Janie on the Run
Janie is an eleven year old with chestnut colored shoulder-length hair, freckled pale skin, and sparkling blue eyes, but at the moment she looks like more of a yellow blur than anything else. She is darting through her backyard rainy forest (not a rainforest, but that actually would be awesome—maybe one day she’ll get to explore a rainforest). She easily jumps puddles and logs scattered across her path. She smiles a thin, admiring smile at her yellow raincoat, yellow hat, and yellow galoshes because she appreciates simple tools that do their job well. While it doesn’t hurt that she looks cute in yellow, Janie, dry beneath her layers of protective clothing, is mostly concerned with function over style. She has plenty of tools at her disposal so that she can thrive in the forest, and her rain suit is perfect for running through a torrential downpour so that she can get to all of her various basecamps.
Yesterday and Today
Yesterday, school let out for summer. Today, Janie’s mom let out Janie into the wild. As an eleven year old who has proven herself safe, punctual, and respectful of her mom’s wishes, Janie gets to run wild in the expansive pine forest behind their cabin. “Be careful and be back by 6:00, okay?”, Janie’s mom cautiously said earlier that morning. Her mom slowly handed her a brown paper sack lunch and then hugged her firmly. “I will, I will, I will!” Janie responded before running out of air from her mom’s increasingly intense hug. Janie took off her backpack, put the bag lunch inside, and then geared back up for the storm outside. Once her mom finally opened up the back door, and as her lungs filled with the fresh air, fragrant with rain and pine needles, Janie stepped forward into the first day of the summer she had been daydreaming about since the first day of school last year.
Today is a perfect rainy day. Sure, sunny days are beautiful, but a steady drizzle has its own merits. A lovely atmosphere presses down on huge pine trees and trickles down drops of water, now imbued with pine oil from the needles they tickled. Janie loves the mist and, honestly, any excuse to wear her rain suit. Once she gets to her first of several base camps, she'll take it off and hang it on a small sapling before ducking into the calm dryness of a small tent. She is imagining the satisfaction of that upcoming moment now, even while ducking branches, jumping logs, and racing through the gathering puddles in her trail.
Tents, Tents, and Tents!
Janie now has 7 base camps. The forest behind her family's cabin is massive enough for this to be helpful for a young adventurer such as herself. Each base camp is spaced out over 7 acres of land, and each has its own reason for being. This is why her idea of permanent tent basecamps has turned out to be her ultimate best idea of all time, even if no one else understands why it’s so awesome. Her parents thought she was a bit strange last year when, on her birthday, she asked for 3 tents. "Why do you want more than one tent? What about 1 tent and a sleeping bag and a backpack?" But Janie had it all planned out in her mind. Her adventure diary was already full of entries about ideal dream adventures. Every single entry depended on establishing 7 base camps. She needed a bunch of tents to have a bunch of basecamps and she needed a bunch of basecamps to have a bunch of adventures. It was all very logical!
Luckily, Janie’s parents listened to her when she continued to beg, saying "Three tents please! Pretty please? I have significant plans." Her parents looked at each other funny but still bought her three tents. That birthday was at the end of last summer, and it was a great start to her kingdom of Foglight Forest. Since last year, during the school year, she managed to get 4 more tents. Three of them were purchased at a thrift store using her monthly allowance. They were remarkable finds, perfect condition, and two of them were even bigger and stronger than the brand new three she had gotten on her previous birthday! With allowance to spare, she also found camping pots and pans, a small backpack, a hat to keep her hair out of her face while swinging on vines, and binoculars to observe adventure opportunities.
When Christmas rolled around, Janie didn't even have to ask for a tent. By that time her parents were well aware of her obsession, and since they supported her love of the great outdoors, they automatically included a tent in her pile of gifts. Like her thrift store tents, it was a used one, but it looked like new and it was immediately obvious that it was the biggest and most awesome tent of all. Janie's eyes opened wider than anyone ever thought possible as she surveyed the size and layout of her new acquisition. "This is AMAZING! It's a huge dome that I can even stand all the way up in!”, she said. “Thank you thank you thank you! Oh and thanks for the books and the pencils and the clothes, too!" Her parents smiled, her dog Teddy hopped and yipped around her, and Janie fell to the floor to hug them all while rolling around on the material of the flattened tent lying on the ground.
Her Kingdom
With a grand total of 7 tents and 7 acres of the forest sprawling before her, Janie had plenty of work to do to keep her busy for an entire year. She had to plan one basecamp for each acre of the forest. Her dad helped her map out the entire forest during spring break. Instead of going on a beach vacation, her parents decided to take time off of work and stay home to do projects around the house and in the woods. Two of the days that week were spent walking through every square inch of the forest, documenting its size on maps at night, and ultimately drawing a detailed blueprint of the wonderland in their backyard.
