5—Pop Pop Pop Dora

No Phone!

Lucy and Hannah had been on their way into Great Aunt Nature Walker's house to meet Adora Birch when all of a sudden, their mother and father said it was time to get in the car to go on their vacation to Nana and Pap-Pap's. But now the girls were home from their every excellent vacation and wanted to get back to Great Aunt Nature's house to meet this mysterious new person Adora Birch. However, when they went into the kitchen for a banana phone, all they found was a banana peel lying in the sink. Lucy tried holding the peel up to her ear, but it just drooped down over her hand.

Hannah was disappointed and went into the dining room to color. But Lucy just stood and began to think. Everyone she had ever known ate bananas instead of using them as phones. What's more, other people walked down the street talking to each other, not to trees. And if little children couldn't walk somewhere, they went in strollers, not drifting along on fairy wings. Were all the adventures with Great Aunt Nature Walker real or make-believe? Lucy wanted it to be real. But facts are facts, and it was very hard to believe in the strangeness of Great Aunt Nature Walker's world.

Trying to Color Away Confusion

Hannah, on the other hand, did not seem to find the situation with Great Aunt Nature Walker the least bit strange. But that's how it is when you're two. Things don't have to make sense. You just have fun. Lucy wished she were two again. But once you're five, there's no going back. So she sat down at the table with Hannah and tried to busy her confused mind with coloring.

"Pop pop pop Dora," said Hannah.

"What?" asked Lucy absently, hoping her mother had written bananas on the shopping list.

"Pop pop pop Dora," Hannah repeated several more times while clapping her hands to the sound of the words. "Pop pop pop Dora!"

Lucy laughed at the silly sounds, then joined in. "Pop pop pop Dora . . . pop pop pop Dora, . . ." they sang, clapping their hands.

"Yes," Lucy heard Great Aunt Nature Walker's voice saying behind her, "Adora Birch was telling me just this morning that we should have you both over for popcorn and cider."

And when Lucy turned, there she and Hannah were, just steps from Great Aunt Nature Walker's yellow door, exactly where they'd left off.

"Pop pop pop Dora!" cried Hannah as they stepped through the yellow door.

Living Room

"Oh by the way," Great Aunt Nature Walker said to Lucy, "I've been meaning to tell you—any time you're not handy to a banana phone, you can always get back to me on a wave of laughter."

"Okay," said Lucy still in such a daze of astonishment that she thought she might be dreaming.

Dining Room

But then as she looked around Great Aunt Nature Walker house, everything seemed quite real and even normal with a living room and a dining room and a kitchen. 

Starry Countertop

Kitchen

The kitchen was best of all with red walls, creamy colored cabinets, and shiny black countertops that sparkled like stars in the night sky.

Yikes! A Monster!!!!

But then suddenly, Hannah and Lucy grabbed hold of each other and drew back at the sight of a short but scary looking black monster with a gigantic arm for a head. "Oh, don't be afraid," Great Aunt Nature Walker said. "That's just Woody the Stove. I don't have a furnace. So Woody eats wood and turns it into fire that heats up the house. He sends the smoke from the fire up through his arm and out the chimney.

"Woody is a good friend to have on a chilly afternoon like this one," added Great Aunt Nature Walker. "In fact, I think Woody could use some lunch." She opened a little square glass door in Woody's stomach, then put in some twigs and wood from her wood box. After lighting up the fire, she closed the door and said, "Now, Woody means no harm. But he gets very hot when he eats. So you will burn yourself if you touch him."

Woody the Stove Having Lunch

Lucy and Hannah understood. And amazed as they were by Woody the Stove, they were no longer afraid and watched with great interest as Woody got all heated up with his lunch. And sure enough, in just a few minutes, they saw a fiery glow through the window in Woody's stomach. And the house felt cozy and warm. 

Meanwhile, Great Aunt Nature Walker had poured pop corn into the pop-corn popper and plugged in the popper. Pop pop pop went the popper, as Great Aunt Nature Walker set out three glasses.

