Long ago I wrote many a story working up from short quips to a full length novel. The shorter stories were passable but I don’t think anyone made it far when reading longer ones.  They lost interest after three pages.

The Novel was a total bust.

I’ve not discovered the secret to a nicely flavored, properly spiced, decently energized  totally clean tale.

Using Chichiyaboo as my platform, I have begun trying all over again.

Wednesday
Today I decided to go into the canyon and poke around near one of the mansions in the coming weekend.
Wend River Canyon is dotted with the little fields in which there are houses of ancient date that should be decayed and overgrown and yet are not the least so despite having sat abandoned for a very long while. The insides are still clean and fresh. Very strange for places no one’s lived in for centuries.
They don’t look new. They don’t look old. They do look as if they were lovingly inhabited just yesterday.
We hold feelings of reverence for them around here, not knowing their history or the cause of their abandonment. They’re called Canyon Houses. I went through one with my parents as a boy. We took off our shoes at the door, walked through the whole mansion and then left it as we found it. That’s the tradition. I remember feeling it was wrong to be there, like I was going through someone’s place while they were on vacation (except that none of the houses are furnished).

Wend River Canyon is in the heart of Chichiyaboo, north and a little west of the Ligwatt plains. There are more Canyon Houses there than in all the rest of the country.
I’ve lived all my life in the vicinity and have not been interested in exploring any of those places because of the persistent feeling that they are someone’s property.
Just outside a field of one of the Canyon Houses, arrowheads have been found!
I’ve never personally dug one up and now I have a chance to do just that.
My grandmother found a teeny little dart point on a trail near the coast. She showed it to me. I think it’s the real thing, but I don’t know what good it was. She thinks it was for getting little birds.
It was black obsidian. I was envious that she found one and thought it unfair that it was her rather than me because she didn’t care one way or another.
I took a summer job that allowed me a lot of time in vegetable fields when I was fifteen. There I found three fragments in the dirt. Two were pretty poor but whoever made the last one knew their stuff. I have always wanted to find a whole arrowhead. That was the closest I’ve come.
Now that Wend River Canyon for sure has arrowheads, I’ve made plans.

The site I’m going to check out is not far from Proxa on the south side of the canyon. My friends found it while looking for a place to camp.
They said that not only isn’t there a road to the canyon house where they got the arrowheads, there is no where for one. Typical.
They found it because it looked like a perfect spot above the river. They found an overgrown entrance to a path with some stone steps leading up from the river so at first they thought they were near a farm. The path led to a flat knoll with a sunny field that they felt would be perfect except for the lack of trees. They could watch for shooting stars after dark if they returned to camp there. So they searched around the perimeter for firewood and found a downed tree they could cut up. The wind must have blown it over. The roots still had dirt clinging to them and that’s where they found the first arrowhead. It was stuck to the bottom of the roots. They found another one in the hole.
They would have kept looking except that the sun was going down and they were losing light fast enough that they feared to lose the trail back. That’s when they saw the Canyon House and realized they were on the edge of its yard.
They think Canyon Houses are haunted and one of them was sure he heard a sound coming from inside it so he started running away screaming like a baby (according to his buddies).
Then the others got scared and wanted out of there! They all ran down to the river screaming. They made their way to their car, and drove home, laughing at the ‘danger’ they’d just escaped.
They told me how to get there.
So I’m going. On Saturday I’m going to find my first complete arrowhead!

Friday
The weather is good. I’m going through my pack.
I have water, lunch, drawing supplies, a camera, a book to write in, and first aid stuff. Hatchet, folding shovel, arrow head chipping supplies (it’s my hobby).
I can hardly believe I’m at long last finally going arrowhead hunting!