"What should we call it?" her dad asked her as they put finishing touches on their custom map. "What do you mean?" Janie replied. "Well, you can keep saying 'the woods' or 'out back' when you play in the forest, if you want. But don't you want to give it a name? That way you are staking your claim,” her dad said. Janie listened to her dad speak then sat still and quiet. Her brain was clearly working overtime, and her dad noticed. "You know what, buddy?”, he said. “How about you sleep on it?" Abruptly, Janie blinked and seemed to snap out of her daydreaming. "So dad, what I'm thinking is that I want to name my forest kingdom but I want to just sleep on it if that's okay." Her dad, accustomed to her occasional moments of being lost in thought, smiled lovingly at Janie and said, "of course, sweetheart. Take your time".
The next morning, Janie woke up from a deep slumber and slowly wiped the hair from her eyes. Waking up often took her quite some time. Her brain began thinking about her backyard kingdom. She rolled around under the covers and made eye contact with her sweet puppy boy, Teddy. She then had the sudden memory that she was supposed to have "slept on it" regarding a name for the 7 acres of forest outside her window. With a jolt of awakening energy, she simultaneously felt a surge of responsibility and a thrill of excitement regarding the name. She was supposed to sleep on it, and she slept on it! She had dreamt an amazing dream all about it.
Skywriting Dream Words
Janie’s dream: Janie was in a darker version of the woods and was standing in a sea of moss. When she looked up, she noticed a humongous moon that filled the whole sky above the tree branches. Abruptly, fog covered the awe-inspiring moon. She grabbed her binoculars and looked up to the trees which were over a mile high. Near the top of the trees, there was a glowing bird up one of them. It looked directly at her through the two eyed binoculars and said, "It’s a bit foggy, no?" And then walked down the branch, hopped to a lower one, and then kept hopping away. Strangely, Janie was not surprised by the bird that was glowing and talking. Dreams are so strange! Janie wanted to talk to the glowing bird more, so she jumped toward the tree. When she jumped, she jumped a mile high! Janie launched through the air, closer and closer to the top of the massive tree. Once she was near the top she landed her butt on a branch that was so high up that she couldn't see the ground way down below.
The glowing bird saw Janie arrive. It hopped closer to Janie, and then grumpily said, "You fly better than me!"
"Why don’t you fly so well?" Janie asked her. Janie knew the bird was a ‘her’ because you know pretty much everything in dreams and also the bird’s voice sounded like a bird version of her mom’s voice.
The bird explained, "I fell into a glow puddle and I glow now, as you can see. Glowing is cool, but it's hard to glow and fly at the same time."
"Oh, I see", Janie said.
This all sounds quite strange now that I'm awake, Janie thought. What is a glow puddle, after all? But everything made sense in the dream!
After Glowbird told her about how difficult it was to fly and glow at the same time, Janie's binoculars slipped from her hands and started falling into the fog below her all the way down to the ground. Janie, startled and not wanting to lose her 'noculars, reached for them below and lost her balance! She fell from the tree branch! Falling, falling, falling, she caught up with her 'noculars in midair, and then more falling, falling, falling, but then a weird feeling on her back and a soft light in her peripheral vision as she slowed down and eventually came to a floating stop in the foggy air.
"Glowbird! You saved me! I thought you couldn't fly well!", Janie screamed.
"Well," Glowbird said, "I guess I just needed motivation. Let's see how I do with a bit more glow flying now."
Janie and Glowbird flew into the foggy dreamscape forest and lit it up with beautiful streams of light from the bird's constant glow. Everywhere Glowbird flew, she left a lingering trail of soft warm yellow light, an unfading light trail that streaked behind her. At one point, Glowbird sneezed and the color of her glow changed from yellow to green. Janie laughed about it a lot and loved the way it looked so she started putting black pepper under Glowbird’s beak to make her best bird friend sneeze more. Over and over again she sneezed and changed colors. Yellow to green to blue to red to orange to purple to dream colors that she had never seen before and couldn't explain. Eventually, they perched near a waterfall and observed the colorful trail weaving through the air all through the forest fog. While they were flying Janie didn't pay attention to Glowbird's movements. But once they were both perched and looking at the multicolored glow trail suspended in the fog, she observed that Glowbird had used the light rays to write words! Now that they looked at the forest together from a distance, she saw the light painting spelled out "Foglight Forest"!
"Foglight Forest! That's it!", she excitedly yelled at Glowbird.
Glowbird startled a bit, then sneezed and turned bright pink. She ruffled her feathers and said, "Thanks for the help flying, buddy!" before launching off into the fog once again. The dream ended there.
Foglight Forest
Once Janie was fully awake and reminiscing about this fantastical dream, she started writing it down in her dream journal. It was the best dream she had ever had. It was so fun, beautiful, magical, and immersive that she wished she was still there. Looking out the window, expecting to be disappointed, she instead saw that the forest in her backyard was pretty close to her dream: it was draped in fog, mist, and gentle morning light. Sure, the dream version of Foglight Forest was majestic, but so is the real one!
"Foglight Forest! Foglight Forest!" she exclaimed the second she saw her father. Her dad was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading a book. He smiled in delight as his daughter’s enthusiasm so early in the morning. "Ooh, good name, Janie! I'm glad you slept on it and came up with something really good”, he said.
"Yeah! That was awesome and I had the best dream in the world”, Janie sang while dancing around the table.