"Where is Adora Birch?" Lucy asked as Great Aunt Nature Walker took a jug of apple cider from the refrigerator.

"Why, she's right there beside Woody," replied Great Aunt Nature Walker, nodding at the door.

Lucy and Hannah looked but saw nothing.

"Is Adora Birch tricky in her invisibility like the elves?" Lucy asked.

Adora Birch

"But she's not invisible," said Great Aunt Nature Walker pointing at a small smiling face that was peering out of an unpainted circle in the tan door leading from the kitchen into the garage.

The little face was so cheerful that Lucy and Hannah smiled back without even thinking how odd it was to be smiling at a door.

"Did you draw that face on the door?" Lucy asked.

"Oh no," Great Aunt Nature Walker explained, "Adora Birch is not a drawing. She is one of the Wood Spirits and quite real. The Wood Spirits live inside trees. Adora had been living in a birch tree in a very large forest for several hundred years before men came with big noisy metal saws to cut the tree down and turn that tree into the wood to be made into things like this door."

Being trapped in a door and not able to move did not seem like a very good idea to Lucy. "Why didn't Adora run away?" she asked.

"Every Tree has its Wood Spirit," Great Aunt Nature said. "A Wood Spirit and its Tree are best friends. And a Wood Spirit will never leave its Tree no matter what."

"Adora Tree!" exclaimed Hannah.

But Lucy wondered: Was Great Aunt Nature Walker was just making this up? And yet, there was that smiling and very convincing little face peering out of the door. 

Great Aunt Nature Walker set up a bench seat from the dining room table so Lucy and Hannah could climb up and touch Adora.

Together, Lucy and Hannah touched the little face with their fingertips. Adora Birch was so tiny and, despite the hard solid feeling of the wood door, felt fragile and sweet. "Hello, Adora Birch," said Lucy and Hannah. And while Adora Birch's lips and expression didn't change, the sisters felt something move in the air. A whisper. A kindness. A happiness like when their mother and father said they were proud because Lucy and Hannah had done something good. It was almost like Adora Birch had, well, talked without talking!

How could this be?

"Shall I tell you about Adora Birch?" Great Aunt Nature Walker asked.

Lucy and Hannah, both too wide-eyed with the wonder and mystery of Adora Birch to speak, just nodded a big OH YES!
So Great Aunt Nature Walker helped them up on the tall chairs at the shiny black kitchen counter, scooped them out big bowls of hot pop corn, poured them glasses of sweet cool cider, and then walking back over to Adora Birch, began the story. "Adora Birch and I," she said, "have been friends for eight years now. And it all began when I had to get a new door. . . ."

4—A Whale of An Adventure

One day Great Aunt Nature Walker called up Lucy and Hannah on the banana phone. No one answered. Hmmm, thought Great Aunt Nature Walker, where could they be? And then the magic-message powers of the banana phone told them: Lucy and Hannah were on vacation at Nana and Pap-Pap's house.

Ah, thought Great Aunt Nature Walker, what a wonderful time they must be having on vacation. I think I will also take a little vacation from Nature Walking. With that, Great Aunt Nature Walker got in her silver car and drove off to the opera. An opera is a play where the actors and actresses wear colorful costumes and sing the whole story.

An Opera

As Great Aunt Nature Walker drove, she listened to a CD with lively tune from one of her favorite operas. It is a song about dancing and having fun. And as Great Aunt Nature Walker drove and sang along with the music, she imagined herself dancing with Lucy and Hannah.

Great Aunt Nature Walker arrived at the opera theater early and bought her ticket. With time to spare, she set out on a way to see what she could discover. Within a few minutes, she saw a fascinating woman made of metal and glass. The woman was taller than a house.

It was a work of art called a sculpture. A sculpture is like painting, except instead of paint, you use objects to make something special—like when a person carves a face into a pumpkin for Halloween, they are making a sculpture.

Within a few minutes, Great Aunt Nature Walker had arrived at the edge of the land. Here along the top of a hill were beautiful tall ocean grasses. Below, was the Pacific Ocean with its sandy beach and and dark rugged rugged mountains.

