Let's go for a walk... Part 8: The Ruins

It's been a while since we've been on a walk with my dog, so I figure it's about time to do that again, especially since I got sidetracked, last year, by A to Z and never told y'all about the ruins. Actually, I did mention them back in the post about Goblin Town, but I didn't go into too much detail.

This area was first settled by the Russians. They set up here in the early 1800's in order to hunt these guys:

The sea otter. The sea otter has the thickest fur of all other animals, so their pelts are very valuable. You know, more valuable than gold and all of that. [As a total aside, they were hunted to near extinction by 1900, at which point less than 1% of their estimated original population was left, as few as 1000 of them still in the wild (from a population that may have exceeded 300,000 in 1800). No, it wasn't just the Russians that did this, but they were (mostly) responsible for it in this area.]

What the Russians found here, though, was more than just sea otters. They found an area infested with goblins, goblins that also hunted otters but not to the extreme that humans did.

Initially, the Russians set up Fort Ross.

The fort was to defend against goblin attacks. They even joined forces with various Native American tribes to fight against the goblins that were being agitated by the swelling numbers of settlers.

Eventually, the Russian-American Company collaborated to build a stone fortress just down the creek from where I live. It must have been an impressive structure based upon the ruins that are still there. You can see the outline of how big the structure was in the remains of the foundation.

The goblins didn't take kindly to the building of a castle in the midst of their lands, so they mustered their various tribes for a large assault against the humans with the intention of driving them out of their lands. It was a terrible battle. Vicious. Bloody. The creek ran red with the blood of the fallen for weeks.

The humans lost. And the goblins tore down the castle, leaving no stone upon another.

But it came at a tremendous cost to the goblins. The survivors were forced to join together into one tribe just to survive. Retreating to their tunnels,

they have remained hidden through the years as the humans came back and completely overran lands that were once theirs.

However, of late, they have once again been growing bold and can often be seen crawling out of their tunnels at dusk to scavenge for food and other bits and pieces of things they find useful.

Let's go for a walk... Part 4: The Otter

A couple of weeks ago, while out walking the dog, I saw an otter. Now, this isn't the first otter I've seen, but, the first time I saw one, it was not very close, not close enough that I could tell definitively that it was an otter, in fact, and it was kind of small. It was neat but not impressive.

This last one, though... it was both neat and impressive. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me. Not that it really would have mattered, because my camera is slow and doesn't like to take pictures of things that are moving. It was swimming downstream and toward me, and it was pretty big. As it approached, it suddenly dived, and I thought, "oh, well... that was pretty cool." But it surfaced just even with me and came to the shore of the creek to eat whatever it had caught. It was, maybe, 25 feet away. Close enough that I could hear its little jaws crunching whatever it was that it was eating. When it finished, it swam back out into the flow of the water and continued on downstream, occasionally diving, but it never banked itself to eat again while I could still see it.

As I was watching it, it occurred to me that it's events like this that make reading worthwhile. It's the injection of the unexpected into a story that makes us want to keep reading. Now, it's not that I didn't already know this, but I'd never thought about it in exactly this way before. I mean, we all know that no one wants to read about everyday life if that's all there is to it.

See, I walk the creek path everyday. It's beautiful. Really. But I do it everyday. It's not that it gets old, exactly, because I like to watch the water while the dog is doing her... well, taking care of her business. Which includes digging for gophers; although, she has yet to catch one. However, it does tend to be just the same old, same old. Things like the otter, though, remind me to keep my eyes open and pay attention to my surroundings. There are often neat little things to see. Like the hawk that landed on a branch just over the heads of my son and I. It was completely framed by the other branches around it so that it stood in a patch of sky with the full moon (it was daytime, though) back behind it. You couldn't have planned a better picture (and I did have my camera with me, but, by the time I got it out, the bird flew away).

Anyway, what I'm saying is that it's important, incredibly important, to ground your writing in the real. Or the realistic. You want it to be believable. In the midst of that, though, you want to toss in bits and bites of the unexpected. It doesn't matter how beautiful your writing is if it's just about the mundane. However, it doesn't matter how much of the unexpected you throw into your stories if they're not believable. Really, it's like adding salt to your food. Just enough to make it tasty but not so much that it ruins the flavor of whatever you're eating.

And there's your writing tip from the creek...

