Mr. Troutbend and Buddy the Interstate Cat have picked up and moved to Las Vegas.



They made it okay, but got off to a rough start: Bud threw up before they got out of the winding canyon 15 miles from home. Heck, I get carsick when Mr. Tbend drives that stretch of road.



So they had to stop at the Dam Store by the canyon mouth and clean up the back of the car.



Buddy's spirit is still here - I expect him to be here when I come back to the house.

Speaking of spirits, I saw a ghost on the path along Rabbit Creek earlier this summer.






I was working on a tree, and sensed someone had come toward me on the path. It was a youngish man, maybe 30 to 40 years old, sort of old-fashioned, not a young man of today. He was slender and wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. In some ways he resembled a younger Mr. Tbend, but it wasn't him.

There have been a lot of deaths on this property, two of them were young men.

In 1973 before we owned all the cabins down here three young men had a drugged-out weekend and one of them died of an overdose. The others were so zonked he was dead a couple of days before they realized it. That cabin has since burned down, fortunately.

Thirty years later, in 2003, a big rock on the riverbank rolled onto a trespassing fisherman, crushing him to death. He was from California.



See the yellow paint? That's where it happened.

It could have been either of these guys, or someone else entirely. I don't know what these young men looked like, and I really didn't get a good look at the ghost's face - he was more of an impression, but he definitely was there, trying to tell me something.