The people walking on the beach looked like tiny twigs. This was indeed a wild and wonderful ocean beach.

                                    Pacific Ocean

Then in the distance, Great Aunt Nature Walker  saw some fascinating white objects. At first, the tall narrow white objects looked like a fence that had been blown apart by an ocean storm. But as she walked closer, Great Aunt Nature Walker realized these objects were the bones of a whale. A sign on a rock told her a man had used the bones to make a sculpture.

When the man put the whale bones in the ground he wanted people to feel how astonishingly big a whale is. The bones sticking up from the ground were the whale's ribs. The ribs were so tall that Great Aunt Nature Walker could walk inside
them!

When Great Aunt Nature Walker was inside the whale ribs, she thought of two experiences. The first was when she saw the skeleton of a whale in the window of a museum. The man standing beside the whale skeleton could have walked around inside that whale.

The size of a man compared to a whale

Then, Great Aunt Nature Walker remembered when she was only five and her father took her to see the movie about Pinocchio. Great Aunt Nature Walker had not yet become Great Aunt Nature Walker and was therefore very scared by the movie because it showed how Pinocchio and his father Geppetto got swallowed by Monstro the whale.

Pinocchio and his father made Monstro sneeze them up into the water and were safe in the end. Even though it was a pretend story, the thought of being swallowed by the whale was very scary. But then they stopped for ice cream and having a chocolate-chip ice cream cone made the fear go away.

Now Great Aunt Nature Walker lives by the Pacific Ocean, and the whales swim past her town twice every year. They swim many miles to warm water in the winter and many miles back to cooler water in the summer. Every years around Christmas time, Great Aunt Nature Walker walks up to a high hill to watch the whales go by. Once she even went out on a boat and saw the whales up close. The whale tails are called flukes and were about ten feet wide, almost as long as her bedroom at home!!!!!

But now, it was almost time for the opera to start. As Great Aunt Nature Walker walked back to the theater, she thought about how whales also make music. Whale songs, of course, very different from music that people make, but beautiful nevertheless.  Whale songs are very mysterious, and Great Aunt Nature Walker thought Lucy and Hannah would find them very interesting.

Once on the Internet, Great Aunt Nature Walker saw how people went out onto the water with musical instruments. They put microphones down into the water. Then they played music that sounded like whale music. And suddenly, whales came up to the surface of the water and showed they'd heard this music. Instead of dancing, they leapt out of the water.

Great Aunt Nature Walker arrived at the opera theater and took her seat. When it was over, she drove home along the ocean thinking it was a wonderful day of music.

----
Notes to the reader:
On whales responding to the orchestra, scroll down the page for the video.

For a longer (8 minutes) video that shows a humpback whale thanking people who rescued it from gill netting, click here.

3—The Mystery of the Rolling Pumpkins

Great Aunt Nature Walkers Backyard

"I am very concerned," said Great Aunt Nature Walker as she led Lucy and Hannah around her house into the backyard. It was a very nice big yard next to a lovely thick green woods. "My pumpkins have begun acting very strangely,"she said.

"What are the pumpkins doing?" asked Lucy.

Great Aunt Nature Walker pointed to two small pumpkins on the grass and then to two small stumps between the azalea and rhododendron bushes just beyond the pumpkins. "For a week," Great Aunt Nature Walker explained, "those pumpkins were sitting very quietly—one on each of those two small stumps. But when I came out yesterday morning, there they were on the grass, just as you see them now."

Who rolled the pumpkins
off their stumps?

Great Aunt Nature Walker stood looking down at the pumpkins and scratching her head. "When was the last time you heard of pumpkins rolling themselves off stumps and across the grass?"
"Never," replied Lucy.

"Quite right," replied Great Aunt Nature Walker. "So how did these pumpkins end up on the grass? I am glad you are here to help me find the answer to the mystery of the rolling pumpkins."

Hannah ran over to one of the little pumpkins and picked it up. "Play!" she exclaimed.

Suddenly, an answer popped up in Lucy's head. "Maybe some children came in your yard and were playing with the pumpkins," she said. "But then their mother called them, and they accidentally forgot to put the pumpkins back."

