Okay, so my grandparents live in the
woods, because they're crazy. They've got a plot of land that's bigger than
certain European countries that shall remain nameless, and they built a tiny little house with a solar pool, and they live there like the dirt-eating hippies that they are. Nice folks, both teachers, grumpy and old and smokers but good hearts.
My great-grandmother, back in the early nineties, was staying with them and went out for a nice long walk in the woods. Being a crazy old coot herself -- they gave her peach slices, right before she died, and she said "Do I dare to eat a peach?" This was a great joke, because nobody had the guts to laugh at it, because she was dying and all, but she'd never even read the poem, she was just faking them out -- being a coot, she went out wandering in the hundreds of acres of woods. Bear in mind, she had to be over eighty when she did this, and it cannot be overemphasized that this property is bigger than Tim Allen is contrived. Three different rivers run on this land.
She went out into the woods and found her way back, and was walking toward the big glaring solar panels of the pool when my grandmother came out on the deck and started screaming and railing at her to get back in the house. My great-grandmother (Do you mind if I call her Marguerite? I barely knew her.) Marguerite insisted that no, she wasn't going to go back into the house. My grandmother pointed out that she was, in fact, being followed by a grizzly bear, but this could not overcome the fact that Marguerite was spunky and rebellious and incredibly hard of hearing, so she leisurely sauntered up to the front porch while the bear followed her, confused.
I mean, I didn't even know this woman. I met her all of twice, but she's just one more person that died before I knew them but still did all these amazing things. The freaky part of living around here is how much will be forgotten about all of us.