"That's great!” her dad said. “Let's put the name on the map and make some copies and then the kingdom is officially yours!"
Back to Today
All of that is ancient history by now, and Janie is now on her 5th folded copy of the map of Foglight Forest that her dad helped her construct. Good thing he thought to make copies! An adventurer's lifestyle often resulted in soggy paper, torn paper, and even sometimes burnt paper maps. Janie had been studying the Foglight Forest map on the last day of school yesterday so she could plan out today's freewheeling adventure. Today, the first day of summer, would be a full day of taking stock and checking on her 7 well established base camps. Like anything, sometimes the camps needed a little upkeep. She would check on every single camp before it was time to come home. She is starting to get winded from her ambitious pace, so a rest at the tent sounds especially enticing. Before arriving at the first tent on her route, though, she still has plenty of time to perform a mental inventory of all her camps.
Seven Unique Basecamps
Tool Tent, for starters, is exactly what you might think it would be: it was set up to be an important center for all of her adventures because it was a valuable, and quite hidden, storage spot for many tools and belongings. Because of the limitations of Janie’s allowance, most of her stuff was a few years old by the time she bought it. That’s no matter, though, because some of the best stuff is old and proven to stand the test of time. Plus, you can get more things when they’re pre-loved and inexpensive! So, Tool Tent has a whole toolbox of things like hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, carabineers, nuts and bolts, thingamajigs, shovels, doohickeys, a lantern, a spare pocket knife, spare boots, rope, tarps, other stuff, more other stuff, and may things like that.
Tool Tent is full of goodies. Tool Tent is her headquarters and the easiest place for her to work on her inventions. She’s got big plans for this summer and is planning on at least three invention breakthroughs. Tool Tent is the biggest dome tent of all, the one she got for Christmas. It’s situated at the bottom of a hill, and it’s surrounded by choice junkyard parts that she picked out one day when the junkyard man noticed her using her binoculars to spy on his stuff from a tree just past the chain link fence that keeps thieves out. Once the junkyard man saw Janie in the tree with her binoculars, he recognized her right away. As an old friend of Janie’s parents, he called up her parents to invite her over for a free shopping spree. The day after she was spying, there they all were, carting an old red wagon through the junkyard and gathering some parts that caught Janie’s eye yet still would fit in her radio flyer wagon. What an awesome day that was. She marveled at her haul of “junk” (TREASURE!) and fantasized about everything she could build with it all. Zip lines, tree fort elevators, dirt powered go-karts, and even a time machine. She’ll start her inventions small, then go bigger with time.
When at Books Base, another one of her 7 basecamps, she writes all about her invention ideas and how they would be assembled. The Books Base basecamp is a great environment for concentrating. Reading and writing is best at this basecamp. If an invention at Tool Tent isn’t working out, Janie usually takes a break by going over to Books Base, reviewing her blueprints, and revising her plan to try inventing again later. Or, if it’s just a relaxing sort of afternoon, Janie sometimes sets up her hammock next to the tent there and reads in the shade while bugs and birds and babbling brook sounds chatter away in the background. Books Base is the first base camp she ever created. Janie need a place to read in nature, and so she made a perfect hideout for just such occasions. The tent in Books Base is her own private library, full of reference guides, novels, adventure books, and even some school textbooks that come in handy on occasion. In the spring and the fall, she spent a lot of time reading and writing. It was in an inspiring location with equal parts mossy rocks, trickling stream, trees, and even a small tree fort that Janie started but never quite finished.
“Running and thinking at the same time is not very difficult”, Janie thought, “but it’s probably smart to focus on not tripping when you’re running through a wet forest that is littered with obstacles. But I can’t not think about my camps! These are all my basecamps:
1. Tool Tent has tools!
2. Books Base has books!
3. Birdwatch Bay is next to the lake at the bottom of the cliffs and has lots of cute birds I watch with my ‘noculars.”
4. “Fire Fork is my basecamp at a fork between two trails and is where I sometimes do a fire. But only if it’s raining a lot like today and I’m not worried that it will spread. And I don’t tell mom and dad about fires but it’s fine because I’m super careful. The tent there stores firewood and keeps it dry so that it will catch fire in the barrel even if it’s raining.”
Janie is still running now, and still thinking, and still talking to herself in her mind.
5. “Camp number five is Tree Climb Territory because there are awesome trees there and sometimes I’ll spend all day climbing trees and eventually I’m going to put the tent up in a tree but for now that tent holds tree climbing equipment like ropes and...well, ropes.”
6. “Camp number six is Woodwork Way where I can make cool wood stuff like my walking staff I made last summer. And this summer I’m going to make a wood statue of Teddy the dog because he is the cutest dog.”
7. “Camp seven is Slingshot Spot,” Janie thought, as she slowed down and began walking.
Janie is getting closer to Slingshot Spot camp and decides to approach it slowly, partly because she has been anticipating her camps for so long, partly because she is getting tired, and partly because she has mixed feelings about this specific tent. Slingshot Spot is one of her newest basecamps and it is one she decided to build after she invented her first slingshot.