Saturday.
I love June. The leaves are all out and still new. Today I’m headed to the canyon. The mighty Wend!
All my life I have lived here and this is the first time I get to explore it on my own. Honestly, I have thought of it as a tourist attraction and way too busy to be interesting.
6 AM and the sun is bright. I’ve stowed my pack in the car and checked the oil, tire pressures, and mirrors.
Because I get lost, I reviewed my instructions again and brought a road map and a canyon topographical map.
According to the directions, first I take CHP road to Canyon drive, where I turn right and go twenty miles.
The trip starts nicely with the road following the river. Then it winds through farm country.
Morning light makes this drive seriously beautiful. I especially love taking the S-curves through that stretch of immense fir trees.
I look for a conical hill that’s like a miniature fake mountain and there it is dead ahead. Imagine hiking up that thing! The shape is perfectly symmetrical with fir trees all the way to the top. More of a climb than a hike!
The road narrows and takes a sharp left. Two more miles and I turn on to Service road 32S.
The peculiar thing about this exit is that it looks like a pull over. There is a broad gravel place next to the road and a rest station with toilets. I love how the buildings along this route have a distinguished woodsy look.
Driving to the left behind the out building I enter the service road which almost immediately begins to descend into the deep canyon.
The road has no shoulder but moss green boulders and red agate and dirty sand right up to the road gravel.
There are flat patches of a short white flower that glisten.
Why haven’t I come here in the morning before?
I pulled the car to a complete stop.
Two frogs hop across the road in no hurry at all and I let them.
The road became a series of narrow switch backs. I wondered what might happen if I met traffic coming from the other direction. What would I do?
The road was carved out of the side of a sometimes steep canyon where one side hugged the earth and the other side had nothing but a drop off. The tips of tall trees growing from far below were at eye level.
Occasionally I saw the blue river down there. Mostly I just saw a vast forest of fir trees and the cloud that my car kicked up from the dusty road.
Close to the river was a stand of cedars and a clearing with picnic tables and fire pits.
My friends didn’t want to use those because they thought there would be too many people for their wilderness adventure.
A little further down I parked the car.
Just as they described it the parking area was bordered by a mossy old log and there was an out building.
I grabbed my bag. The river was not far away and the sound was very loud. There were also chirping birds.
In school we were taught that there were flowers in the canyon that almost perfectly followed the calendar. Different flowers dominating the land in different months. June was the month for the magenta, purple, and deep blue Mintalla flowers. They look like buds that stand straight up. The whole plant is only six inches high with meaty looking dark green leaves and three inch long thick buds that curve to a soft point. The base of the petal bud is deep blue, then purple, then magenta with veins of brighter blue ever so faint closer to the tip.
The Mintalla are a draw for out of area visitors. Now I see why. It’s one thing to have pictures in a book but seeing them where they grow is something special!
I stopped, and set my watch to chime at 3pm. Maybe this is my lucky day. Mintalla flowers unfold and the seeds launch in a peculiar way that toys are sold to mimic.
Note to self, be near a Mintalla patch when that chime sounds. I want to see.
I wonder if that scent is from them. That’s now my favorite flower if so.

