Ongoing Series

Conversations with Sasquatch, The Encounter: A Journey into the Unknown

Richard Rensberry, authorLeave a comment

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Excerpt from Conversations With Sasquatch, The Encounter.

Chapter 2

     Talking to a Sasquatch would probably qualify me as being a delusional schizophrenic or having some such mentally manufactured label from the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders.  Rest assured, I am more sane than the writers and creators of that psychiatric flap-trap.  As a Sasquatch said in our first conversation a little over a week ago, “Humans are blind to the world of the Sasquatch.”

     Exactly why I was chosen, I haven’t got a clue.  All I know is that today I have an appointment to meet with him once again near that auspicious cedar ridge that runs along the banks of Big Creek, in Lewiston, Michigan.

     I do not take this meeting lightly.  The fear that was inexplicably absent during our first encounter is in full force as I lock my Mazda and begin my traipse into the greening woods.

     As always, I find myself getting unwound and relaxed by the sanctuary of the forest.  There is a lush carpet of fresh moss, wintergreen and huckleberry as I begin to cut a trajectory toward the ridge where I had previously shared mushrooms with a being that claimed to be immortal.  As I walk, I am suddenly struck with the notion that Sasquatch might like a bag of fresh wintergreen.  I, myself, love to chew on the minty leaves, which are cool and relaxing.  I kneel down, pluck a new sprout and pop it into my mouth.  I then gather a few handfuls of the dark green fingers and slip them into the small Ace Hardware bag I always carry for gathering purposes. I succinctly remember Sasquatch telling me that humans had once been much more attuned to the gathering of the medicinal and nutritional gifts of nature.  Is it possible my penchant for such was what had drawn this Bigfoot to engage me?

     I don’t know.  There are doubts.  I’m still feeling a bit dumbstruck and unbelieving.  I have to work quite hard to suspend my recurring thoughts that Sasquatch was nothing more than a figment of my overactive imagination.  Had I eaten (like some have suggested) the wrong mushroom by mistake?  Was it possible I had simply hallucinated and manufactured my whole Sasquatch experience from the far reaches of a childhood memory?

     Over the years, I must admit, I really hadn’t thought much about Sasquatch.  I’ve had no particular reason to do so.  I’m a busy person, both purposeful and happy.  I think little of the past and focus on the present and the future.

     As I continue my trek towards Big Creek, my childhood memory of Sasquatch floods back as if a dam has burst inside my head.  I find myself emotionally present in the excitement of the time, the utter bug-eyed blinking and wiping of my eyes during those fateful moments I laid eyes on him bathing in the river near my fishing hole.  I am overcome with a hot flash of perspiration.  Adrenalin rushes and vibrates through my body as I re-experience running helter-skelter up the bank of the river to reach the deer camp where my father is playing poker and drinking whiskey with his pals.

     I breathlessly arrive as Al Kaline is stepping up to the plate with runners on first and third in the top of the ninth in a tight game against the Minnesota Twins.  My dad and his pals are glued to the tinny squawk of a small transistor radio, intently listening as Ernie Harwell sets the stage for the next pitch.

     I shake my father’s arm violently to get his attention and shriek incoherently about the monster bathing in the river.  My dad’s eyes blink rapidly as he slowly tries to bring me into focus.  When he finally registers my presence, he frowns uncomprehendingly and remains as lethargic as a toad.

     “Not now!” he grumbles.

     I tug and push even harder, beseeching him to come and see the hairy man that looks bigger than a bear.

     “Sorry guys,” he groans, “the young tyke is always dreaming up ghosts and things that go bump in the night.”

     “No!” I exclaim, “He’s really there!  He’s down by the river where the sunfish are!”

     “Now son, go play.  We’ll all be ready to leave in a few.  Right now the Tiger’s are trying to beat the Twins.  Let your dad finish his game.”

     Forgotten and dismissed, I am overwhelmed by the force of his rejection and disbelief.  Coming from my dad, it presses down hard on my young heart.  He hadn’t even considered for a moment that what I had seen could possibly be true.  I was just a kid with nothing better to do than make things up.  And yes, I often did make things up, just not Sasquatch taking a bath in the river.

