There’s a kind of knowing that sits apart from the rest—what some call special knowledge. The kind that makes you seem prescient in a meeting, or keeps you from running aground when the fog thickens. It’s knowing where the riptides and hidden rocks live.
Most of us don’t have it. We drift along, improvising, mistaking guesses for insight. With time, what little we once knew grows dim—like the memory of how to row a boat we haven’t seen in years.
When something strange happens, we do what humans always do: we try to make sense of it. Sherlock Holmes offered a convenient script—when every ordinary explanation fails, the impossible must be examined.
Years ago, I had such a moment. A rural road. A dark reservoir on my left. No lights, no shoulders, just the curve of asphalt and my headlights cutting through brush. Then—an eruption from the foliage. A blur of legs and motion, fast and upright, crossing my path in a heartbeat. Too big for a dog, too balanced for a bear, too quick for anything that ought to be on two legs. Black jacket, fluttering tails, perhaps lighter trousers.
I arrived home unsettled but rational: the mind must label what it sees. So I told my wife I had nearly hit a three-and-a-half-foot-tall creature in evening wear, bent forward like a Marx Brother fleeing a wedding. She laughed so hard I considered waking the children to join in.
I shelved the story. But two weeks later, same road—there it was again, slightly ahead this time, caught clean in the beams. The same tuxedo tails, the same improbable sprint. I kept that encounter to myself.
A week after that, I met him again—at home. Not a phantom, but a whole family of them, perched in my century-old oak and strutting beneath it. Turkeys. Real, live turkeys.
For most people, a turkey is an abstract thing: frozen, shrink-wrapped, cartooned on greeting cards. Seeing one alive—standing in your tree—rearranges the world a little.
Later, in conversation with our veterinarian, I relayed my “gnome in a tuxedo” tale. He laughed, then leaned closer:
“Your neighbor imported Southern California turkeys years ago,” he said. “Looks like they finally took the hint.”
And that, I suppose, is special knowledge—not the knowing itself, but the moment when the absurd resolves into sense. It doesn’t erase the mystery; it just lets you laugh at it with better aim.
A Work Progressing 
Unraveling the Mysteries:
There’s a kind of knowing that sits apart from the rest—what some call special knowledge. The kind that makes you seem prescient in a meeting, or keeps you from running aground when the fog thickens. It’s knowing where the riptides and hidden rocks live.
Most of us don’t have it. We drift along, improvising, mistaking guesses for insight. With time, what little we once knew grows dim—like the memory of how to row a boat we haven’t seen in years.
When something strange happens, we do what humans always do: we try to make sense of it. Sherlock Holmes offered a convenient script—when every ordinary explanation fails, the impossible must be examined.
Years ago, I had such a moment. A rural road. A dark reservoir on my left. No lights, no shoulders, just the curve of asphalt and my headlights cutting through brush. Then—an eruption from the foliage. A blur of legs and motion, fast and upright, crossing my path in a heartbeat. Too big for a dog, too balanced for a bear, too quick for anything that ought to be on two legs. Black jacket, fluttering tails, perhaps lighter trousers.
I arrived home unsettled but rational: the mind must label what it sees. So I told my wife I had nearly hit a three-and-a-half-foot-tall creature in evening wear, bent forward like a Marx Brother fleeing a wedding. She laughed so hard I considered waking the children to join in.
I shelved the story. But two weeks later, same road—there it was again, slightly ahead this time, caught clean in the beams. The same tuxedo tails, the same improbable sprint. I kept that encounter to myself.
A week after that, I met him again—at home. Not a phantom, but a whole family of them, perched in my century-old oak and strutting beneath it. Turkeys. Real, live turkeys.
For most people, a turkey is an abstract thing: frozen, shrink-wrapped, cartooned on greeting cards. Seeing one alive—standing in your tree—rearranges the world a little.
Later, in conversation with our veterinarian, I relayed my “gnome in a tuxedo” tale. He laughed, then leaned closer:
“Your neighbor imported Southern California turkeys years ago,” he said. “Looks like they finally took the hint.”
And that, I suppose, is special knowledge—not the knowing itself, but the moment when the absurd resolves into sense. It doesn’t erase the mystery; it just lets you laugh at it with better aim.
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