According to my friends I take the trail all the way to the river, so that’s next.
The trail is wide enough that campers can carry their rafts up where some use them as shelter.
I’m surprised there is so much sand on the trail and yet the ground is firm. It’s blanketed with a carpet of green and brown mossy carpet that grows over much of the trail in patches. Where there is none of that growing, there is sand.
The sun is illuminating the tips of trees but not yet the river. The trail leads right onto a sandy tan shore with its rounded boulders firmly set. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.
The scent of Mintalla wafts past again. I see a cluster of them on an island in the river.
A steep shore brings the forest right down to the waters edge and it is covered with ferns that look like part of a jungle. Growing out of them are branch-less trees whose height is exceedingly great with a palm tree top.
The steep shore on the other side gives way to a sweeping valley directly across from me that goes on a long distance, miles, and curves around to the left then out of sight.
They told me to follow the shore to the left, which is down river, until the redwood tree. Just beyond that there will be a pile up of big logs from the winter flow that had been held back by two huge cedars.
Go around the log pile.
So I did.
I pulled the paper out of my shirt pocket and reviewed the directions.
Look up stream (where I’d just been) and see a boulder that looks like the two round parts of a big heart. Look downstream and see a little island with white clay on the near side. Follow the shore until you’re across from the white clay. You’ll find a trail leading up the side of the canyon. If you walk over all the rocks and sand of the winter flow until you reach the edge. There is an almost perfectly round boulder and a smaller cubish boulder that you walk between and then you’re on the trail and it’s easy to see. Follow it.
I heard people and instinctively hid myself. Rafters were coming down the river and if there really were arrowheads to be found then I didn’t want to tip anyone off about where they were.
Three rafts sailed past. The rafters were laughing and shouting things to each other. Two of them went between a couple of the little islands and another passed by the far side and then they were gone.
When I started up the trail it was already ten in the morning.
The path was just as I imagined and I could easily visualize my silly friends running past with exaggerated terror in their eyes as they fled their imaginary demon. They really believe the old houses are haunted.
After I passed the stone steps I looked in earnest for the part where they said they’d tossed the arrowheads. It was in or near a patch of Mintalla flowers some of which faintly glow.
If they landed in the flowers, it would be unfortunate. We’re instructed not to touch the flowers because it damages the pedals.
I found the flowers!
One of the arrowheads was actually there in the midst! Another was on the dirt at the edge and with my heart pumping rapidly I retrieved it.
They weren’t kidding! It was real! Holding it to the sky, light passed through its translucent form. Completely intact, it was well made out of some sort of opal.
Everything my friends told me panned out.
I picked up the pace and practically ran up the trail until I reached a place where there was forest on the left, grass on the right. The trees formed a high canopy from nearly branchless trees and there was a brilliant sunlit field on the right.
I don’t know what kind of trees they were, but the effect is etheral. Blue shafts of light penetrate all the way to the ground.

