OMG!!!
I’m the first to admit, a lot of crazy coincidental things have happened to me in my lifetime – however, what Savannah Brett and I experienced this past Saturday is extraordinarily unbelievable.
Being back from college, Savannah had suggested before we all get busy with our summers, we should all go up to the land to spread Buckles’ ashes in the stream he loved to jump and swim in.
While still at home, I asked which way they wanted to take to get to the stream: hike down the 500 foot bluff or walk down the long road a half a mile away? The reason I asked, was it would determine what type of shoes and clothes we would all wear. They choose the road.
It was such a beautiful day to be at the land – the weather was perfect and the skies were all blue. Before heading down to the bottom of the valley to the stream – we decided to appreciate the view of the land first. About 20 minutes later, we set off for a long walk to the bottom of the valley.
It was a great walk, sharing stories of our many adventures with Buckles down by the stream. Once we reached the place, where Buckles loved to run, jump and dive into the deep portion of the stream, where sometime he would even try to catch a trout. We all took turns spreading his ashes in the stream – enjoying the moment we were all in, Savannah said, “lets go down to the river, where Buckles use to swim too.” She was speaking of the Mississippi another favorite swim place of Buckles’.
I was a little resistant, not cuz it was a couple mile walk from where we were – more so, cuz to get there, we would have to walk thru a half a mile of brush, just to get to the railroad tracks. Keep in mind, none of us were dressed to be doing this.
Savannah said, “what happened to our cool Dad?” I laughed and said, “OK, lets go.” The brush was so bad, Savannah took her shoes off and walked the half mile in the stream.
Once we got to the tracks, I said, now we have to walk about a mile down the tracks to the beach to get to the Mississippi river. Savannah asked “cant we just go thru there to get to the river?” She was pointing at the dried up marsh/wet lands – so we thought.
If U look at the photo in the link (“view of the land”) U will notice the wet lands I’m speaking of, it’s the vast forest in the background, behind the thin tree in the center of the picture.
U see we never had gone in there before cuz usually it is filled with water sometimes about 5 feet deep. However, since it has been such a mild Winter and Spring, the water level from the river never rose high enough this year to cover it.
Before I agreed, I went down onto the marsh to see what we were dealing with, it was soft, however it seemed stable – as I said, so it seemed. We had about a half a mile to walk thru this marsh forest of trees – it was very cool – like something U would see in a movie.
From time to time, in certain areas, my feet would start to sink, and the closer we got to the river the softer the ground was and the more it smelled like a foul swamp. We came about 30 feet from the river and it was all swampy mud – the shore line was about 3 or 4 football fields long. We decided to continue to walk down stream but still about 20 to 30 feet from the actual shoreline/water.
The ground was more unstable. At one point, I decided to test the ground and started to walk towards the water and I sank – and my nice clean white shoes along with the lower portion of my legs were now completely covered in swamp mud.
Savannah started apologizing. I said its my fault, I shouldn’t have tried to walk towards the river yet. She said we can go back, I said no way we came this far we will find a place to reach the river – we continued on.
We finally reached a part, where if we walked back into the forest a little bit, and then back out to the clearing we would be able to reach the water without any issues of mud. It worked and we all took our time spreading the ashes.
When it was time to head back, we decided to go deep into the marsh forest from where we were then walk the way we came – to avoid the mud.
Before I continue, please keep in mind of a few things:
1. None of us have ever been in this area before. 2. It’s about a mile up stream to where we used to take Buckles to swim in the river. 3. Buckles had not been up at the land since 2005. 4. Over the past 10 years, there has been some major flooding (I remember 2 years in particular were devastating) and this particular area we were walking in was 15 to 20 feet underwater.
We were 1/3 of the way into the forest when I looked down, stopped and said, “OH MY GOD!!” Savannah and Brett replied with a scared tone, “What, What?!” I said, “LOOK!!” pointing at it, they said what is it, I said, “look closer, it’s Duck T.!” they, were like “what?” they seemed confused what I said, I replied, “a Rubba Duck!” and “look, its chewed up!” Savannah added, I replied, “I know, it’s one of Buckles’ chew toys!” Brett said “how did it ever get over here?!”
All three of us stood there for about 5 minutes – stunned. We started questioning and trying to rationalize how it got there. Not to mention, the fact we came across it right after spreading his ashes. I said, “there is no way, it came from the beach, considering it’s a mile down stream and things don’t float upstream, specially with a holes in it from Buckles chewing on it.”
I confirmed with them both, that Buckles and I have never went anywhere near these wet lands. Besides with all the major flooding over the past 10 years anything in this area would have been washed away. We looked around and there was NOTHING on the ground anywhere except leaves.
I took out my phone and took a picture. As we were taking the picture we noticed the only thing green on the ground was Duck T’s remaining eye, a few green weeds and one weed was shaped as a heart. I shared with them, “out of all the strange things that has ever happened to us, this is by far the most unexplainable – something U would read in Ripley’s believe it or not books.”
Although we all knew and agreed it was a sign from Buckles – he was there with us.
The duck is now sitting on the shelf in my office at home.
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