Enter “The Warden”
When Planet Earth Needs a Superhero Patrolling Swamp, Meadow & Forest ********** August 19, 2024 Somewhere Deep in The Adirondack Mountains It materialized as if out of nowhere. A spinning disk-shaped object, sitting low over moonlit mountain lake water, emitting not even the slightest whisper of sound as it...
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Drone Hunter
When high tech intruded, the hunter went old school. They suddenly began showing up on his trail cams in mid-May. Strange glowing images hovering low over his back fields at night. He did not know what to make of them. Folks all thought he was a bit overly paranoid...
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Call of the Crow
He sat perched on a flat, sloping, moss-covered boulder at the edge of a cliff, overwatching the hardwood forest below him. The hunter scanned predawn silence through late October’s mid-fall morning mist. The year was 1981, more than a decade before cell phones. A time when hunters...
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Demon
He’s out there, hunting. My hands are shaking right now. I don’t know where to begin. My heartbeat is racing. I fear he is following me. I can’t catch my breath. It started innocently enough. I had no warning. Well, maybe I did. I don’t know. I...
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Forbidden
When the Laws of Man and Nature Collide in the Mountains The year was 1983. July, to be exact, as a young man’s lone figure eased into an overgrown Adirondack trailhead parking lot and turned off his truck’s engine. He did a quick personal pat down; keys, pocket-knife,...
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Bedroom Window
I awoke to the sun. Its warm morning rays gently knocking on my bedroom window. I sat up, yawned and stretched, kicking back my hand quilted comforter. I looked out from my second story vantage point across Stevenson Lane to the day. To my left was Carpenter’s...
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The Canoeist
“Beware! He’s Watching.” ********** His ears suddenly perked up. He lifted his head, put his nose to the air. He could smell it almost as soon as he heard the boat’s engine cut off. “Humans.” His keen nose soon confirmed it. The mixed aroma of campfire smoke,...
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When The Ghost Whispers “Dig”
“Don’t heed the voice and put shovel to earth, unless mentally prepared to uncover the truth.” ********** “African-Americans made up approximately twenty five percent of the U.S. Navy during the War of 1812. In July, 1813, Commodore Isaac Chauncey reported “nearly 50 blacks” on board his flagship, the General...
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The Hunter
Beware! He’s watching. Author’s Note: This story appeared in The Adirondack Almanack’s Sunday October 31, 2021 on-line Halloween edition, making it my 1st published fiction short story. ********** “What was that noise I just heard? Was that just a squirrel or a chipmunk? Or is somebody watching me? Are...
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OUTLAWED
An Adirondack Outlaw’s Confession: Where Truth & Fiction Join Forces to Outwit the Law “Sometimes An Outlaw’s Best Hideout Is Right in Plain Sight” ********** Saranac Lake, New York – 1978: No one paid any attention to the slender blonde t-shirt clad teen walking casually down Woodruff Street,...
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