My Ongoing Exploration of Earth
My Ongoing Exploration of Earth
 I visited Ryan Park off of Lafayette Road in North Kingstown, Rhode Island on March 24th, 2018 A.D. It consists of a broad dirt road running through an open field area in the middle with forest around the edges. The road gradually tapers to a trail as it approaches the southern entrance on Oak Hill Road. To the east is Belleville Pond, which can be seen through the leafless trees in the winter. The park is actually kind of boring, but I had myself with me and he’s very interesting. This is how the park looked through my weird Dan glasses: I originally took the central path from north to south. Many narrow trails appearing to be bike trails entered the woods on either side. The topography was very hilly – very much unlike Florida. In fact, many of the tiny hills were a bit too steep to have happened naturally and I thought that a mighty civilization of humans must have once dwelled there. No sooner did I have this thought than I stumbled across a ditch full of large stones of roughly uniform size. The race of humans must have been sorters. What was it that had caused their demise?  Further along the trail, I continued to see signs of the artificial nature of the park. If only I knew what these signs portended I would have left immediately, but fool I was I assumed they were only signs of past human activities. There were odd piles here and there of neatly stacked stones, logs, or tires. What was their purpose? Were they territorial markers? Did they have religious significance? Reaching the southern extreme of the park, I turned east towards the pond. At first, it seemed unapproachable, as a dense border of reeds and marshland surrounded it, but eventually one path brought me to a row of wooden beams sitting atop the mud, allowing me to walk right up to the water’s edge. There was quite a web of paths running every which way, and if I could not see my way through the trunks made bare by winter, I could have easily been lost forever. It was in this area I saw the first shoots of spring rising from the land in hopeful expectation of the glorious seasons ahead. In addition to pitcher plants by the pond, there were short plants with black leaves. In other places, there were patches of green briars with formidable thorns.   Again heading north, I began to hear strange speech, but could see no one talking. The language was eerie, the words rather like the sounds of a duck or a frog, yet it had a certain human quality to the pattern of speech. I eventually traced the sound to a large puddle, at which point the sound abruptly stopped the moment I appeared. There was no one to be seen. I was quite familiar with this phenomenon from my time in Junior High School. It meant that the hidden speakers had been talking about me! Further along the path, I came across a baseball cap draped over a fallen tree. Someone had lost it somehow – but why had they not turned back to pick it up? Were they in a hurry? Were they being chased? A short distance further I saw a single glove. Did it belong to the same person? Why were they losing their clothing? What had happened to them? Further along I saw an empty can of diet coke. Now I knew something was wrong. Nobody gives away soda for free. I saw now that this was a dangerous area where unsuspecting travelers might be chased by woodland fairies who would strip them of their clothing and take food right out of their mouths! At that moment I remembered the strange voices near the pond and realized I might already be a target. I would have to be on my guard. Walking quickly, I crossed a stream and happened to look to the left. This is when I finally understood. A recent windstorm had knocked over the trees – but instead of uprooting, they had pulled up the carpet beneath them – exposing the true nature of the park beneath! This was no park at all! No wonder the trees did not have leaves! No wonder the topography was so strange! It was some demented fairy’s idea of what they thought a park was supposed to look like so that they could trick and trap unsuspecting explorers!  I instantly broke into a run, screaming like a baby. I did not even stop to take a picture and have no idea how it got into my phone. As I tore through the web of crisscrossing trails, I began to worry that I might never make it out alive. That is when I saw the signs. Branches laid against trees spelled the letter “Y.” It being a letter used only by humans, I thought it might be showing a way out of the woods. I also thought it could be a fairy trick just to toy with me and prolong my suffering, wearing me out before they closed in for the kill. I had little choice; I took a chance and followed the mysterious trail.
I followed the path as it ran along the top of a tall, narrow ridge, its artificiality blatantly obvious now. How could I have been so stupid? I passed around an unusually large patch of green briars and went near another pond. There I heard the fairies speaking even louder than before. They sounded angry and I took it as a sign I was headed in the right direction. I ran and ran past more of the signs. I still don’t know how the pictures got into my phone…
At last, I found myself at the parking lot where I had come in and scurried to the safety of my automobile. The fairies would not catch me that day, and I would never enter that trick park again.
