The 2.7 mile (4.3km) hike in to camp was not even one quarter completed when the kids began to play with the wildlife. Orange salamanders dotted the trail. The recent thunderstorm and ensuing sunshine had brought them all out to bask on the warm, wet, rocky soil.
The sky was bright blue and mostly clear when we arrived at camp. Temperatures were in the mid-80's (30°C). It was the perfect summer day, just right for diving into a crystal clear mountain lake.
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| Me, sporting a serious case of Pandemic Hair |
The water was close to the air temperature - cool enough to be refreshing without being a shock, as mountain lakes tend to be. The kids and I spent hours playing in the water. I finished the day with a wicked sunburn. The kids were OK because they have more melanin than I do so they never burn - although Mrs. M. would have still insisted they wear sunscreen anyway. I hope she does not read this :)
We spent two days at our secret mountain getaway. There was not another soul in sight - only three humans and an infinite amount of wild critters.
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| Baby Dragonfly - Got one! |
Without anything else to do, no electricity, no broadband, no toys, the kids found ways to entertain themselves. This came mostly by way of collecting anything that moved. That made me think about something. As usual, I thought about aliens. More specifically, I thought about alien abductions.
Why do Aliens Abduct People?
My last post discussed whether aliens go camping, or not. If they did, Earth might be considered roughing it, just like a three mile hike into the mountains, carrying few supplies, might be roughing it for humans. What would aliens do when they got here?
Earth does not have whatever the alien equivalent of broadband or cable TV is. If we did, surely the people at SETI would have picked it up by now. (What do those guys do all day anyway?) So when aliens arrive here, and we know they do, what is there for them to do?
Me, I like to be bored. I like to unplug. I like to sit and do nothing. That is what I love most about going out into the wilderness. I can sit and just sit. My phone does not ring. I am not tempted to play a video game. I do not check social media. I do not need to talk to anyone. I do not even bring a pen and paper to write - and I love to write. Sitting, with my mind void of thoughts is fine for me.
The Quiet Place
At home, the kids have computers, phones, tablets, game consoles. They have broadband, WiFi, and Ethernet. It is an understatement to say they are wired.
Surprisingly, it is easy to unplug the kids - especially when we have no power or internet. They too can sit - an inch away from me, as it were, despite the vastness of the outdoors. I like that. Someday they will outgrow this lack of boundaries. For now, I enjoy the closeness.
The kids cannot sit still for as long as I can. Eventually, they need to get up and do something. The activity they like most, in the wilderness, perhaps even more than swimming is catching critters.
We have lots of frogs in our pond at home. The mountain frogs did not interest the kids much. What fascinates them is the one tiny creature we do not have in our pond. They go crazy for the newts.
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| Abductee in its holding chamber |
Newts are basically salamanders that live in water. They are amphibians. They are fairly easy to catch - they put up a bit of resistance but they are not too fast or wily. My kids are gentle with them. They take great care not to injure the newts in the capture. They placed the creatures into a container we found and made sure there was water, so the little guys would not dry out.
Imaginations run as wild as the environment. The newts all get names. Somehow, my daughter is able to tell which ones are male and which are female. She knows way more about animals than I do. The newts are given gender-appropriate names. They are assigned personas. Stories are told.
Eventually, the kids grow tired of this game. They also know that the creatures they have captured must be returned to their habitats or they will die. We do not have the means to properly care for a newt while we are camping. We did not bring any gear to transport them home with us without them dying on the way. Plus, we have enough critters at home, both as pets and out in the yard. The newts are flown back to the pond in a saucer, perhaps not to the same place they were captured, but not far away, relatively unscathed.
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| Captives flying home in a saucer |
Hopefully by this point, the reader sees where I am going with this. Watching this IRL show, for hours on end, with nothing else on my mind, I think about aliens. Is there a parallel? Could this be what is happening when aliens abduct humans?
There are many reasons aliens may take humans. It is often thought that it is for scientific or medical examination. But maybe, once in a while, it is just for fun. Aliens come here, they look around, they unplug, they chill, and then they get bored and need something to do. They beam up some humans and put us in an air chamber. They play with us. They give us names. They tell each other stories about us. Then they release us, terrified, but mostly unharmed. (For the record, I have never been abducted - just a close encounter.)
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| The kids, hunting for critters to play with |
To the newt, being abducted by children would be similar to a human being abducted by aliens. The world above the water is as foreign to a newt as the world outside our atmosphere is to us. Suddenly, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, a hand plunges into the water and captures the newt in a child's tractor-beam-like hands. The newt swims around in a tiny pocket of water but is bound on all sides, unable to escape the beam's powerful grip. It must be frightening. Are their brains big enough to process terror? Aliens may ask the same about us - or maybe they do not care.
Why don't Aliens return People to the same Place?