About Slingshot Spot
A year ago, Janie invented her first slingshot. She started working on her slingshot at Woodwork Way, of course, because she had to cut and whittle down a tree branch into the perfect handheld weapon. While the small branch she had found was already a good wishbone shape, she then spent an entire morning carefully perfecting the piece of wood until it was symmetrical, smooth, and perfectly strong to add a thick rubber band around the top of the “Y” shape. To add the rubber strap, she hiked over to Tool Tent, searched through her junkyard treasure, and eventually found a perfect piece of thick rubber that was originally wrapped around some sort of strange little metal wheel. Tying that rubber band around the “Y” shaped branch, Janie had finally created the ideal slingshot. It was a satisfying thing to build. Unfortunately at that moment she didn’t yet realize how much power a slingshot could give a girl.
Equipped with her new slingshot weapon, Janie excitedly ran over to Birdwatch Bay to gather some pebbles that would be perfect ammunition. She was happy to see that there were more birds in nearby trees and cliff nests than she had ever seen before! There were blue ones, red ones, Mohawk ones, baby ones, big scary ones, and every possible combination of all those bird categories! It was awesome, so she took a minute to unzip her birdwatcher tent to grab her ‘noculars, bird journal, and folding camp chair. She then observed birds for at least twenty minutes. It was a breezy, beautiful, bird-loving sort of day, and she smiled with contentment as she sketched a few new bird drawings in her bird journal.
After drawing birds, rocks, lake, and sun for a while, Janie stretched out and stood up from her luxurious camping chair. “Well, back to slingshot business,” she said, returning her birding gear back into the birdwatcher tent. “Time to gather some pebbles.” And, that was what she did. Janie scooped up handfuls and handfuls of pebbles from the lapping lake water that she called the bay. Filling her pant pockets and getting her legs wet with the residual moisture from the small rocks, she decided to try out the slingshot and see if it worked as well as it looked. Janie observed her immediate environment and decided to aim her slingshot directly into the lake. On first attempt, the pebble she had locked, loaded, and released ultimately just toppled to her feet.
“This is harder than I thought it would be,” she said out loud. Resolutely, she then placed another small stone in the rubber of the sling, pulled it backward, and let go. Again, she had let loose a total dud!
“Dangit!,” she yelled loudly, scaring off three nearby beautiful blue-breasted Mohawk birds. “Oh, sorry,” she apologized to the birds while watching them fly away towards the lake and the sun suspended over the water. Then, without thinking, refilling her slingshot with another pebble, expecting another inconsequential slingshot attempt, pulling back the rubber band and taking aim towards the sun, Janie let go and sent a perfectly executed shot at one of the blue birds to whom she had just apologized. The bird was hit. It fell from the sky and into the water.
“Oh no. Oh no, oh no….oh no”, Janie said out loud. She felt a moment of panic.
Janie stared at the water where the bird had fallen, a small spot of water that was still rippling where the lake had swallowed it. Janie had just killed a bird. This couldn’t be happening. She loved birds. What had she done?!
Slowly moving her eyes away from the scene of the crime, she then looked down at her hand which was holding her newly created slingshot. Her hands were shaking, and she dropped the weapon onto the ground. She looked back up at the sky and saw the two remaining blue birds still flying, circling around the spot where their friend had fallen. As Janie watched them, the two birds darted away and out of sight. Staring at the sky towards the sun left Janie a bit blinded with sunspots in her eyes, but the emotional shock of what she had just done was still the most overwhelming sensation of standing in that moment.
As tears started to fill her eyes, Janie immediately turned on the spot, ignored her dropped slingshot, and started running. Up the steep trail that had led her down to Birdwatch Bay, she ran as hard as she could while her eyes blurred with tears and her mind clouded with the racing thoughts of regret and sadness of what she had just done. Running, then tripping, standing, then climbing vines and tree roots to get to the top of the trail and closer to home, she eventually exhausted herself by the time she reached the top of the path, and collapsed on a large slate rock so that she could cry for a little bit longer to herself. By the time she was done crying, she looked down at her white shirt and saw that it was covered in dirt, grass stains, and spots that were wet from her own tears. She never told anyone about the horrible thing she did and after that fateful summer day she frequently wondered to herself if she was an evil person.
However, over time, Janie began to realize that she was not an evil person, and she did everything she could to avoid hurting birds or other animals from then on. That was why Slingshot Spot was an important camp-- she set it up only a month or so ago, in April, before school was out for summer this year. She created Slingshot Spot as a safe, bird-free place to practice her aim. The guilt of killing a bird last summer was very difficult to think about, but over time, she began to forgive herself and move on. Before Slingshot Spot existed, back in March, she went back to the sad spot at Birdwatch Bay for the first time since she shot the bird. Her slingshot was in the same spot where she dropped it. She picked it up. Janie felt nervous. It felt like the beautiful birds there that day were judging her, but after a little while she felt more calm and even enjoyed revisiting that lovely camp. Janie put her slingshot into her backpack so that the birds there would not be scared of her. She spent time cleaning up the tent, looking around with her ‘noculars, and revisiting some of her favorite bird drawings from last year which were still safely stowed away in the birdwatcher tent.