My friends told me that when the path disappeared that I should stay on the grass where it borders the woods. After curving around to the right I would see where they found the artifacts.
As I came into the sun I warmed up fast. Full summer light. Insects filled the air with their sounds and songs. The scent of tree pitch mingled with that of the grass and flowers.
I stopped and closed my eyes and breathed in deeply with the sun on my face.
By the time I reached the fallen tree I was completely immersed in this place.
At the roots I began pecking away with my rock hammer.
After an unproductive half hour, I checked in the dirt where the roots had left a hole. Nothing there either. I should have brought a screen to run the dirt through.
At the edge of the hole I spied a little bit of something shiny. My heart lept as I saw that it was indeed a stone pressure flaked artifact. A genuine real arrowhead! I felt like I’d reached a heaven!
How many generations had it laid there? How many seasons of snow and rain and sweltering sun had it endured unnoticed? Almost, it seemed wrong to disturb it.
Time had stood still for this thing and now I was here to collect it.
I picked it up with a reverence I can’t express.
Had it been plain, I’d still have been thrilled, but it was a mix of what looked like buttery opal and flecks of gold. It was beautiful indeed! For A long time I examined it from every angle both against the sun and under it, slowly examining it’s chip patterns, its colors, and it’s feel.
I was about to dig for more when the strangest sound thundered past as if there were an approaching storm. A change fell over the place and it sounded like a full tempest was approaching. I looked at the fallen tree as a sign not to want to take my chances in the forest if there were any wind I also didn’t want to risk electrocution by lightning in a field if there were any of that. The weather changes rapidly in this canyon so I ran straight to the house. My gut was telling me to get out of there but I didn’t want fried and I didn’t want squished so that house was my best hope.
I felt something fall on me. It wasn’t wet like rain or cold like hail but it was sharp. I don’t know what it was but it made me run all the faster and to very nearly drop my pack in surprise.
Running around the back of the house, thunder rolled through and sheets of rain deluged everything. Now I was really anxious to get inside.
All the windows were too high off the ground to try to get in that way. There was a cellar entrance but I ran past that
and then I felt a whoosh of air and heard a sharp crack like a lightening strike. I thought a tree was falling and would surely get me.
I ran up the steps and knocked on the back door.
When another crack of thunder rolled through the canyon and a flash lit up everything, I turned the knob and let myself in.
It was strangely calm. The tempest didn’t penetrate the walls so I felt safe.
The walls must be very thick, I thought.
Ceilings were high in that place.
As I look them over I’m kneeling, untying my boots.
It’s different this time than when I toured a Canyon House with my parents. Then, I wasn’t interested. Now, today, I find myself very interested. I’m looking at the corner molding and the way the walls are finished and the materials that cover the floors.
This room is made for exactly what I’m doing. It’s a transition into the habitation. There there is a place to hang up my coat if I had one and to stow my boots. There is a shelf for my pack.
I place it there and paw through it looking for my camera.
No window is open and yet I feel the flow of fresh air. I like this place.
I start looking for the source of the breeze just out of curiosity.
How can a building that’s sat for several hundred years look and smell so nice? How can it feel so inviting?
This is not what I’ve been told about these places.
My friends at school find them creepy. I’ve read about people who tried to live in them but gave up.
Where is the breeze coming from?
I pulled a tissue from my pack to see if I tell the direction of the air with it. As I was holding it up, I both heard and felt a thunk from deep within the house as if it were under my feet.
That should have frightened me but I felt no such emotion. The house now had my curiosity.
Something made it stay this nicely kept and I was sure that whatever it was had to be harmless. After all, it was doing a good thing. So how could I be afraid?
I fished my flashlight from the pack and closed up the flap and put the pack on my shoulders.
If I couldn’t find the source of that noise maybe I would have to go outside and try that cellar door. I wondered if in finding that I could also discover the answers to other questions I had about a place with such marvelous properties.
The floors of his place were solid like as if they were stone, but they had a soft texture everywhere except for the part near the walls, which was polished. There were no seams, as if the floors and walls were poured or carved from an enormous block of rock.
That would be impossible, I decided.
What I thought to be trim pieces were solid integral parts of the walls. The floor felt soft to my stocking feet, so despite its solid appearance it could not be stone. Very comfortable, it actually felt a little springy.
The back room that I entered the house through passed into a kitchen.
Water poured continuously out of the wall down an angled slab and into the sink. Ingeniously, there were parts of the assembly that allowed the water to become a stream, a spray, or a silent trickle depending on how one moved its simple parts about relative to each other.
I am afraid to taste the water. There is no staining, no wearing away, and no disruption of flow. The water smells okay. I expected it to be dank.
There is enough light to fill the room, despite that the kitchen faces the shadow of the trees.
The door to the lower level not here, so I move on to an adjoining room with no windows on any of the walls. The ceiling has some sort of appliance that casts light on the walls and produces a diffuse illumination that makes me want to linger. Maybe this is a dining room.
That soft movement of air is still apparent.
Now I can even hear it. Reminds me of a breeze, but it’s not so strong. This floor continues to impress. It looks like a carpet in some ways and yet there is no pile or fiber. The patterns are pleasing.

As I pass into a great room, I feel something again as if some big machine has actuated far beneath me.
There must be a basement.
I search for a way down to it.

What I discover after looking high and low is that there is only access to upper floors. The more I see of this place the more I like it though. The flow of the interior layout is easy and sensible. On the second story there is an interior porch all around and the rooms are behind it, accessed by an airy little hall
I see features that I do not understand in some of the rooms but I am focused on finding the basement so I take note of the more interesting while I keep looking. Who knows? Maybe the access to the lower levels is only found somewhere in the upper ones?

I returned to the back entry to get my shoes, having failed to find the way downstairs (if there were stairs!) and while lashing up my boot strings I was reviewing in my mind the tour through this magnificent home. The bedrooms upstairs have pocket doors that don’t look at all like doors. You’d think it was a solid wall where the entrance to the room is. The hint that there is a door is in the floor pattern which makes a decorative path to the doors and part of the pattern includes ovals. Stand with your feet inside the two ovals and the door slides into a wall.
With my boots on my feet I searched the floor at the side walls for hints, but found none except at the leftmost wall of the room where a series of round designs were part of the floor. Remembering the bedrooms, I thought to myself, “Why not?” and went over and stood on the two largest designs just as I might stand on the ovals upstairs. With that, the wall, which had appeared quite solid, slid into itself revealing a hall whose left wall was glass with each window pair split so that the top ones were to the outside and the bottom ones overlooked what appeared to be a cavernous garage below.
Like every room in the house there was plenty of illumination. There were no windows and no obvious source of the light. It was furnished with all sorts of interesting goodies. Now it really seemed like actual people had lived and worked here.

