October's colors were ramping up the farther my pickup and I traveled North. The aspens where starting to turn as I sped up the I-75 corridor in mid-Michigan. The kinds of trees were changing as I progressed, from venerable, old oaks in the middle of a wheat field, to these aspens, quaking in the sun, their leaves with bold hints of gold, mixed with the waning greens of summer. I thought about the parallel situation that happens as one travels to higher elevations, almost anywhere in the world. You might start out in a jungle, near sea level, but as you progress inland and up, the flora changes, just like it does as you head North, or South, for that matter. At some point in your upward progress, you're going to encounter something like a quaking aspen, then pines, or other conifers, then that will give way to perhaps some scrubby pines and willows, then tundra, then barren ground with not much, then snow/ice. Same thing with going North. Same progressive shift in vegetation. Pretty weird really, but logical.
Now that we've got THAT out of our way...
I was on a trip to Northern Michigan, to meet up with my brothers and some friends. The plan was to do some bird hunting, mostly Ruffed Grouse and Woodcock, but I had also gotten prepared to hunt waterfowl by picking up that stamp as well. It seemed like it took forever to get all my work done and get out of town. It had already been a long drive - about 6 hours so far, with about the same still to go.
As I worked my way farther North, the solid wall of aspens was giving way to an ever more frequent smattering of conifers. Ah, the Great White North! I love it! The Zilwaulkee bridge was a distant memory now, with it's floodplain and mile upon mile of grasslands. Saginaw Bay had flown by in the bright, crisp daylight, a glimmer in the distance. Now I was working northward toward Grayling, but struggling to keep my eyes open!
A couple days before, my brother had texted me to say, "You're not gonna believe this, but it looks like some Marine died in my cabin!" What?!!!! Yep, some guy had been running from the law, holed up in my brother's cabin and got himself peppered with .223 caliber ventilators. We still aren't sure what it was all about. Sounds like a Jason Bourne film, or a Tom Clancy plot, only the "hero" got snuffed out quickly, like a candle.
My brother warned me that we were going to have to spend some of our time repairing the damage the swat team had done. "You'd think they would have taken care of that themselves!", says I. "Nope. They don't do that. It's just shoot out the windows, frames, etc., dig out the bullets, hastily clean up all the shells, and such and hit the road. Dirty dogs!
So I'm pulling into the place, in the absolute middle of complete nowhere, tooling up the trail that leads back to the cabin, and see smoke up ahead. There's my brother, burning a mattress. He looks up at me, in my pickup, and warns me not to breathe the smoke, "It's that guys blood! You never know..." Wow! Craziness, indeed.
Yeah, that guy died in one of the bunks in our dormitory in the cabin. How? Why? The only information we got was of limited use, and likely incorrect. Back to the Jason Bourne notion! He must have heard something he wasn't supposed to know, I'm thinking. Holy crap, things like that actually happen. And how in the world did they find the guy? We're talking nowhere land here! He must have had a tracking chip hidden somewhere inside his body.
That's all for now. I'm off to start a series of novels based roughly on this incident and make millions!
Ciao