Let's go for a walk... Part 3: Goblin Town

[Note: Tib part 8 is up >points to the Tiberius tab above<. You should go read it and let me know what you think. Next week (I hope), look for some changes in the Tiberius tab.]

I'm waiting for the dog to eat, right now, so that we can head out on our walk. She seems more content to be taking a nap, though. You know, I think that's what that saying "a dog's life" is all about. Naps. I want one of those. But... this post is not about napping, it's about walking.

As I've mentioned, we have a troll bridge off to the right down the creek path. But, if you go to the left, there is something completely different. Goblins. Actually, the goblins are sort of everywhere, but the closer you get to the troll bridge, the scarcer the goblins become. Not that we've actually seen the goblins, but we know that they're there. "How's that?" you might ask. Well... here's how:

This is an entrance to Goblin Town. There are many of them along the path, especially if you go left out of the park. Trolls eat goblins just as readily as they eat people, so there are not so many entrances to Goblin Town if you turn right and none near the bridge where the troll lives.

The dog finds the smell of the goblins very interesting, and she always wants to explore the doors to Goblin Town, but goblins love to eat dogs (they're a delicacy), so we do our best to keep her away so that no lurking goblin can reach out and snatch her up. Of course, goblins also love to eat little children. They're so juicy and tender! They especially like to throw children into pots and cook them up in a stew. They'll eat adults, too, but it's not their preference.

This is another entrance into Goblin Town. If you look closely, you can see the warnings painted on the door. Although, goblins love to catch people, they also don't like uninvited guests, so they paint warnings on everything to keep people away.

The trail isn't safe after dark. Daytime is mostly okay, though. Goblins don't like sunlight, and they tend to stay underground during the day. I've heard that sometimes they creep out on really cloudy or rainy days, but we've never seen any. Yet.

A better view of the "keep out" warning. It's written in goblin language, though, so I'm not sure how it actually translates.

This is one of the main entrances into Goblin Town. A fortified entrance. It's like a concrete bunker. It was getting late as you can probably tell by the darkness of the picture, and I had to run before I could get a better picture as I heard the concrete lid start to slide open. Not a place you want to be when the goblins come out!

Some time ago, there was a battle between the goblins and the early human settlers in the area. Here is a picture of the place where the human's fortress once stood:

The foundation is all that's left, so, as you can see, the goblins won this great battle and drove the humans out for a while. Drove us out. But, you know, I didn't know those people, so it's kind of easier to just think of them as the "humans."

There is a new watchtower built to keep an eye on goblin activities in the area. I thought I had some pictures of it, but I'm not finding them. At any rate, it's disguised as a practice area for the local fire department, but some of us know the truth. It's a good cover for all the personnel that come and go that are busy monitoring the goblins.

Which brings us to the end of today's exploration of the path where we walk the dog. My kids enjoy learning about the "history" of the area, and my daughter, especially, asks lots of questions about the entrances to Goblin Town. She has even mentioned becoming a goblin hunter and going down to wipe them out. The boys generally just content themselves with singing that song from the animated version of The Hobbit.

"Down, down to Goblin Town..."

Let's go for a walk... Part 1: The Turkey Tree (or Why Stories Matter)

One of the things that's changed in the household since getting the dog

is the need for walks. Walks are a good time for allowing the dog to do her business (no picture available), but they are not for that purpose. She has special "potty breaks" in the mornings and evenings that are just for the purpose of taking care of said business, but she needs some real outside time, too, so that means walks. Beside the quick trips outside at 6am and 7pm (15 minutes or so each), she also gets at least one walk of at least one hour every day (some days she gets two) and at least one other potty break.

As I may have mentioned, we have a park right next to our house. Through the park, there is an entrance to the path by the creek that runs through town. My wife and I like to bike together on the path on the weekends and have been doing that for a few years. Previously, though, we had to bike to the path before we could bike on the path. The path is really nice, and the city does a pretty decent job on the upkeep of it. Having the creek path right there is very (extremely) convenient. Of course, one of the criteria we had in looking for a house was that it had convenient access to the creek path, so it's not a coincidence that we're in the house we're in.

One of the things I've learned from these walks is that my family doesn't do walks in quite the same way as most people do them. Mostly, this is my fault (I think). However, this post isn't about any of that, but I felt it needed saying at the outset, since it's what made me think of doing this series of posts. Part 2 will probably be about the troll bridge and the dragon crossing; then, you'll understand.

