Amidst Constant Ancient winds and fogs

We were staying at a house in The Primorye Forest, also called Primorsky krai in the southernmost province in the Russian Far East. Specifically, we were in that part of the region known as the Sikhote-Alin mountain range. It would be dry and cold this night. There was a lot of work to be done! A young girl was staying for awhile as her folks were working. She would go out in the mountainous tundra areas and catch something like a live salmon or a char and come back in to make a big mess setting up a habitat but never cleaning up. My mom didn’t get mad at her ever.

I went into the front parlor and there were at least 4 or 5 pairs of my jeans lying everywhere, and they all needed to be washed. I started on that, but there were also loads of other chores to be done everywhere you looked. People would stop by often to stay for just a minute.

I saw while I was outside in the front yard huge fruits on a broad-leaved cedar. Bright orange they were, as big as beach balls. They were like breadfruit. I was quickly squatting down to pee when I noticed these fruits and saw they were also in at least 2 smaller trees in the yard, one spruce-fir and a cedar-spruce.

Two young men were walking up the road talking and laughing loudly, so I tried to quickly wipe my pee and do up my pants all the time saying loudly, “Look at those fruits!” to distract so they wouldn’t see what I’d been doing.

Two or more of the giant fruits fell down. The spherical objects shook faintly as embryonic reptilians nestling inside grew restless awaiting their moment to hatch.

The men were handsome natives of the area. They stopped and talked awhile, but I didn’t know their tongue.

Back inside, the girl was wanting and trying to help with something but had only made a bigger mess by getting out tools and experimental equipment such as bunsen burners and graduated cylinders.

I noticed that a young woman with a wide face, big eyes, and soft, short hair sprigs sticking out from under her headscarf had come onto our screened front-side porch. She was asking in broken English how far we could take her toward her home.

I found Mom and asked her about this, and she said to have the woman wait. I went to tell her, but she’d already fallen asleep. She had on sandals with straps. On one foot someone had written in red below her toes. “Have a nice day.” Below it, in a tone less obvious on her skin, they’d printed “Hi, Mom!” As she reposed, her jeans shook faintly as the embryo nestling inside grew restless.

I did a little more stuff but was glad I’d get a chance to take the woman toward her home because there was something else I needed to leave the house for. I fell asleep, too.

When I awoke, the house was sparkling clean, and several women were there for a luncheon.

I asked abruptly about the young woman, and Mom said she’d taken her home. I could tell Mom had learned of the pregnancy, and it would be all right.

Skirting the side of the house, we saw many pine cones falling in our odd, mystic forest. An almost extinct Amur tiger playfully chased an Olorotitan, an indigenous genus of duckbilled dinosaur, beside a fast mountain stream running down to a small river in this area that appears the same as it had in the Late Cretaceous period.