At one point during her March visit to Birdwatch Bay, Janie started crying when thinking about the blue bird she shot. But, forgiving herself and closing her eyes to imagine that bird’s family forgiving her, she started feeling strong again. She gathered a few pebbles that looked like blue bird eggs, gathered up some small wiry sticks, and created a memorial that looked a lot like a Mohawk bluebird nest. “Goodbye, Silas”, she said. For whatever reason, Janie got it into her head that the bird’s name was “Silas”. Giving him a name felt like the right thing to do, and so did a small memorial service. She knew that the fake nest she built wouldn’t stay there forever, but at least it helped her in that moment to remember the innocent creature that she harmed. She decided not to ignore her sad feelings about Silas forever. She did a bad thing but she wasn’t a bad person. She wouldn’t shoot a bird again. Foglight Forest was her home and you don’t hurt people that live in your home.
Where Were We? Oh Yes, Back to Today
Now walking into the clearing of Slingshot Spot, catching her breath from this morning’s invigorating puddle run, Janie arrives at the smallest of her basecamp tents, a dark brown single person tent that is currently housing some small targets and her infamous slingshot. Janie loves Slingshot Spot, and it’s exciting to be here on the very first day of summer. Now that she is extremely careful to not hurt anyone with her weapon, Janie can responsibly enjoy her ‘sling’ as a fun toy to shoot at targets. Taking some time to enjoy her surroundings, she removes her yellow rain hat, unbuttons her yellow rain jacket, and then hangs them both on a nearby tree. She unzips her brown tent and sees that everything seems to be in order. The tent isn’t collapsed, there are no leaks inside, and all her belongings are right where she left them.
“Good,” Janie thought, “the first camp I checked today is in good shape.” Once fully inside the tent, she takes a moment to enjoy the soft amber light coming in through the translucent material of the shelter. She sits inside, cross-legged, and counts her targets while gripping the smooth handle of her slingshot. The rain outside has slowed down to a trickle by this time, and the tiny pops of water droplets along with their silhouettes against the tent make Janie feel like she is at the perfect spot at the perfect time. “This is perfect”, she says to herself as she rummages through her knapsack for the sandwich her mom gave her earlier this morning. Janie bites into the peanut butter and banana sandwich while letting herself relax onto her back to stare up to the top interior of Slingshot Spot’s reliable brown tent.
Janie is relishing her sandwich and her freedom. Some moments are so nice that you wish you could fold them up into neat rectangles and roll them into a compressed bundle that will fit into your backpack for later use. Sometimes when she’s going to sleep at home, Janie tries to unroll fond memories in her mind like that—she pretends that a moment in time is a blanket or a tent or a sleeping bag that she can crawl into whenever she wants. This fond memory sleepy time activity usually works for Janie because she usually falls asleep within five minutes, and with a smile on her face.
All perfect moments end, and this one is no exception. Janie finishes her sandwich, stretches her arms, and thinks about her dog Teddy who is back home with her mom. Teddy likes to curl up on the couch while the family humans watch TV or read a book. Janie wishes Teddy could come on adventures with her, but he is a bit old and one time she brought him in to the forest and it did not go very well.
Even though he is 8 years old, Teddy has two modes: 1. asleep on the couch, or 2. uncontrollable wolf athlete. “I can't take him out in the forest with me anymore because I had him on a leash one time and he got away and I twisted my ankle and cut my knee trying to chase him and he chased a deer and then disappeared for twenty minutes. He came back but mom got worried and I got scared,” Janie thinks to herself.
On that awful day when Teddy disappeared, Janie had panicked. While Teddy was missing, she wondered if he was gone forever and if it was all her fault. Janie had run around her forest kingdom trails screaming, “TEDDY COME HERE BOY TEDDY COME HERE!”, and eventually all 15 pounds of that grey wiry fur ball showed up with a smile on his face and a wag in his tail. What a relief it was to have him back! He looked so happy, probably because he enjoyed having a forest escapade just like Janie!
It was great that Teddy had fun on his own, but who knows what could have happened to him out in the wild? After that frightening day, Janie decided that an adventurer’s risk-taking life in Foglight Forest is best reserved for human girls such as herself, rather than mature miniature mutts (old small dogs).
Wait, Where Were We? Oh Yes, Back to Today Again
“Where was I?”, Janie thinks to herself. “Whenever I think about Teddy I get distracted because he is really cute. It’s time to set up some slingshot targets.” Janie shoves her trash back into her knapsack, unzips the tent, and re-emerges into the fresh air of Slingshot Spot. She walks around the perimeter and observes that the rain has stopped completely. Drops drip from the surrounding pine trees, but above the branches and green needles Janie can see rainclouds moving away to reveal a rich blue sky. Janie reaches into her tent to grab a few small paper targets for slingshot practice. She drew some circular bull’s-eye targets by hand a few days ago during art class at school. Now that she is finally able to use them at Slingshot Spot, just the way she imagined she would, she is getting excited. Janie places five of the paper targets on five different tree branches, at different heights and distances. She also notices a small pile of junkyard stuff she left here one time.