Reports of alien abductions show that sometimes humans are not returned to the exact same place they were taken from - it may be nearby but not exactly the same. Maybe it does not matter to them. We are just wild animals. Does it matter if we are returned half a mile from home? We will scurry about and find a place to live our cute little human lives.
My kids collect newts from all around our little section of the lake. But all the newts are returned to the water in the same spot.
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| Go home, critters, and be critters |
They will probably finds their way back to wherever they need to go. Do newts even have anywhere to go? They always seem busy, swimming here and there. But they cannot possibly have any real agenda. Surely they do not have houses and families to return to. Do aliens think the same about us?
It is clear that we have homes to return to, but what about families? Does the term "family" even mean anything to aliens? Travis Walton was taken from a work crew. They were not his family, at least not in the truest sense - I understand how one can develop a feeling of kinship with their workmates over time but I am talking about real family. Maybe the aliens who took Walton figured he was just with a bunch of other stags and none of them would miss each other if he were to leave for a few days and then return to a place nearby.
Some people say they are levitated from their beds and drawn through solid walls during alien abductions. I have more difficulty wrapping my head around those stories. On the one hand, it is hard for me to doubt anyone because I myself have a fantastic story. I get that it may be perceived as hypocritical. On the other hand - Science. I do not see how someone can pass through a solid wall. But then again, I do not see how any of these people get here in the first place. They come from light-years away, defying physics as we understand it - as we understand it.
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| Strange Eggs, Abducted from Bed |
Anyway, those guys seem to be put back in their beds rather than in some other weird place. My kids followed this same practice, oddly. We found some strange round eggs in the water. I was OK with taking them out and handling them because it is no longer strange egg hatching season and the eggs were covered with algae. No doubt, whatever was supposed to hatch from those eggs never made it, long before we got there. Despite this, when we were done examining them, the kids put them back in the same exact spot they were taken from, just like alien abductions from beds. I suppose if I were going to be abducted by aliens I would want it to happen while I was in bed.
Aliens and cows
My last article mentioned cattle abductions/mutilations. One theory I proposed for this was that aliens are interested in cows because cows are yummy. When my kids were little I used to tell them cows were made out of hamburgers. True story. Sorry vegans.
Speaking of vegans, there is another possibility for why aliens sometimes take cows. Maybe aliens think that eating animals is barbaric. They take cattle simply because it is a crime of opportunity. The cows are just sitting there, out in a field, with no adult supervision. They are ripe for the picking.
Likewise, while I was helping my kids with the newts, I spotted a tadpole. That was not on the kids' menu but when Daddy helps out, Daddy sometimes does his own thing. I caught the little sucker, mainly just to see if I could wrangle him.
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| One of these things is not like the other |
I placed him in the pan with the newts. They all seemed to get along OK. We knew the tadpole would have to be returned to the lake sooner than the newts because my daughter, the frog expert, said his lungs had not developed yet. The water in the pan was shallow. But there he was, mixed in with the others like a steer with some humans in a spaceship.
I heard an abduction story a couple years ago. I do not think it was Travis Walton. I think it a guy named Shane Sirois, at a "UFO Conference" at the Danbury Library. The source is not important. The point is, the subject of the story said there were some main aliens who had interacted with him but then there was a leader who was taller and dressed differently. He had like a cape and a robe, like a king. Maybe that was the dad.
Sometimes my friend and ski buddy, Captain Awesome wears a cape and his kids seem totally cool with it. Sometimes I dress totally normally (as far as I am concerned) and my kids look at me funny, so... Maybe, in the story I heard, the part that was not reported was that the dad alien came in and told the kids, "Put that Earthan creature back before you kill the poor thing. And wash your hands when you're done. Dinner is ready."
Some people have stories of being abducted by the aliens repeatedly throughout their lives. Are they chosen? Maybe not. Maybe the aliens who take them like to vacation at the same spot and those people just happen to live there. Although, I have heard of people moving and continuing to get abducted. I know my kids would get a kick out of catching the same newt every time we go to our special mountain spot. If there was one with some cool markings on its back, they would give it a name and would look for it the next time we went back there. It would not be the newt's fault it was so unique.
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| Me, packed for the hike out |
So that is what I think about alien abductions. Maybe this does not explain every episode. I have heard some bizarre tales that do not jibe with this scenario. But it could be one of the reasons. The parallels to what my kids did just seem way to similar.
Either way, it was a fun couple days in the woods visiting our secret little slice of heaven. We were all by ourselves with no concerns about masks or social distancing. For a while, we forgot there was a pandemic. And it was good.
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If you have seen an alien spaceship or any type of unidentified flying object (UFO) contact me using the Contact form at the bottom of this page. You may remain anonymous if you want. I will not ridicule you or try to tell you why you are wrong. I get it, I saw one too.
Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.
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