July 05th, 2022

I will often be a rabbit for our K9 team.  A rabbit is someone that goes out into the forest, pasture, or neighborhood and will just sit, so the K9s can come find them.  It is important for the K9 to be successful.  They work for their reward which they only receive when they find the rabbit. Ensuring their success reinforces their training and it gives them pleasure. 
  
On one such occasion we had training in a wooded area which is common here in the southeast United States, where we search.  At this point, I had not yet really started writing “Path of Spirits,” although I had been putting some thought into the plot.  I felt pretty strongly that it would include spirits (not the type one finds at a cocktail party; rather the type found in a graveyard) and some type of portal to another world.  Mainly just big thoughts now.  I knew of several ways to illustrate this portal, from movies, or books I had read. But I wanted something...different.

As I was sitting on the forest floor, watching for the K9 Team to approach, I was straining my hearing, listening for the bells on the K9s harness, so I could spot them, before the K9 spotted me.  The K9 shouldn’t find the rabbit using its’ eyes.  It needs to use its’ nose.  I look all around, trying to either catch a glimpse of the handler, as they usually wear bright clothing, or hear or see the K9.  I do not see or hear them, but I continue to look. I cannot see very far, since I am surrounded by trees, but I fully expect to hear the bells before I get a visual.

Then, just to my right, I realize that I can see deeper into the forest at this one particular bearing.  I notice a pathway of sorts.  It isn’t a critter trail, as there really isn’t a trail. No hard packed pine needles or leaves.  No sign of critters having traveled through this area. It is absent of twists or turns, underbrush, trees or dead fall.  At this point in the forest at this precise location, in this one specific orientation, all the trees align, forming a natural colonnade. 
There was my portal.
I snapped a picture, which is the basis for the front cover of my novel and is also displayed on the home page of my website.  Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?
 
 GC