As I am forced by my dog to walk daily, I did so again today, even though I stayed home from work due to back pain. When it’s daylight, I like to walk Jake down by the river, through a small forest rutted with ORV trails, where most of the good timber has been cut down and scrub alder and cottonwood remain. It was a typical November day, windy, wet, chilly. I didn’t expect to see anyone else out walking their dogs, so I took Jake off the leash and let him run.

As soon as I entered the dirt road leading back to the river, I saw a new red 4x4 pickup parked, empty. I walked on, wondering if perhaps it was stolen, or there were hunters around about to shoot, or dogs that Jake would get into a fight with. Walking further, I decided to take an alternate path from our usual. I saw someone in a blue coat, and they saw me, and seemed to retreat. I debated going another way and decided to follow my intuition and go the way I had chosen, parallel to the river instead of going straight for it. The figure in the blue coat was joined by another one, in a green coat. It was two women, roughly my age. An odd couple in the woods on a weekday, I thought to myself.

“Is he friendly?” the younger of the two women asked.
I ignored them for a minute while I sized them up, then said, yes, he was. His wagging tail attested to that.
“I’ve seen you before.” Said one of the women. She looked careworn compared to her companion, toughened, perhaps. I wondered at first if they were a couple. I had never seen two women my age walking in the woods without children or men before.
I looked at her, hers was a face I’d seen before, at work. We decided that we worked for the same big outfit, and that was a bonding element. Then she told me who she was, and that she was looking for her son, and it clicked. She said someone had a feeling her son would be out here. I felt the desperation and sorrow in that statement. I had read an email that was put out institution wide about a co-workers missing son. That was four weeks ago, before Halloween.

Lori Bowling is still looking for her twenty-three year old son, Brock Holmes, pictured above. Here’s the link to the story in the local paper. I hope she finds him, and the next time I see her walking in the woods, her son is with her.

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