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Life is an adventure. Life is magical. I often find fun and intrigue in mundane things by using my creativity to imagine alternate explanations for everyday phenomena. Could what appear to be mere coincidences actually be proof of a plot to replace world leaders with alien clones? This is the most common way I come up with my science fiction stories. While there is nothing wrong with this, the real world is interesting too.
I often like to think of natural places as full of mysterious fields of energy that can be tapped into with the right knowledge to perform interesting shows. I’m not wrong! Natural places are full of gravity, magnetism, and electric gradients! Trillions of neutrinos pass through our bodies every second. Individual particles maintain spooky connections through quantum entanglement. Ripples in the electromagnetic field are all around us. Those with the right knowledge and equipment can send and receive radio waves to communicate long distances. Under the right circumstances, there can be spontaneous discharges called lightning. None of these phenomena are fully understood. Even so, does knowing how magic works make it any less magic? I often like to think of normal rocks as having strange properties making them react with other substances in unexpected ways. Maybe they do! Chemistry is relatively well understood, but there is still room for surprises. Perhaps if mixed with just the right solution in just the right concentration at just the right temperature at just the right pressure something will happen that is not obvious. I often like to think of the parks I explore as islands in a large sea. By using my magical powers/artifacts and standing in the right spot, I can grasp onto the mysterious currents of energy that will bring me through the air or water to the next island. This is almost what happens! I use a machine called a car to follow the roads. Some roads have higher speed limits than others, and they intersect each other in complex ways. Does being made of matter make the roads less interesting? Would my mysterious currents of energy be any less interesting if beings made of the same energy interacted with them as if they were solid? What is matter made of anyway? Does requiring stops for fuel to power my magical artifact make my car less interesting? Does the fact that the roads were built by a race of intelligent beings make them less interesting? Does the fact that off-road travel is also possible make the roads less interesting? Of course, in the real world we also have real islands and there are real ocean currents, not to mention the trade winds and the jet stream, so I don’t have to dream. Other times I like to think of the parks I visit as whole planets. Does being small make the parks less interesting? Realistically, I don’t think I could ever stand to explore a whole planet. It would take too long before I got bored with it and wanted to move on. It would be too different from continent to continent to really get a feel for what it was like that made it different from other planets. Swamp planets and desert planets I understand. A single planet with deserts, swamps, jungles, tundra, oceans, plains, mountains, farms, and cities is just too much! It would take a lifetime to explore it! In order to hold knowledge in our finite minds, understand it, and enjoy it, it must be simplified by cleaning up the details that don’t fit our narrative. This is why I break the Earth down into manageable parks (and other places) with nothing in between as if they were planets separated by empty space. I often like to think of trails as following mysterious flows of energy that prevent plant growth, but this is not too far from the truth either. I know that they are maintained by the actions of humans (and sometimes other animals), but does understanding how the phenomenon works make it any less interesting? Why were those paths chosen to begin with, anyway? Human psychology is still very mysterious. What really causes fairy rings? No, they aren’t gateways to other worlds, but the world inside is different than the world outside. The world inside is dominated by a mysterious force called fungi, and nobody really knows how living cells function. I also often like to think of animals as having a secret language of their own in which they exchange profound truths that we can’t understand. How do we know they don’t? We can never be sure of the full meaning another human brings to the same words that mean so much to us. Animal sounds could be much the same for them. Animals have senses and forms of knowledge we do not, trail scents and electrolocation being only some of the examples we are aware of. What about the examples we have yet to discover? What of the examples that animals deliberately keep secret from us? Could animals and angels be one and the same? We already live in a fantasy world. Related posts: Miracles Happen Every Day, Finding Adventure Close To Home, How To Find Interesting Things |
AuthorMy name is Dan. I am an author, artist, explorer, and contemplator of subjects large and small. Archives
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