“Oooh, junkyard treasure! I forgot I had this stuff!”, Janie excitedly says in a singsong voice. Strangely, while Janie runs over to her pile of rusty metal odds and ends, a couple of tree branches just behind the pile move around. Janie is so caught up in the joy of finding her forgotten belongings that she doesn’t even notice that some animal must have run off to hide behind the cover of dense pine needles! Normally, for obvious reasons, junkyard items end up in Tool Tent. Metal stuff is usually perfect for inventing and has nothing to do with slingshotting. Janie inspects the pile of objects in front of her, noticing three hubcaps, two crow bars, a metal cage, and a pulley with a rope attached to it.
Suddenly, inspired by the metal scraps at her disposal, Janie spins wildly around and looks at her paper targets which she had just hung in nearby trees. “Let’s make this interesting!”, she says, as she reaches into her pockets and puts on her leathery, tetanus-preventing, adventure gloves. Grabbing a hubcap, she takes it over to the base of a tree and sets it against the tree’s roots. Then, grabbing the remaining two hubcaps from her heap of rusty goodies, she places one up a branch a few feet away from the first hubcap, and then she sets the last hubcap near the roots of yet another pine tree to the right. If Janie had been paying closer attention, she would have noticed that the rope and pulley item from the mound of metal junk had started moving away from its initial resting spot, inch by inch, seemingly alive and moving on its own!
Pinging, Dinging, and Donging Perfect Pebbles on Rusty Treasure
Janie, oblivious to the whole entire world except for the placement of her paper and hubcap slingshot targets, does not notice that her pulley is being dragged away. Janie takes a step back to survey her target practice setup. It looks like an arcade game! “Time to shoot some stuff that can’t get hurt!”, Janie says. She thinks about Glowbird from her awesome Foglight Forest dream. She would never hurt Glowbird. She would never hurt another real life bird ever again, either. She would especially never hurt a blue Mohawk one like Silas (poor guy). Janie sighs to herself, closes her eyes, looks back up to the blue sky, and then picks up a handful of pebbles from the ground next to her brown tent. She raises her slingshot in her left hand, a pebble in the right, and locks the ammo into the rubber band. Janie concentrates and aims at the first hubcap which is resting at an angle against the roots of a tree. She breathes slowly, steadies her aim, and releases the first pebble of the summer.
The rocketing pebble hits the hubcap target perfectly, at an awesome speed of probably a hundred miles per hour. Just hitting a target is amazing enough, but Janie set up the three hubcaps at very specific angles so that the pebble would bounce and keep going! So, when the first pebble of the summer hit the first hubcap of the summer, it instantly bounced with a loud “PING!” and headed straight for the second hubcap, on which it instantly bounced with a loud “DING!” and headed straight for the third hubcap, on which it also instantly bounced with a loud “DONG!” and headed straight for a thicket of pine trees past the pile of rediscovered junk! Expecting to hear no more pings, dings, or dongs, Janie lowers her slingshot with wide eyes and a huge smile that can only come from shooting the best slingshot shot of all time. In the one second that she lowers her slingshot, however, a new sound comes from the area where the pebble went: “PONG!”. The pebble hit something metal over there! And now there is another sound: “Ouch!”
What the Pebble Hit
When Janie heard the word “Ouch!” coming from the woods, she instantly imagined it was the sound of Glowbird getting hit. She simultaneously instantly imagined Silas the bird (rest in peace) getting hit. “This cannot be happening! This can’t happen again! I don’t want to hurt any birds!”, she thought. But, wait. The voice she just heard, come to think of it, though, was a human voice. Birds can talk to people in dreams, but sadly they do not speak English in awake life. So, was that a person talking? In all Janie’s adventures in Foglight Forest, she was always alone. The woods is her kingdom, after all, and she doesn’t share it with anybody.
In the space of two seconds, Janie went from sad and panicked to surprised and confused, and maybe even a little angry. Janie looks down at her small pile of available pebble ammunition, picks up the biggest pebble, and loads up her slingshot for use as a weapon of self-defense.
“Who’s there?!” Janie yells towards the trees. A branch twitches.
“I know someone is there because birds can’t speak English!”, Janie says. The twitching branch stops moving. There is no sound for ten seconds.
“Ouch isn’t English,” a small voice responds.
“Ouch is English!” Janie retorts.
“Ouch is a sound, not a word!” the mysterious voice says.
“I have a slingshot and plenty of ammo and I’m not afraid to make you say ‘ouch!’ again!”, Janie angrily responds to the trees.
For the first time, Janie notices that the pulley which was originally in her pile of junkyard treasures is no longer sitting in the pile with the crowbars and other stuff. The pulley must have been pulled by its rope over towards the trees, because it sits closer to the location of the mysterious voice rather than Janie’s junk.
“Hey! You’re stealing my invention!”, Janie screams towards the trees.
“What invention? This pulley?”, the voice screams back.