That feeling of being in someone’s house returned powerfully and I thought to just leave. Seeing that room with all the stuff enforced the sense of immediacy. It was an orderly, practical looking room that looked recently used, especially because of the way the stool and some of the items on the bench were arranged. And no dust anywhere! I expected to turn and see the owners waiting for an explanation about why I am in their house.

But there are no owners. There is no trespass. They’ve been gone for a very long time. It’s hard to believe.

What could it hurt to look? I was amazed that no one found this place before me. Surely it would be published if they had! What is this burning that I feel in my chest?
The hall crosses the full width of the garage then disappears to the right.
There is a door that I walk through to stairs. I can see that the hall leads to a ramp down to the floor.
The garage is expansive with a high ceiling, even taller than that of the other rooms. It has a purposeful feel to it. There is a work bench, chairs, stools, and shelves and box like containers.
Much of it is curious and mysterious so the discovery of a magnifying glass on the workshop table seemed out of place.
In the center of the room was something infinitely more strange. Set about four feet off the floor were two cars. Neither had wheels.
They were beside each other, oriented the same direction. There appeared to be a front and a rear and sides to each. They were not identical and one was larger. Both were longer than wide and wider than deep.
They sat perfectly still, above the ground with no visible support.
I found a rod and waved it beneath each of them. It made no difference. I could not detect any force or energy or unseen prop. I waved the rod above them also, as if clearing spider webs.
I examined the smaller vehicle.
Its surfaces were smooth but not entirely shiny. They were clean and devoid of grease, bugs, fingerprints, or even dust. Maybe if I touched the surface it would cause damage or malfunction so I didn’t.
I pressed up on the tail with the rod, ever so gently and it moved. At that moment, equipment in the room came alive, especially on the bench. There were lights. White, blue, red, and a color I’d never seen before.
As if that were not surprise enough. the vehicle rose high above me, reoriented itself with the front faced opposite where it had been, and then it descended to just above my height, becoming as still as before.
My heart was racing. I wanted to see the inside but there were no doors or hatches or windows that I could find.
I pulled my pack off and was again going to grab my camera but the vehicle made a slight sound and almost half the length of the bottom tipped down all the way to the floor.
There were lights inside. I leaned under to look and was surprised to see that although there was no external sign of windows, the cockpit appeared to be fully glassed and I could see the ceiling and wall of the garage through it from the view below.
That moment was the moment this all became very very personal because I remembered dreaming of a machine very much like this thing when I was ten that I test drove in that dream. Actually, there were two that I drove. I don’t remember the second one other than that I did the same thing with it as with the first and tried desperately to commit to memory everything about it that I could see. It drove like a car but with levers and pedals to control it in the air where it could silently maneuver forward, backward, up and down.
The experience was burned into my memory.
So I stood beneath the hatch and leaned back against the door to get a better look inside and it pulled up. As it rose, the inner skin of the hatch changed shape so that by the time it completely closed, I was comfortably sitting in the control seat.
There were pedals in the foot well, but as it turned out, they were not for driving.
Never had I seen so many gauges and lights and gadgets in a single machine.
Visibility was excellent, as if the cabin was under a dome of glass. In fact, it was better than that because it appeared as if there was no glass, and no structural obstructions. When I looked down I could see the shop floor.
I don’t know how to explain, but I could also see to the rear and all around but the cabin did not look transparent. It was dark but comfortable. My hands were each palm down on a greenish glass hemisphere. Later, I discovered that that was not necessary but that the control of the vehicle was enhanced by my having hands on those glass things.
The craft responded to my will the same as if it were a hand or a leg. What I wanted it to do, it did. It was the most natural thing!
It rose to the ceiling and turned about. I explored the garage, finding the craft exceedingly maneuverable.