     As I neared Big Creek I shook off the memory and began my gradual descent down the ridge toward our destined meeting spot.  As I did so, the hackles on my neck suddenly stood straight up and goose flesh prickled down my arms and back.  Once again, the woods fell eerily silent.  All my senses snapped to the present and I reflexively reached for my absent Beretta which I had purposely left in the car.

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Available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1940736684

Round Island Light

Richard Rensberry, authorLeave a comment

Round Island Lighthouse is located in the Straits of Mackinac, Michigan.

This painting of Round Island Light is part of my series of lighthouse paintings. 

My lighthouse children’s book “If I Were A Lighthouse” is available at Rusted Roots Apothecary in Mio, Michigan and on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/1940736366 

I Saw It Coming

Richard Rensberry, authorLeave a comment

.    image           I Saw It Coming, The Series.  Part 1

I hike everyday.  It is energizing and allows my spirit to open up to my surroundings.  I am able to observe with the spirit’s eye and see universes beyond the physical reality of things.  I am delighted to take photographs and collect artifacts like feathers and wood for use in recreating what I have seen in my imagination.

On my many wanderings I have come to find hidden and secluded places where almost no human ever ventures anymore.   I am not talking about the wilderness, I am talking about within the city limits of San Francisco.  Most of The City is a massive tangle of abutted structures, but not all.  There are forsaken copses of trees and open spaces in this bustling cityscape.  Some appear forgotten as the now condemned Berlinski’s Hardware that sits forlorn with its boarded-up windows next to a twenty-first century Home Depot.  I used to frequent that old Hardware Store and it was way more interesting than Home Depot could ever dream of being.

My name is The Surest Sugar Maple.  The Elders christened me with the namesake as a young child because of my propensity to take calculated risks that none of the other kids could wrap their wits around.  I was the one that climbed the railroad trestle and tied the rope so we could fly out over the cliff and fall into the river.  I hunted and snared the rattlesnakes that were fodder for our moccasins.

If I wasn’t sure about a dare or a challenge, I wouldn’t take it on until I had it figured out to where the odds were in my favor.  I couldn’t be swayed but I could be bought.  It served me well in Hollywood where I spent many years working with the likes of John Wayne, Fess Parker, and Jimmy Stewart.  I was one of the Indians falling off horses, cliffs and bar stools.  I have an abundance of physical wounds to show for it, but I am alive and a very rich man because of it.

I am also old, but I am not as decrepit as the cocky little teenagers think.  They have begun to follow me at times and are over-confident, foolish and blind.  Their bodies are full of fast food and drugs.  They lack the power of observation.  They only see an old man, they do not see beneath the surface where I am fleet as a gazelle when and if I need and want to be.

The Skinny One and The Vulture had been waiting to ambush me when I came out of the Wells Fargo on Biscayne Street.  The Skinny One sidled up to me on my left while The Vulture nervously poked something implying a gun into my ribs.

“Gotcha old man,” The Skinny One hissed.  He was their teenage lips, their fear and their bravado all mixed up into one.  Of all the little gangsters that I had noticed he seemed like the one that was dangerous.  “Just do as I say,” he said, “And maybe you’ll live to tell your chess playing Bros about shitting your pants down at the Wells Fargo.”

What he didn’t have was the gun.  It was The Vulture that had the weapon in my ribs and I had  since surmised that he had no business as a hoodlum.  He was too sensitive, weak minded and a coward.  Besides that, I had purposely bumped him with my elbow and there had been no weight behind the supposed weapon.  It was either his finger or maybe a plastic water pistol.

They ushered me down Biscayne.  An old man and a couple of teenagers out for a stroll.   As they did so, I quickly concluded that I was probably in no real danger.  That’s the luxury of having made  a calculated risk,  the odds are in your favor.  When I added it up, one way or another they were destined to lose.  They were high on adrenalin and probably cocaine.  They were having visions of how they had already won.

To be continued.

Richard Rensberry, Author at QuickTurtle Books®