Porcupine Noses

Years ago I had to miss one of our dinner meetings because the winds and rains made travel over Nehakini too treacherous. This is a road that was cut out of a rock mountain. Below the road is a cliff that falls 500 feet to the sea. After a good storm the road is cratered with rocks that have fallen from the cliff above. Rocks the size of engine blocks are not uncommon.

The next week I asked what I had missed, and the group said, “Porcupine Noses.” This is a story that this fellow only tells on very rainy and windy nights. I asked for a recap, but no one in the group would say a word. It wasn’t their story to tell and to them, telling someone else’s story is akin to sleeping with someone else’s girlfriend or wife. They just don’t tell someone else’s story.

I have met with then on other stormy nights, but somehow it’s never been stormy enough to rekindle and repeat the story. It has easily been ten years since the story was last told, and I’m hoping to be in their company again on a stormy night so I can hear the story of porcupine noses.

Yes, I have thought of the possibility that they have been yanking my chain over this story for all these years. I wonder if the story here is really how you yank the chain of a story lover, and that Porcupine Noses is just a good name to get me hooked. But somehow I still believe there is a special story out there waiting to be told again on a dark, rainy, stormy night where the power flickers on and off. I’m sure I won’t be disappointed because this fellow is a master story teller. He could tell stories about making peanut butter sandwiches and I’d be on the edge of my chair.