And then the alarm sounded on my watch.
I descended and aimed toward a round black hatch on the garage wall. It opened like an iris and then I pulled forward, passing through some sort of membrane that covered it. There was darkness and then another iris opened and I slowly entered the forest. I turned the vehicle around to see what the exit spot looked like so I could find it when I came back.
The machine was so easy! So I backed up and tried to familiarize myself with the location. The house was quite a ways off, up the hill.
I turned around and started through the forest, passing between trees. If there had been a storm before, now it was gone. I descended and looked for a patch of Mintalla flowers.
There they were! From the ground you can’t tell that they form patterns. I do wish I could explain but as close as I can come is to say that the patches of the flowers in any given part of the canyon form patterns that are very obvious from the air as being deliberate. Or maybe better said , they are obvious when viewed from this wonderful machine. It’s as if someone planted them according to a landscape design.
Then the thing I was waiting for began! I got closer.
The flower buds peel back until the outer layer is nearly flat radiating out from the bud like the petals of a sunflower, and then they spin and fly off the bud up into the air like little whirley circles just like the Mintalla toys we sell in Proxa. The petals fly up, held together by a little fiber in the center so that they form a propeller. Then aloft, the ring falls apart and each petal flies down like a maple seed and the forest for a few minutes is a spectacle of the pretty descent of the liberated petals like so many little helicopters! Being luminescent, they made a dramatic spectacle that looked like fireflies.
Then I noticed something else I didn’t know would happen. The release of the petals was happening as a pattern of waves that rippled through the canyon as if it were choreographed! They don’t tell you everything in school and I never heard of this part of the seeding spectacle. In just a few minutes it was all done and all that remained was the soft glow where the seed petals landed and even that was gone after a short while.

I took the machine up to the southern borders of the canyon and flew all the way to Rileton over the country road. Then I descended into the canyon and followed the full length of the Wend River in all of its twists and turns over rapids and the calm spots.
At Proxa, I flew to my house and navigated under the lid of the car port, just as I’d done in my dream so many years before. Just like in the dream and only because I’d done it in the dream, I surveyed the roof.
There was a lot about this vehicle that’s superior to the one in my prior dream.
Next I followed the road to the river and flew above it all the way to the sea.
Then I turned back and followed the river again until I reached a familiar part of the road.
I had to try this.
I lined the vehicle up as if it were a car and I drove one of my favorite roads that had a long slow dip followed by a very high hill which is very enjoyable to drive at lively speeds.
Mimicking the car, I drove down the dip and then up the long hill, except that at the top, I just kept going high into the sky. I turned in a wide arc to the sea and then descended to drive along the shore, over the wet sand and surf.
At Kankst I turned west and circled Mintomen Island.
Then I returned through the Ejit Mountains and tried to find home. When I was unable, and I was puzzled and lost, a light glowed increasingly brighter in the cockpit and it was that color that I’d not ever seen before.
I waved a hand over it and thought of the house and with that image in my mind the vehicle got us there. Before long I saw the iris open and I flew inside the garage.
The honest truth is that I was sure it was all a dream as I sat gratefully in the seat not wanting it to end but feeling satisfied and happy that it had ever happened.
Then the hatch lowered and I was soon standing under the vehicle and the hatch returned to its place I went to the bench to retrieve my backpack. The many lights all dimmed until they were off.
I wanted to take a souvenir but could not bring myself to do walk off with anything. It would be stealing.
I walked up the ramp and approached the end of the hall where without my having to do anything special, the door slid open allowing me in side the rest of the house.
It was late. I didn’t want to hike in the dark to the car so I went upstairs to the bedrooms to sleep on the floor.
Happily, with a little experience in the rest of the house, I figured out the beds. They were integrated into the room and I was able to get one working.

That was one of the best nights of sleep I ever had.