"That's it!" replied Great Aunt Nature Walker. "Very excellent thinking." But then her excitement faded. "The problem," she said, "is that the pumpkins rolled off at night."
Lucy understood the problem immediately. "So everyone was asleep," she said, "and not outside playing because it was dark."

"Yes," agreed Great Aunt Nature Walker, slumping deep into thought once again.
For a moment Lucy was dejected because she couldn't think of any other answer.

"We must not be dejected," cried Great Aunt Nature Walker in a determined voice. "Finding answers to these outdoor mysteries can be very tricky indeed. But Nature Walkers are people who just have fun looking around at Nature and thinking about what the answers might be."

Realizing this, Lucy now thought being a Nature Walker was even more fun than before.

Meanwhile, Hannah was climbing up and down the three different sized stumps as if they were stairs. Lucy became worried that her rambunctious little sister might fall so stepped closer to the stumps to stand guard. "While you're over there," Great Aunt Nature Walker said, "you might look behind those stumps for some clues. A clue," she explained, "is something that doesn't answer your question but helps you think of the answer. To find clues, you just look very carefully."

Lucy still wasn't quite sure how to recognize a clue. But she helped Hannah down from the middle stump, and together they looked around very carefully. "There are some leaves and twigs and and dirt," Lucy told Great Aunt Nature Walker.
"Mud," said Hannah pointing.
"And two little piles of mud," Lucy reported. "One is on the dirt beside the leaves. The other one is under the leaves."

Mud Piles...or a Clue??!

"You have done a very excellent job of looking," Great Aunt Nature Walker complimented Lucy and Hannah as she peered over the stumps. "And oh my!" she exclaimed as she stepped closer and leaned over to look at the mud, "I believe you have discovered the clue we are looking for."

Lucy and Hannah had never been more puzzled.
"How do little mud piles tell us who rolled the pumpkins off their stumps?" Lucy asked.

"Well," said Great Aunt Nature Walker with a big smile, "I no longer so sure it was a person who rolled those pumpkins off their stumps."

Lucy's eyes grew wide. "Was it elves, then?" she asked, remembering how tricky the elves in the forest could be.

Great Aunt Nature Walker laughed. "Rolling pumpkins off stumps is definitely a prank elves would find amusing," she said, "but in this case, I think those piles of mud tell us something different. You see, the piles are not mud at all. They are bear scat."

This made no sense to Lucy "Scat" was a word some grownups said to cats to tell them to go away.
Hannah waved her arms at the air. "Scat . . . scat out," she called, and several birds flitted off from the tree overhead.

Great Aunt Nature Walker smiled. "You're both right about the word scat," she said "but sometimes words have more than one meaning. In this case, 'scat' is what Official Nature Walkers call the piles animals leave when they go to the bathroom. So what these little piles tell me that a bear was standing right here behind these stumps."

It was funny to think bears went to bathroom just like people and the dogs she had seen in the park. Bears and other forest animals seemed different somehow and so it didn't seem that they would do such an ordinary thing.

"And here's another clue," said Great Aunt Nature Walker pointing to the blackberry bushes just past the stumps, along the edge of the woods. "Bears love blackberries. And right there above the little piles of bear scat, all the blackberries are gone from the bush."

Lucy and Hannah looked. And sure enough, there were blackberries on the bushes to the right and blackberries to the left but no blackberries in the middle.

"Yes," Great Aunt Nature Walker said, "I think maybe the bear had his fill of blackberries and began wondering if the pumpkins might make an even better meal. In trying to find out, that hungry old black bear rolled those pumpkins right off their stumps. Then finding them too hard to eat, he just left them. We can't be sure, of course, because we didn't see this happen. But the clues tell us it might be a good answer to the mystery of our rolling pumpkins."

Lucy enjoyed thinking about the mystery in this way—that is, she enjoyed it until Hannah said, "Bear . . . zoo."
"Yes," said Great Aunt Nature Walker, "some bears do live in a zoo. But this bear lives in the forest."

