Several times each year, I head out to Area 42.
Area 42 is located in…well, never mind. It’s kind of like the US Air Force’s Area 51 in Nevada where a UFO crashed, or didn’t crash. Who knows? It’s top secret. Although the location of Area 51 is well known, it is off-limits to all but certain military personnel, unlike Area 42, which isn’t top secret. I’m just not going to tell you where it is.
My location name of Area 42 is a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. According to the “Guide,” a small size planet/supercomputer, named Deep Thought, was built to answer a vaguely worded question concerning “Life, the Universe, and Everything.” After 7.5 million years calculating, Deep Thought answered: “42.”
“Forty-two what?” the designers asked. So, a bigger computer, named Earth was built by nonearthlings, to determine what exactly was the ultimate question. Ten million years of calculations were five minutes away from spitting out the ultimate question when Earth was destroyed by alien Vogons building a trans-galactic highway.
This is a cute start of an adventure fiction story. But my story follows a different path. It is a real story with a real person (me) and a real place in time (now) that ends differently.
Area 42 is a place that does not stand out to those passing by. It looks like a thousand other places in Massachusetts. From the one-lane bridge, I look north and see the small meandering river flowing towards me. Marshes, full of reeds and grasses, Song Sparrows and Red-winged Blackbirds fill both sides of the river, reaching back a hundred feet to a small rise in land, mostly White Pines and Hemlocks on the eastern side and Red Oaks and Sugar Maples on the western side. I see the same when I look south, except the water is flowing away from me.
North of the bridge, inside Area 42, were once working hayfields are now overgrown with Staghorn Sumac with their deep red berries, prickly brambles, young Birch trees, and in some of the more open areas, Milkweed, in its decades-long succession plan to become like its borderlands: a mixed forest.
I often hike around Area 42 when I need to demagnetize as they say, to clear my mind. I meander along the woodland paths, past vernal pools rimmed with Highbush Blueberries, damp forested areas thick with lush, green ferns, and past stone walls once built to keep in livestock a hundred years ago, judging from the large Oaks and Maple trees surrounding the granite stones.
Eventually I enter the “holy of holies” of Area 42 on the east side of a small rise in land covered with closely spaced Hemlocks and Pines interspersed with young Birches. Almost every time I enter this place, I find Golden-crowned Kinglets, usually a flock of three to five birds. Their constant high-pitched but very slight peep, peep, peep is nearly inaudible and keeps the flock together.
Kinglets are tiny, only about three and a half inches long. They have a golden-yellow crown and a black striped face. Their body feathers are mostly muted gray-green in color. They especially like pines and look like jewels hanging from eye-level Pine boughs while searching for bugs and insect eggs to eat.
These are the little angels I come to stand among. We talk in ways I can’t explain, the Kinglets and me. This never happens anywhere else. I ask for answers as to why someone is treating me so poorly, and why do I give so much time to my day job.
A Golden-crowned Kinglet hangs upside-down working its way along the tip of a White Pine bough.
Why is my mother suffering from dementia? What did she ever do to the universe to deserve that scourge?
Another Kinglet flits to a bough four feet from me looking for food. Peep. Peep. Peep.
I don’t understand I say.
The Kinglets answer as they always do: That’s because you are constantly asking the wrong questions. Peep. Peep. Peep. You should be asking: How do I learn to forgive more? How do I learn to love myself more? How do I learn to care for my mother more?
I leave this holy place as I have done every time before: in peace. I will be back, as I am fallible, looking for more answers to the wrong questions, although I never know when that will be.
The military can have their secret UFOs, or non UFOs or… whatever; but I have my Area 42, the Golden-crowed Kinglets, and for today, all the answers I need, to questions I didn’t know I had, now that I know how to ask for them.
Note: I wrote this piece several years ago, and just came across it today. While a bit dated, I thought I’d share it anyway. Tim
