The Free Radical

“Fuck you!” I shouted over the steady staccato, shaking my fist at the sky. My middle finger extended its own salutation as I added “I’m a poet, not a fighter!”

It hovered a moment longer in observance, and then the helicopter dipped sideways to skedaddle over the ridge. The light cloud of whatever-the-fuck it had dispersed in the air above me swirled a moment in the turbulence while continuing its inexorable fall upon the Forest in which I stood. Mostly it looked dirty grey– but with a few sparkles glittering in the sun. I tried desperately to get away before the unholy mist could descend upon me, fully knowing my efforts in that regard to be futile. I was about to be finely dappled in some strange techno-magic…

All this craziness began a couple of days ago.

I was out on my ritual walk; I don’t know what else to call it. It was perfectly ordinary and totally sacred… as it was every day… a thousand times before.

I know this Forest; I know it as myself.

There is a part of me that is more at Home here than any other part of me has ever felt ‘at home’… That ‘part’ is my Spirit, creating all of it– all the parts and counterparts to the discernment of my perception. Spirit meets Spirit in the Forest Life.

When I encounter critters in the Forest, it’s easy to tell if it’s just a chance occurrence or a deliberate attempt at interaction. There’s a vast difference in an animal’s behaviour if you happen to stumble across it, than when it has obviously stalked you and sought you out.

When it comes to helicopters, however, their motivations aren’t nearly as discernible.

This same brown helicopter– a bit odd looking– kept making passes very nearly overhead. He was always just off to the side, and each time I happened to be in dense forest, so I knew there wasn’t much chance that he’d spotted me or the dogs. But the places he chose to fly suggested that he knew my daily route; I was just lucky enough to pass through the highly visible spaces while the brown helicopter was away looking elsewhere.

I couldn’t say for sure that he was looking for me, that he even knew that I existed, but the seed of the possibility had been planted in my awareness; my attention piqued. And it’s so easy to let the paranoia run along beside you when the thump-thump-thump of a helicopter is dogging you through the woods… or so it seemed.

But it was still another hour to get back to the truck, and during that hour the brown helicopter was nowhere to be seen or heard. By the time my ritual walk was over, I’d pretty much decided that I had just let my imagination run away with me, and the brown helicopter who’d scrutinized my territory was merely coincidental. I loaded up the dogs in the back and drove the five minutes to ‘home.’

Just as I was approaching the turnoff from the highway, I noticed the vehicle who had just taken the same turnoff ahead of me– a decent distance ahead of me. When I saw the side of the white four-by-four I could make out the RCMP insignia. The paranoia cozied up with me again. I was too far back for him to really notice me, but suddenly I wasn’t quite so eager to get home.

I parked the truck briefly a couple of blocks from home, and quickly went to spy on my own house. The RCMP truck was parked along the street in front of my house; it was unoccupied. I could see a uniformed officer standing outside the side door conversing with one of my tenants. I was nowhere near close enough to hear what was being discussed.

All I knew for sure was that I hadn’t done anything wrong. It was all very puzzling and rather upsetting. I was quite curious… but part of me insisted that I didn’t want to satisfy my curiosity with that particular uniformed being. The direct confrontation just looked and felt like something I’d be better off not stepping into. I’d puzzle it all together later, but now I took the dogs to the river for another swim… to allow the curious foe time to get away.

I still didn’t park in the driveway; I was around the corner. Coming home, in this instance, I was on a tight mission. I pumped my tenants for all the information they could give me about what the cop wanted. They told me everything… which amounted to very little. I wasn’t in any trouble personally. Well at least that much made sense; I hadn’t done anything. He’d said they wanted my help in an investigation. What does that even mean?

Then, I grabbed my older, bigger backpack and geared up for a few nights of camping, just me and my dog. (The other two dogs belonged to the tenants.) I still didn’t know if the brown helicopter was related to the RCMP visit or not. I figured that by going out camping for a few days– which is incidentally the precise lie my tenants told the cop as to why I wasn’t there– I figured that if they really needed me, they apparently knew roughly where to find me, and I’d rather meet them in the place where I feel the most comfortable and supported, as opposed to some authoritarian box of intimidatory design. My turf, not theirs.

I had decided that whatever this is, it’ll be played out in the Forest– my family and witness. I wasn’t into playing anyone else’s games; Nature and I shared the same creative game of evolutionary expression. Civilization and its myriad torturous games was now just some uninteresting overlay seeking domination… easily avoided.

Maybe I was always just looking for an excuse to move full-time back into the woods. These events gave me the excuse I needed to grab my evac bag and settle in for the long haul if necessary. I couldn’t go back to the little shack I’d built more than a decade ago up in the gorge; too many people had come to know about it– probably because I had posted videos online showing off my little getaway. I established a new base-camp in a hidden location I’d scouted out years before. I might still be able to salvage some of the lumber from my old shack to build a suitable shelter if I’m still out here come winter. For now I didn’t have to worry about it; it was only the end of July, and living in the woods is actually pretty easy in the middle of summer.

On the second day the brown helicopter returned. It was a pleasantly cool day, so I had decided to leave my dog at the truck for a bit while I established the longterm comforts of base-camp. The truck was shaded and well hidden from aerial view; when the brown helicopter suddenly appeared, unfortunately, I was not. I was exposed and spotted almost instantly. (At least I had been a fair distance from my new camp, so I don’t think the location was in jeopardy.)

At first, I wasn’t hugely concerned because I knew that at least they couldn’t land that thing anywhere nearby. I figured they were just tracking me for now and they’d send in the goons later on foot. I was wrong, and now the strange mist they’d dispersed above me was just beginning to reach its target.

I was in a t-shirt and shorts, plenty of skin exposed. This was some pretty weird shit! The places where the droplets and particles landed on my shirt there was an instant discoloration. Where they ‘landed’ on my skin… they just seemed to disappear inside. I watched these particles just pass straight through my skin as though it was no barrier at all. And even as they were passing through I could still see them beneath my skin, embedded in flesh, as they sunk deeper and eventually disappeared. There was no accompanying sensation at all, so it made me wonder if this was something that was actually happening or just some holographic presentation for my mind. Either way it was pretty freaky.

I retrieved my dog from the truck and settled in at base-camp… to endure a harrowing night.

(I’ll explain my internet connection in the next briefing.)
___________________________________________________

Go To the Next Episode of Running Dialogue