And all of a sudden, it occurred to Lucy that a bear—A BEAR!—had been standing right where they were standing. She grabbed Hannah's hand, looked around, and prepared to run away from the bear into Great Aunt Nature Walker's house.

But then Great Aunt Nature Walker said, "Bears don't like being around people. So they come around looking for berries at night when people are asleep." Lucy was very relieved to hear this.

Deer Scat

Then Great Aunt Nature Walker stepped a few feet to the right. "Deer also come at night," she said,
"but sometimes during the day as well. "Look here." She pointed to a pile of little round black balls on the grass. Each little ball is about the size of a marble. "This is a pile of deer scat. This is a clue that tells us deer have also been here."

"What do the deer like to eat?" Lucy asked.

Great Aunt Nature Walker laughed. "Just about everything. Flowers, leaves, and the apples from my tree. Look over here," she said as they walked toward a tall yellow and very odd looking bush. The branches went way out like arms at the top and were full of leaves. But there were hardly any branches or leaves in the middle or at the bottom. "The deer enjoy eating these yellow dogwood leaves. So why do you think they do not seem to eat the very tall leaves?"

Lucy thought and thought. Then she noticed that Hannah was more interested in the orange flowers on the small bush that was beside the tall yellow bush. "Maybe the deer aren't tall enough to reach the top leaves on the yellow bush," Lucy said.

The Very Odd Looking Bush

"I think that is a very excellent guess," Great Aunt Nature Walker said. "Hopefully, the deer will come by later and tell us."

Lucy was very excited at the possibility of seeing a deer. But how would the deer tell them? Do deer really talk?

"Well, now," said Great Aunt Nature Walker, "one mystery at at time is surely enough. We have found the answer to the mystery of the rolling pumpkins. So let's go inside for some apple cider and popcorn. My friend Adora Birch is also inside and has been wanting to meet you."

"Why didn't she come outside?" Lucy asked. "Is she sick?"

"Oh, no," replied Great Aunt Nature Walker, "Adora Birch is quite well."

"Is she afraid of bears?" Lucy wondered.

"Not all all," replied Great Aunt Nature Walker. "In fact, Adora Birch grew up in a forest and got to know some bears before she came to live with me."

Lucy thought Adora Birch must be very brave and interesting. But then she grew a little concerned about meeting someone who had lived in a forest and knew bears. Would Adora Birch have long scary straggly hair like a Halloween witch and frighten Hannah? Just in case, Lucy took her little sisters's hand as they followed Great Aunt Nature Walker around to the front door of her house.

2—Real or Make-Believe?

Lucy and Hannah enjoyed their forest magic adventure with Great Aunt Nature Walker. Hannah liked her fairy wings and going under the elf bridge. But mostly, she liked being on an adventure with her big sister. Being more grown-up, Lucy began having some serious thoughts about the forest magic. 

Lucy's serious thoughts began the day after she and Hannah got home after their forest adventure with Great Aunt Nature Walker. She took a picture of Great Aunt Nature Walker to school for Show and Tell. She showed the picture and told how Great Aunt Nature Walker talked to the Banana Slug and they they all the fairy house and the elf bridge. “Oh, my,” exclaimed her teacher Miss Fact, “Great Aunt Nature Walker must have a very good imagination! How lucky you are to have such an interesting friend.”

Performance Best

After Lucy sat down, Performance Best went to the front of the room for her turn. Performance Best was wearing a new red sundress and had her blonde hair all fluffed up in curls. Performance Best was always bragging about how many stickers and stars she had on Miss Fact’s Sticker and Star Chart. “I deserve my name,” she would say, “because I am the best.” Lucy found this very tiresome and annoying.

Performance Best

For Show and Tell, Performance Best had two pictures of herself in the woods. In one, she was wearing her red sundress but with a hat to match and white stockings with hearts. In the other she was wearing a blue and white flowered play outfit and sitting on a little brown pony. 