“Well, yeah!”, Janie says.
“This is just a pulley. What did your invention do?”, the voice asks.
“I hadn't decided yet,” Janie says back.
“That's silly. Inventions have reasons to exist,” the voice replies.
“Don't tell me how to invent, you conniving thief,” Janie says.
“I really need this pulley,” the voice says.
Janie: “I need it, too. It's mine now.”
The voice: “But seriously, I looked in every junk yard and couldn't find one anywhere else. I really need one and this is the first one I found!”
Janie: “I don't care.”
“What if I tell you what it's for?” the voice asks.
“I don't care!” Janie angrily replies as she continues aiming her loaded slingshot in the direction of the speaking voice.
The voice speaks, “This is the last piece I need for my finest creation of all time.”
“I said I don't care! You stole it from me. How do you even know it works for what you need?”
In response to Janie’s anger, the voice continues to say, “I just know it will work for my design. I have a knack for these things. One time I did a jigsaw puzzle just in my brain from looking at the puzzle pieces that were on the table. I did the puzzle in my head.”
“That's silly. How do you know you did the puzzle right? You just pretended in your head that you finished it,” Janie says.
“Nuh uh. My mom will tell you I did it, too. She wouldn't lie about that,” the voice pleads.
“Just walk away from my pulley and I won’t shoot you. This is my forest,” Janie says.
“I'm making a dog rollercoaster,” the voice says.
“…”
“…”
Janie stands in silence for twenty seconds before slowly and calmly loosening tension on the rubber band of her loaded slingshot. Janie lets the pebble bullet fall the ground.
“Hello?” the curious voice says.
“I’m listening,” Janie says.
The Boy with Three Names
From around the trunk of an especially thick pine tree trunk, an army helmet peeks at Janie. Below the metallic army helmet, two small eyes quickly view Janie then quickly retreat back to their safe hiding place behind the tree. “I won’t hurt you. I promise,” Janie says. Moments later, the helmet reemerges, followed by the shy eyes, followed by a small nose, mouth, neck, and shoulders. It’s a young boy!
“How old are you?!”, Janie impulsively asks the boy, while immediately blushing.
As the boy continues to emerge from the darkness of his pine tree thicket, he drops the rope which is attached to the pulley. He walks into plain sight, straightens his army helmet, extends his arm, and points squarely at Janie.
“You almost killed me! Good thing I was wearing my helmet!” he yells at Janie.
“So that’s what that ‘PONG!’ sound came from. Wait, why did you say ‘ouch!’ if I hit your helmet?” Janie asks the boy.
“Well it wasn’t an ouchie sort of ‘ouch!’ as much as a surprised sort of ‘ouch!’”, the boy tells her.
“I really don’t want to debate about the word ‘ouch!’ again. How old are you?”, Janie insistently asks the boy as he steps closer to her.
“Well, I’m 8 years old but I don’t know why it matters,” the boy tells Janie.
“Eight?! You are way too young to be out in my kingdom,” Janie says indignantly.
“Your kingdom? What the heck?”, the boy replies. “This is just the woods near my house.”
“Well, it’s my woods and you are too young to be here and it’s my woods so you should not be here even if you were old enough to be here, which you aren’t. What’s your name and why are you sneaking around my Slingshot Spot basecamp?!”, Janie yells.
As the boy steps closer and closer towards Janie, she notices just how short he is. She towers over him by at least a foot, even while he is wearing his army helmet. The boy is wearing dirty blue jeans that were patched at the right knee, freshly torn at the left knee, and covered in grass and dirt stains. He wears a red T-shirt that has a drawing of a bicycle on it, and over the shirt he wears a dark green army style jacket which nicely complements his metal helmet. The helmet, at closer inspection, is clearly meant for bigger, more adult sized heads. Wobbling around on his head and annoyingly tapping each of his small ears as it seesaws with his walking movements, the helmet is clearly something he loves to wear despite its impracticality.
“My name is William but my friends call me Billy. And my enemies call me ‘Monster Man’”, William says. “And I was not sneaking around your basecamp. Well, I guess I was. But I was just exploring the woods because I live close to here and I need some construction materials that sometimes are in the woods.”
“Alright, Monster Man,” Janie says. “This is my forest and that is my pulley and you should know that when you’re here, you’re my guest.”
“Okay fine, just don’t shoot me again!” William replies.
Janie takes a good look at William, or Billy, or Monster Man, bends down to pick up her slingshot, and backs up a few steps. William looks frightened at her behavior, but stands his ground. Janie then turns around and unzips her tent to stow her belongings away.
“So, Monster Man, what were you saying about a dog roller coaster?” Janie asks.
“You know, only bad guys call me Monster Man,” William says with furrowed brows.
“Well you might be my enemy still. We’ll see if you upgrade to William.”
“Or Billy? My friends call me Billy.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The dog roller coaster. Talk,” Janie replies.
The Best Laid Plans of Dogs and Boys
“Okay,” William begins his explanation. “My dad and I moved in to a house over here a few months ago. We have a pretty big backyard that is close to the woods here. When we first got here, my dad told me that I could do whatever I wanted in the backyard. At first, I wanted a tree house. We built one. Then, I wanted a zip line. We got one of those. Which, by the way, is really fun. You should get a zip line.”
