Daily Prompt | The Gad About Town

The Forest and the Trees

Posted on October 5, 2016 by Mark Aldrich

A heavy rain drowns each raindrop; a light rain, like the kind I saw in the woods out behind my house when I was a child, a light rain striking the leaves and branches of trees, further slowing their impact, that rain produces the strongest petrichor of all, the one that renders me into an seven-year-old noticing the world for the first time.

The lightest of rain after the driest of spells leads to the most argillaceous petrichor, which is the kind that humans smell as relief, the thought that things will start growing again.—”Petrichor,” Jan. 26, 2015

We called it “The Woods.” Well, I did. Sometimes, I referred to it as a “forest,” which it most certainly was not. Our backyard ended at a line of trees and dross beneath them; the lightly manicured, suburban lawn did not grow beyond that line, despite my teen-aged lawn mowing efforts to expand the lawn by clearing the dead leaves and branches away. That tight boundary made The Woods appear all the more elemental and foreign.
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Derring-Don’t

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Mark Aldrich

The only unsolved hijacking of an American plane took place on November 24, 1971, almost 45 years ago. A person who may or may not have been named “Dan Cooper” hijacked a plane over the Pacific Northwest and demanded $200,000 and several parachutes. His demands were met, and he then demanded a flight toward Mexico City at a low altitude and slow rate of speed.

About forty-five minutes into the flight toward Mexico, somewhere over Washington state, at night, during a rainstorm, the man jumped. He and most of the money have not been found. The case remains an unsolved mystery. Because of a news media error, his name was reported as “D.B. Cooper,” and so the daring unknown hijacker has remained known by that mistaken moniker.
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