The last day of my life in this mountain town has been completely unreal.
Police and news helicopters, the chop, chop, chop of the metal blades are a sound that has been endless for about twenty four hours now.
It began yesterday.
The Chris Dorner manhunt seemed to be winding down. Over the weekend local police, hell, even the mayor of the Big Bear area were trying to convince tourists that Big Bear was safe, come up and play in the snow! Rumor had it that yesterday, Tuesday would be the last day of a big police presence and that these small mountain towns were believed to be safe again?
I was sick and tired of being cooped up in my cabin so I went for a little three mile run near my house. I stuck to an abandoned paved road and didn’t venture into the forest at all. At first on my run I head nothing but Stellar’s Jays in the high Jeffrey Pines and the wind rustling the pine needles above me. This was peaceful. This was what I had missed the last few days.
As I turned around a mile and a half up a steep hill I could hear helicopters and as the noise was ongoing for quite a while I began to get paranoid, worried that the woods next to me were being searched for something. By the time I returned back to my home twenty minutes later I was witnessing a steady stream of under cover cops driving very fast up the highway, lights and sirens blazing.
It was time to turn on the news.