Theories Over Gas Station Coffee and Upcoming Plans

Theories Over Gas Station Coffee and Upcoming Plans

It was a quiet morning by our standards. No frostbite, no spooked cattle, no three-toed anomalies vanishing into rock ridges. Just cheap gas station coffee in foam cups, a scratched-up map of Oregon, and all eleven of us huddled around the hood of Vernon’s Suburban like it was the command table in a war room.

We’d spent the night in Chemult, still shaking off the oddness of the Klamath Falls snow-tracks incident. Everyone had theories, and most of them were worth writing down. Vernon leaned hard toward a rare, upright mammal species, something undocumented but terrestrial. Donna, on the other hand, kept circling back to the sudden stop in the tracks — how they simply ended. She believed that was more telling than the tracks themselves.

“Either it flew off,” she said, “or it was never fully touching the ground.”

Caleb, sipping microwaved tea and squinting at the sun, muttered something about hopi myths of the “sky walkers.” Grandpa, as more of the group has started calling him — nodded but didn’t elaborate much, which usually means he knows more than he’s letting on. That’s his style. He plays his cards like he’s holding a full house even when he’s just waiting on a decent draw.

We reviewed photos and soil samples one last time before sealing them into containers for later lab processing. Jennifer had logged visual notes on the topography, snow drift patterns, and estimated stride lengths from the tracks. She and Robin debated the layout while Mathew tried to recalibrate a handheld magnetometer that had given us junk readings the night before.

Then came the discussion about what’s next.

Professor outlined a report he’d read years ago about a series of strange animal vocalizations heard near old growth forest west of Eugene. Not your average howls or bear calls — these were described as tonal, almost musical. The original witness claimed he could feel the sounds vibrate in his chest. The area had been largely undisturbed, and there were no existing trails near where the sound had been recorded.

The plan is to head out there in two days, once we restock supplies and swap out some of the malfunctioning gear. The location’s remote, somewhere near the Siuslaw National Forest boundary. We’ll hike in and spend a night camping with parabolic audio sensors, EMF scanners, and a couple of high-sensitivity camcorders. Robin’s hoping the geology might offer some explanation for sound resonance, but Donna’s already smiling like it’s a prelude to a classic contact narrative.

This statement, which gave me chills, did inspire me to start writing song lyrics about our experiences.

Anyway, we took inventory of who’s riding with who. Car assignments shuffled again. Looks like I’ll be with Donna, Josh, and Mathew in the van for the next leg. That should be a quiet ride — or not, depending on how much Mathew wants to theorize about resonance fields and acoustic plasma.

The rest of today was logistics. Gas, restocking dry food, running our clothes through the motel’s quarter-eating machines. Jennifer found a clipping from a February 12th issue of the Eugene Register-Guard reporting on a recent series of “sky flashes” seen over the coast — the same night we were in Kings Valley. Timing feels less like coincidence and more like trail markers pointing us forward. Creepy.

The Professor didn’t say much after lunch. He just sat in the van’s passenger seat, jotting notes into his leather journal. But before we all split off for sleep or showers, he looked up and said:

“Remember, what we don’t understand may not be nonsense. Just not understood yet.”

Miles driven since last post: 43 mi