But back to this post:

Raise your hand if you would believe me if I told you that turkeys roost in trees. Yeah, I know. Me, too. That's a crazy suggestion, and I wouldn't believe me, either. That has about the same level of believability as if I told you that dogs can climb 10' tall chain link fences. Okay, not all dogs, but one particular dog that I used to know. But that's a different story. At any rate, when presented with a blunt fact like that, it's often less than believable.

So let me tell you a story:

This happened back in the middle of November when it was still light enough when my wife got home from work to get the whole family out on the evening dog walk. Make a note of the fact that this was prior to Thanksgiving. Not that it's exactly important to the story, but it, in my mind, at least, it makes it more interesting.

Whoever has the dog goes first. Not because there's a rule or anything, but the dog sort of insists on being out in front. Generally, that person is me. [Especially back in the first weeks after we got her when she was still trying to eat every bike and jogger that passed us.] This actually results in a weird yo-yo effect, because she stops to smell things and dig and stuff, so the family group will pass the dog by while she's busy. Once they've reached whatever distance ahead of her that she deems is "too far," she makes a mad dash to catch up, so whoever is holding the dog (me) has to run (and I do mean run -- this is no jogging doggy) to catch up and, then, pass the family group by at least 20' to 30' before she can slow down again.

So, on the day of the walk, I was out in front with Tessa. We were rounding a curve in the trail. Off to the left, behind a fence, was a field area, and, in the distance, a great white bird rose up out of the nearly knee high grass and flew up into a tree on the other side of the curve. Tessa is kind of into chasing birds, so she started running to get to where the bird was. But, like I said, it wasn't a straight shot, because we were on the curve, and we had to go around to where the bird was, which meant losing sight of it.

We got around the bend, and Tessa began looking for the bird. She's not really very good at searching for things in trees (except squirrels), though, so she got busy sniffing the ground for it. However, I was curious as to what kind of bird we'd seen, so I was looking up in the trees while we waited for everyone to catch up. And, then, I saw it. It was a big, white turkey sitting on a branch up in the tree.

Just a word about turkeys: we have wild turkeys that roam around our city. Just last week, my wife and I saw a fairly large flock of them roaming around the train tracks just a few blocks from downtown. Wild turkeys are not at all like what Americans usually think of when we think of turkeys. We think of the grossly obese birds we eat for Thanksgiving. Wild turkeys are not these turkeys. So this turkey up in the tree wasn't some huge blob of meat waiting to be eaten. When I say it was big, I mean that it was big in that it was 3-4 times the size of a crow.

I stood there in a state of amazement. Not only had I never seen a turkey in a tree before, but I had never even entertained the thought of turkeys in trees. And it wasn't just the one turkey, either. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom of the gathering dusk, I saw that there were a couple of other, smaller, turkeys up  in the branches, too. They were more typical adorned in grey and brown, so they were a lot harder to see than the white one.  As I watched, another turkey flew up into the branches.

I ran back down the trail yelling for my family to hurry up and catch up to us. I had something amazing to show them. I turned back around and ran back to the tree. The dog was really confused by all this back-and-forthing. She knew there was something to be excited about, but she couldn't figure out what. After all, there were no squirrels that she could see. Right?

My family finally caught up to me. My daughter, first, because she's the most willing to run. We all gawked at the turkeys up in the tree... after I made the kids scoot back so that they weren't right under them. I figured no one needed a mouth full of turkey poop. We watched several more turkeys join the others until there were about eight turkeys roosting in the tree.

We eventually tore ourselves away from the weirdness of the flock of turkeys up in the tree, but I went back looking for them everyday for about a week. I really wanted a picture of them up in the branches, but we've never found them up there again, and I didn't have my camera with me that one time we saw them. Not that I would have been able to get anything usable; it was too dark.

That tree is a landmark on our walking path, now: the Turkey Tree. Here are some pictures of the bare branches. Bare of turkeys, that is.

Now, you probably all believe that turkeys roost in trees. Why? Because the story gives the statement validity. This is an example of a true story backing up a fact, but all of this holds for fiction, too. Our stories give validity to the fictions we write about. It's what allows people to get drawn in and become apart of our worlds. And it's what makes people from history real to us today. Or people from our lives have real pasts. Like my kids great-grandfather and how he once lost $50,000 in the ocean. That's one of those statements that makes you go, "No way. You're lying." But when you hear the story... well, another time, maybe.