"In 1952, I entered St. Lawrence College High School in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin. In my third year I became intrigued for some reason by the North woods of Canada, and I wrote a letter to a couple who lived in Alberta. They wrote back and thanked me for my letter. That made the distant land of Alberta, Canada seem much more real. While studying German, Physics, Latin and English, I found the time to write a short story, hoping to have it published in the school's fine magazine, named after the main building, called the Laurentianum.

My brother-in-law owned a construction company, so I made the main Character a construction contractor who lived by himself in Alberta in a large log cabin. The cabin had a deck out back where the Contractor enjoyed watching the deer and other wild animals moving about in the thick woods behind his home.

Early one evening, as he walked out on his deck, the Contractor saw a Canadian Indian woman stooped over the fire pit he used to burn unwanted papers.

That's what I wrote, and that's what I imagined. I have a photographic memory. I can review a scene in detail and even "feel" the situation occurring, but I must be reminded first through some trigger that I saw what I saw, since there is no time/date/place details included in my memory.

I am now recalling what went through my mind while writing the short story, sitting at my study-hall desk in Mt. Calvary, Wisconsin in 1955, 70 years ago. As I am writing this, I can see the woman near the fire pit, with the railing of my Character's deck partially blocking my view of her, until, that is, I mentally move forward to the edge of the deck.

Now I can see her long black hair, her ankle-length dress, which was dirty by the way, and her dirty bare feet. As soon as she comes into full view, I see her jump up, look at me for a moment with her beautiful black eyes, then turn and run off into the pine woods behind the Contractor's home. I feel the Contractor's urge to run after her, his muscles tensing up to take action, which he does.

For my High School short story, I named the woman, Watika. I made it up, thinking it sounded like an Indian woman's name.

In 1981, 40 years after I wrote the short story, my wife and I traveled to the north woods in our motorhome on vacation. She decided to go outside, I don't and didn't know why. After a while I decided to look for her.

You can imagine the memory-shock I experienced when I stepped out of the motorhome and found a woman with long black hair, stooping over a fire pit, in a dirty ankle-length dress and dirty bare feet. It was my wife!

I call it a memory-shock when I see an image that matches very closely with my photographic memory of a person or an event.

I grabbed my camera and took the photo of my wife, which I used on the front cover of the novel, Watika. No, it was not staged to match the memory I have of Watika, 70 years ago. We both agree, it doesn't even look like my wife.

That's me, John Paul Gehrs, and my "Watika," my wife of 40+ years.

I finished the story I started in High School, creating the novel Watika. The photo on the cover takes me back 40 years when we traveled to the north woods in our motorhome, and it takes me back to my third year in High School, 70-years ago, when I wrote the short story, Watika; something a time-traveler would have experienced.

I hope you enjoy the novel. If some things you read seem like they really happened, it's because they did. I've personally been to all of the places Warren Meir took Watika."

John Paul Gehrs