Janie looks at William with judgmental eyes. She rubs her hands to her face, then says, “I already have a zip line at another base camp. Don’t try to teach me about zip lines. I basically invented zip lines and that pulley you are stealing was going to be another zip line here at Slingshot Spot so, yeah, I know about zip lines.”
“Okay, okay! Sorry!” William says. “Well anyways, my dad and I built a tree house, we set up a zip line, and we even built some deep trench tunnels so we could have hidey holes when we would have water fights. It was super awesome. But after a while, I wanted to try something new. And right around the time when I was getting tired of all the cool stuff in my backyard, we went and got a dog!”
Janie’s eyes light up at the thought of a dog. Janie loves Teddy more than any other dog in the world of course, but she loves dogs in general and will always be excited to meet a new dog if it is a nice dog. “What kind of dog did you get?!” Janie nearly yells at William.
William is sensing that his story is having a positive effect on Janie’s attitude. He looks around, notices an inviting looking oversized rock on the ground, and takes a seat. Janie watches his actions and continues to stand. She knows that it stopped raining but that the rocks and ground are still wet. Therefore, she knows that William Billy Monster Man’s butt is getting wet now. William obliviously looks up at her and continues speaking. “We got an Irish Wolfhound. Her name is Cala.”
Immediately following his most recent statement, William Billy Monster Man looks up at Janie with a small smile on his face. Janie looks back at him, lost in thought. She is trying to imagine an Irish wolfhound but can’t remember what they look like. “That’s awesome,” Janie says, but then realizes she only said that because she didn’t know what else to say. William’s smile disappears from his face. Janie can tell that he was trying to impress her but it did not work.
Instead of standing in silence forever, though, Janie has an idea. She grabs her rain hat, rain jacket, and her backpack. “Follow me!” she then yips at William while running towards the well-trod trail that connects Slingshot Spot to all of her other basecamps. Janie runs onto the trail and nearly out of sight by the time William stands up, notices how wet his butt got from sitting on the rock, yells “darn!”, tightens the strap around his army helmet, and finally chases after Janie. Luckily, William Billy Monster Man is surprisingly fast for his size and well-practiced in the art of running, as he runs the mile for his track team. Once he gets onto the trail, he just barely sees the bright yellow of Janie’s rain gear up ahead. Janie has the lead, but William can catch up. After all, Billy earned his nickname of “Monster Man” because of his speed on the track.
Within thirty seconds, William catches up with Janie. Now closely on her tail, he yells ahead, “Where are we going?!” to which Janie startles in surprise at how closely William snuck up on her. “You scared me!” she pants, now out of breath from her rapid run away from Slingshot Spot. “We’re going to Books Base,” she further informs William. And, no sooner than she states their destination do they arrive. Janie slows to a jog as she turns off of the trail and under some branches. William follows, and once he raises his head from ducking under the tree branches, he finds a serene clearing near a brook which is populated by a hammock and a tent.
“Sorry I ran away so quickly. Sometimes when I get a great idea I just get so excited that I have to go for it right away,” Janie says between gasping breaths as she throws her rain gear and backpack onto the hammock. She continues breathing heavily as she walks toward the large red library tent that is the true heart and soul of this book-themed basecamp.
“That’s okay, I like to run,” William Billy Monster Man replies. He stands watching Janie enter the red tent while gently catching his breath as well, only barely breathing harder than normal.
Janie disappears from his sight once she enters the large red tent. Now that the rain disappeared and the purity of a blue sky showcases a welcome sun, a crisp shadow of the tent’s contents can be seen silhouetted in the bright light of day. William notices stacks and stacks of different sized books clinging to the internal walls of the tent. “There must be a hundred books in there!”, he thinks to himself.
“Here it is!”, comes Janie’s voice from within the red dome. “Encyclopedia of Dog Breeds!”
“Did we run like our butts were on fire just so you could see a picture of what Cala looks like?” William asks.
“Maybe, sort of. I just don’t know what an Irish wolfhound is,” Janie says.
“Well, I have a picture of her right here in my helmet!” William tells her. He starts to undo the strap under his chin that keeps his helmet from banging around his ears and head too much while running.
“Wait! Don’t ruin the surprise!” Janie screams. “We came all this way so we could look at this book! I got this book a long time ago and I haven’t looked at it in a while but I love it and when I get to use it for a good reason I want to use it!”
William, taken aback by the intensity of Janie’s response, tightens his helmet strap once again. “Wow, okay, sorry! Let’s look her up in there!”
Janie stares at William Billy Monster Man for a few moments, blinks, then looks down at her dense book. “Yay!” she says as she heads to the back appendix, the spot in the back of a book where it tells you all the places you can find specific words. In this case, Janie goes directly for the section in the appendix that lists words that start with “I” so that she can find “Irish wolfhound”. Once she sees what she’s looking for, she sees page numbers associated with the word. “Pages 82 and 83!”