“These pictures are going to be in a magazine,” she told the class. “My uncle got me a job as a model. This means people will look at my picture in their magazines and then go to the store and buy clothes like mine. I get to keep all the clothes and wear lipstick. The people who make the clothes will also pay me a lot of money.”  
“Oh, my,” exclaimed Miss Fact, “what an exciting experience! Congratulations.” 

In the playground at lunch, twenty girls were crowded around Performance Best, looking at her picture and asking if she would teach them how to be a model so they could wear lipstick and earn money. “If I have time,” Performance Best told them with a flip of her blonde curls. 

Only two girls were looking at Lucy’s picture and asking if Great Aunt Nature Walker would take them on a forest magic adventure. Suddenly, Performance Best walked over and grabbed Lucy’s picture. “Your show and tell was really silly,” she said. “Everyone knows elves and fairies are only make-believe. And slugs are just big yucky worms. They can’t talk. Did you hear them talk?”

“Well . . . not exactly, but . . .” Lucy hesitated, unsure of what to say. 

Performance Best waved the picture of Great Aunt Nature Walker in her face. “Great Aunt Nature Walker is a ridiculous name for a crazy old lady. And look at the crazy lady's big ugly shoes." The crowd of girls laughed. Performance Best fluffed up her curls. "Only babies think you can call up someone up on a banana phone," she said. "Grownups use smart phones. When I get my first paycheck as a model, I'm going to buy a smart phone.” 

Great Aunt Nature Walkers Shoes and Socks

With that, Performance Best dropped the picture of Great Aunt Nature Walker at Lucy’s feet and announced to the girls, “Tomorrow, I’m going to get shiny silver slipper shoes for my next magazine picture.”

Lucy was trying to think of what to say. But all her words got crowded out by confusion. She had to admit that a lot of what Performance Best said seemed true. She hadn't really heard the Banana Slug talk. She didn’t actually see the fairies and elves. And Great Aunt Nature Walker did wear those big clunky shoes with big fat purple socks. Still, the forest magic had felt real.

But before Lucy could put her feelings into thoughts, Performance Best skipped off with the crowd of girls behind her. And Lucy heard her say, “I can’t believe that Lucy and her silly little sister would believe that old lady and her ridiculous stories.” The two girls with Lucy were still very polite but went quietly off to swing by themselves.

"Hannah is not a silly little sister," Lucy muttered after them all. But she felt the excitement about the forest magic go out of her like a big balloon that just got popped. 

Back in the classroom, Lucy did her best in reading and numbers. But she was worried inside and didn’t get her usual sticker and stars to put on Miss Fact’s Sticker and Star Chart. When Performance Best went up to put her stickers and stars on the Sticker and Star Chart, she wrinkled up her nose at Lucy.

When Lucy got home, she tried to forget her day by coloring with Hannah. Then she went out to help Hannah learn how to water the flowers in their new garden. Hannah was doing a very good job. And Lucy’s thoughts drifted to who was right—Performance Best or Great Aunt Nature Walker? Lucy wished Hannah was the big sister. Then Hannah would have to figure out the big problems in life.

“Maybe it’s time to take a break,” their mother called as she put down a bowl of fruit so they could choose a snack. There were apples, pears, and bananas. Hannah picked up a banana and held it to her ear. “Tree,” she said. “Fairy.” Then she picked up the other banana and gave it to Lucy. Lucy took it and thought a moment. If Great Aunt Nature Walker was telling them the truth, she would answer the banana phone. 

Sadly, there was no answer. Lucy felt very dejected.

Great Aunt Nature Walker's House

But then a very strange thing happened. They were suddenly standing in front of a white house with a gray roof, a bright yellow door, and a very large garden. And who came walking around the side of the house but—Great Aunt Nature Walker!

"Welcome," she cried.

“Welcome,” she cried. “I just got your banana phone message. Which was funny because I was just about to call you. I have the mystery of the rolling pumpkins in my backyard. And I thought you could help me solve it.”

A mystery! Wow. This was very exciting. So Lucy took Hannah’s hand, and they followed Great Aunt Nature Walker around her house to learn more about the mystery of the rolling pumpkins.

Next: The Mystery of the Rolling Pumpkins