangled mat of thick vines draped inside the corner of the wall. It wasn’t exactly waterproof under the snarled briars, but he might be able to spread his poncho, which he always carried in his pack, over the vines and it might keep some of the rain off.
As he began to make his way towards the wall, he heard a solitary old crow nearby, but instead of the normal cawing cry, he could swear the crow was screeching “no, no!”, and the calls seemed to grow more insistent as he moved in the direction of the old wall. “NO! NO!” This was upsetting, to say the least!
He stumbled on through the darkness in the rain, which was by now getting heavier, he tripped over something about knee-high, but it didn’t feel like a tree stump – it was harder, like a rock, and sure enough, as he looked down through the tall weeds, he saw that it was a slab of limestone. In the gloom, he could make out that it had been shaped by someone long ago and obviously placed there. As he reached down to feel of what appeared to be a flat side, his fingers traced crude chisel marks in the stone which, even though they were by now illegible, revealed that it was a very old grave marker – and another lightning flash revealed that there were more of them close by, some standing eerily and others leaning this way and that. Still others were lying in dark and lonely mounds, which he now suspected of being ancient burial sites, and to make matters even spookier, in places, the ground had been washed away over the years and in the brief lightning flashes, he could see what he thought might have been bones of long-dead inhabitants washed out of shallow graves, scattered and mingled among the mossy cold rocks.
The rain had grown into a torrent as he hurriedly pulled the poncho out and did his best to drape it over the vines in the corner of the old concrete wall and crawl under it, with lightning flashing all around, and then all he could do was wait until the storm abated. By now he’d decided to call off the hunt, as it would probably be too late to resume it after the rain stopped, and he was soaking wet and thoroughly tired of this spooky place. He kept hearing weird noises, almost like some kind of unhinged raspy laughter, but he tried to convince himself it was the thunder and wind playing on his imagination. The old graveyard was playing mightily on his thoughts too.
It was getting late in the evening, still a couple of hours before normal dark as the rain began to subside. The wind was still gusty, and Earl, somewhat shaken by the events of the day, looked out from under his crude shelter to see if he might be able to get out of there without drowning. It was still raining lightly, but had grown very cold, and he was wet. Just as he was about to gather himself together and leave, he noticed a movement out in the gloom. There was someone – or something – silently moving out there just a few yards away! He knew there was no way it could be a living person out there in those decrepit woods in the storm, but it didn’t look to be an animal either. It almost resembled some kind of greyish mist, sort of drifting through the dark brush, but with definite form and purposeful movement, and he ducked back under his shelter thinking that he’d glimpsed more than one!
A sudden chill came over him that wasn’t coming from the cold air as Earl was beginning to realize this place was inhabited by something he’d only heard about or watched in horror movies. Prior to this dark and eerie evening, Earl had never given much thought to the supernatural, but he now knew he was witnessing something horrifying. And he was afraid – afraid of something unknown – something old, dark, and unexplainable.
Flashes of lightning lingered after the storm had passed, showing he was in a mess of tangled vines and thickets interspersed with a few very old hardwood trees, some with late autumn leaves stubbornly clinging to thin branches and undulating in the strong breeze, they almost looked like spidery fingers clawing at the dark air. It was by now late evening, and Earl realized that if he was going to get out of that dreadful place before it got too dark to see, he’d have to get himself together and start moving, so as hard as it was to come to grips with crawling out of his makeshift shelter and moving through that horrifying cemetery again, he had to get going. The noise that sounded like laughter he had been hearing didn’t go away with the storm, in fact, it seemed louder, as if it was coming toward him.
While Earl sat there shivering, trying to get his nerve up to leave, his mind went back to the evening he stopped and asked for permission to hunt on that property. He was beginning to think he understood now why the old timer acted so surprised that someone would actually want to go out there into those foreboding woods. There probably had been others who had seen things here, maybe things as terrifying as what Earl was experiencing, but why didn’t he warn Earl? He did say something about not letting the sun go down on him in those woods, and now Earl knew why, and if it was going to get spookier after nightfall, Earl didn’t want to be there, so he crawled out and just left the poncho, grabbed his gun, and began to pry himself out into the deepening evening.
So far no more spooky apparitions were moving around, and as the storm moved away, it actually got a little lighter, and Earl was both thankful and apprehensive, because the waning daylight allowed him to get a better look at the old graveyard, and he really didn’t want to see any more of it. Yes, those were bones he had seen earlier, in fact there were a few skulls among the bones lying face up, staring with empty eyes that he almost felt like were watching him as he hurriedly moved through. In one especially dark corner of the area, Earl couldn’t help but feel and especially sinister presence lurking in the blackness. This seemed to be where the unsettling laughter was coming from, and Earl made haste to get away.
He finally got through the old cemetery and back to the game trail he’d come in on, but as the evening darkness grew, he realized he still had to go back by that awful old house. He wished he knew those woods better so he could figure out a different route back out of there, but as it was, he had no other choice. It was icy cold now, and he was able to see the gloomy dark old house with the black windows glaring down at him from some dark upstairs bedroom that hadn’t been slept in, at least by a living soul, in scores of years. He hoped it was his imagination, but there seemed to be a dark grey mist drifting out of those windows, long without panes or sills. There were vines growing up the walls, over the doors, and dead limbs fallen from surrounding trees embedded through the roof in places. There was no way to get through the tangled vegetation and get into the old house, even if someone wanted to. Yet there seemed to be a strange glow emanating from one of the downstairs window openings, almost as if there was an old lamp burning inside! Earl could have sworn he heard that same evil laughter he’s heard down at the old graveyard.
Earl could see his breath in the gathering darkness, and he found himself panting as he tried to avert his gaze from the window with the impossible light inside and he wanted to throw down his rifle and cover his ears to block out the insane laughing – by now he was actually running and on the verge of panic. The sun was going down and he was still a long way from his truck! He looked behind him on the trail and to his horror, he saw what appeared to be a vivid apparition of an old woman standing there leaning on an ancient garden hoe, silently motioning for him to come back, and her hands and arms were soaked with blood! As horrifying as the sight was, Earl felt an overwhelming sadness at her visage, but he did not stop to try and figure out what it was about.
Soaked to the bone and exhausted beyond belief, Earl reached his truck and shivering and shaking, he finally fumbled his key into the door and climbed in. The wheels were deep in mud which had washed down the old road in the storm, and he wondered if he was going to be stuck there. The creepy laughter had subsided, but he could still hear it far away now. He couldn’t remember a more relieved moment in his life than seeing the interior light of his truck and hearing the engine start. After rocking back and forth in forward and reverse, he was able to get the vehicle moving and turned around. After much slipping, spinning, and sliding, he found himself approaching the old cabin where he’d stopped, it now seemed like ages ago, to talk to the old man, and to his amazement, the cabin was gone! Completely and utterly not there! In fact, there were giant oak trees growing in the very spot where the cabin had been! Earl had been set up for this whole thing, by someone, or something, returned for an encounter with the living from long ago!
Earl spent a lot of time in the ensuing years wondering just what those ancient oak trees out there had witnessed long ago. He found out bits and pieces of information about the old mill and settlement where he’d chanced to have his adventure, and after some time was able to piece together just what he had happened upon. As for me, well, I’m amazed at the things a person can overhear listening to idle conversations during a rained-out golf outing.
