Mike and I were going camping down by the lake. It was our lake, but for some reason it was massively huge and there were islands in the middle of it. I thought that was very strange, because they were HUGE islands, so our lake must have literally been gigantic.
Anyway, we were down by the lake and we were on the back side, up the bank a little ways, and we had a lot of trees around our little clearing. There was a kind of lean-to under the trees; I'm not sure what it was made of, but it appeared to be constructed between a small cavern of tree roots and wrapped in thick canvas. The front entrance was open save for some tree limbs that reached down over it, so it didn't exactly have any real privacy. If anyone were directly in front of our entrance, they could see right in. It was only private from the other angles.
So we're in this little lean-to, and we have a bunch of camping supplies with us to last the night. Mike suggests we take advantage of our alone time (wink wink) and at first I was hesitant (outside, in the dirt, under a tree, with a wide-open doorway? Umm...) but as it turns out, my delayed response worked out for the best. A few minutes later, a giant ship flew overhead. When I say giant, I mean something out of Star Wars (I actually think we might have these in real life, too, though). It was one of those triangular ships with a top fin that sticks straight up and the two wings can fold up to the top when it lands.
This giant ship flies directly over us, very low to the tree tops, and lands on the largest island on the lake. It's really close enough to paddle a boat to in just a few minutes, that's how close it is. I was getting worried about it, but Mike said, "It's okay, it's pretty far away," But then a second one came and landed in the mud on the bank next to us, just a few trees away. I'm freaking out, saying things like, "Oh my God, they're on our property! What the hell is going on here?" I was very grateful that most of clothes were still on (nothing "revealing" had come off). I put my pants on and climbed out of the lean-to behind Mike.
He walks up to the men coming off the ship that landed on the bank to tell them they're on the wrong property, and my paranoia is going haywire imagining us being killed for "seeing too much." It had a very "high-level military" feel. But they just referred us to the overseer of it all, so we got into a small boat and crossed over to the island. Once there, we went to a small building where the overseer was said to be waiting for us.
This guy was a tall, light-skinned black man with a shiny bald head, very similar to the man on the TV show Scrubs. He was leaning back in a reclining couch when we walked in, yelling at a guy for touching him. "Stay away from me! Don't touch me! You know the rules!"
Mike tried to talk to him and get his attention, but the overseer refused to listen. Mike tried to tell him, "Hey, man, you know you're on our property? What's going on here?" but he wouldn't have it.
"Stay away from me! I don't know who you are! Don't touch me, don't come near me, get away from me! Security!"
Finally I got fed up with it all. Fuck this, I thought, and I walked right up to the guy and shoved my hand in his face, as if to shake his hand. "Good evening, SIR," I said very pointedly, "I'm going to have to ask you to get your ships off my property."
At first the guy kind of leaned away from me, but I guess I was exuding enough confidence, because he actually acknowledged my existence and shook my hand briefly. "Okay, so this is your place here? I don't think we're on your property, but we can check the property lines and we'll figure out how to situate this so that everybody's happy."
I was fine with that, because I was pretty sure I knew where our property lines were. I was fairly certain at that point that we had actually leased out the islands for their use, but that the far bank was ours.
My view changes to a bunch of different maps; GPS maps, Google maps, hand-drawn maps, etc. All kinds of amazing maps. They each show the lake coming into view or being drawn out, starting close up and panning back, showing dotted lines for the property lines and circles around the islands to show where it was his, but then...it showed a section of the bank being cut out to indicate it was also on his side.
I wasn't sure where along the bank we had been camping; I had been pretty positive we were on our own property at the time, but seeing that part of the bank cut off really dug into my confidence, because it made me worried that I had confronted somebody when I was wrong, which is a huge fear of mine. But that's where it ended.
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