Knowing: Twelve

And there are some uncanny things that have happened.  Like the deliberate pounding on the kitchen door from inside the garage alarmed me.  Not once in the ten years I have lived on the side of the mountain has anyone circumvented the red front door.  Besides, walking up the stoned walkway onto the covered porch had a breathtaking view of the mountains.  Even my close friends wanted to stand on the thirty-two foot long porch.

I’d been working in the herb garden that morning.  Oregano had growth to mammoth proportions.  Even in fall everything multiples.  Like it is the final quarter of a well run marathon.  A long sleeved shirt was in order because of the poison ivy that was about to encroach.  I also needed to refill the vinegar spray which would slow the growth or if I was lucky, eliminate the poison ivy. 

I grabbed my cell phone placing it in my left hand just in case.  A slender not too tall man stood with his hands on my workbench.  He jolted as I flew open the door.

Suddenly he lunged toward me.  A stet of stairs and a landing separated us. 

“Are you aware of identify theft?” the man demanded.

““Are you aware you are trespassing on private property?” I asked.

My heart was pounding. The man moved closer.

“You need to leave…NOW,” I shouted.

The dark haired man reminded me of a Jehovah Witness. He didn‘t budge. 

“Leave or I WILL have you arrested,” I said.

Moving like molasses, the strange back away only to face forward as he went under the garage door.  I pushed the remote and could see through the windows he was leaving the driveway.

I ran to the front porch from inside the house watching him disappear up the eight degrees plus grade. Waiting five minutes he didn’t come down.  Slowly, I backed the Highlander out of the garage, closing the door watching behind me and in front.  There was no car on the road behind my corner lot.  There was no man in sight.

All of a sudden I saw him at the bottom of the hill near a white sedan.  The sedan reminded me of the vehicles behind me on the highway on Route 441 south the night of my UFO sighting.

I kept the garage door closed after that.  Inconvenient but safe.  I also never went out of the house without my cell phone.  Ever.

This information was shared with my neighbors, some of whom are in the Sheriff’s Department.

That following winter, several of my neighbor’s homes and cars were vandalized.  The vandals were never found.

I never felt safe outside again.

The dogs and I summered on the seacoast of New Hampshire for two months. Closer to family.  Something drew me there.  The water has a cleansing effect.  The dark granite boulders embedded along the seashore, are hidden at high tide, stunning at low.

Coral sunsets, seagulls perching on boulders softened the trauma in my garage.  It had been a decade since I’d seen the expanse of the evening skyline.  A luminescence that begged to observe it for hours on end.  It was in those hours that I was coming out of my self-imposed cocoon.  More confident, a great knowing, I had touched the great  beyond in the Smokies.  Everything was as it was meant to be. But I missed my mountain and my wildlife and returned to my southern Appalachian home.

My home was lonelier than every that year.  I skipped Thanksgiving with no invitations, no place to be.  I needed to experience my favorite holiday with self.  I was determined never to experience another one without my family again.  It had been too many years separated by distance.

But coming home was met with sadness.  A lawyer neighbor above me took out nearly twenty of the trees in the wildlife preserve I had created.

“I didn’t know I was on your land,” she said.

“That is why there are surveys,” I said.

“The trees were left fallen.  A nest of squirrels were tossed.  One found their way into my garage as I was pulling in.  I held it in my arms while it took its last breath.  She had murdered my beloved animals.  I had come here to protect them. Now the energy that welcomed me was telling me to go.

I was more than sick the following few months.  My work had come to an end.  Like a hammer cracking the pavement. 

“Come, it is time to go,” was the voice I kept hearing in my hand. 

I had hoped a realtor would sell my home.

The following summer, I left in early June to care take two chickens in a cabin while their owners built a silicone yurt in Alaska. I agreed to care for all the plants inside, some twenty-five and a yard filled with organic flowers and bird feeders.  It was nestled in a quiet area.   My own private retreat by the Oyster River.