My Ongoing Exploration of Earth
My Ongoing Exploration of Earth
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The orange one is even more beautiful in person.  It’s not much of a beach, with not much of a view, and according to the signs the water is polluted, but Calf Pasture Point in Rhode Island is packed with interesting stones, shells, and bits of trash that make one wonder just what half these objects used to be. To get to Calf Pasture Point, I walked the bicycle trail there. On the way, there was much to see to spark interest. There were large boulders to climb or sit on. There were peeling trees. There were flowers. There was some sort of water barrier or something I imagined to be a giant snake. There were imposing piles of dirt in the middle of nowhere. There were a few trails running into the woods I did not have the time to take. There were holes in the fence, some quite obvious and others very nearly hidden. I also noticed that running parallel to the bike path was another paved path completely overgrown and only visible here and there.     Finally reaching the short peninsula, I walked around its perimeter. I found it overgrown with three different types of brambles, the most spectacular of which was covered with red thorns and stiff hairs.  There was a tiny lagoon just big enough to be a natural jacuzzi. There was a lot of red, white, and green seaweed (Christmas!). On the sand, the seaweed had somehow dried into a solid, papery mat that crunched under my feet. In other places, there was rubbery, black, stratified mud. In at least three places, I had to cross streams dumping into the ocean. Crossing one of them, I was surprised when my foot sank rapidly into the muddy bank, drenching my foot in cold water. I pulled out and looked back to see the mud fill in and smooth out my footprint so that within seven seconds there was no sign I had ever been there!     There were so many curiosities packed into this place that I could not focus on any of them and my account is less of an adventure story than a chaotic, incomplete inventory. What I post is only a fraction of what I photographed. What I photographed is only a fraction of what I saw. What I saw is, I’m sure, only a fraction of what was there. In addition to the items listed above, there were also all forms and varieties of litter, every kind of shell (sea life’s litter), and several types of rocks (Earth’s litter). There were even some bones and some dead crabs.        There was even liquid litter in the form of this oily patch:  There was also a hairy shell. Whatever it was that grew on the outside of it put up perfectly regularly-spaced hairs. There was also a sponge and another shell covered in tubes. Other shells were stuck together in stacks.   I found a rust-colored stone that was basically a big lump of rust. I dropped it and it broke in two, revealing the inside to be the same crumbly orange as the outside.  I have no idea what this is. At first I thought it was a jelly fish, but then I thought it could be the remains of someone’s half-digested soup that had formed a skin in the hot sun. Can anyone identify it?  There was also much evidence of a prior visit by the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things:   I wonder if the same people might have put all those bottles in the trees at Ryan Park.  a bottle from Ryan Park If anyone is looking for buckets, ribbons, or large pieces of eroded Styrofoam to play with, this is definitely the place to visit.
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I recently read The Lost City Of The Monkey God by Douglas Preston, the account of his 2015 visit to the newly discovered (2012) ruins in the mountains of Honduras. Very little is known of the city at this time except that it is not Mayan and was probably abandoned shortly after the Spanish landed. It is believed that not one human had been there in five hundred years.
It had long been rumored that structures existed in the area, remains of a city abandoned when the people lost favor with the gods. The place was believed cursed, and that anyone who set foot there would either be bitten by a snake or contract some horrible disease. Over the years, a small number of people would claim to have seen white stone structures filled with statues of monkeys. The lost city was either called “the white city” or “the city of the monkey god.” In reality, there were likely many real cities being conflated with each other and exaggerated into legend. There were even some tales later shown to be hoaxes. The dense vegetation, rough mountain terrain, jaguars, and most of all the numerous venomous snakes prevented many expeditions from confirming these stories. Government permitting processes, drug traffickers, and hurricanes stopped others. Finally, in 2012 a LIDAR-equipped airplane was flown over the area. Enough lasers penetrated the gaps between the leaves in order to form a topographic map showing unnatural shapes. This is how they discovered not one, but two cities. The 2015 visit confirmed the LIDAR readings. There were stone structures, including much use of quartz (making it a “white city”), although most of it seemed to be earthen mounds and terraces now so overgrown with vegetation that they could be easily missed for what they are. Almost nothing else is known. The book dives into a little bit of speculation at the end about religious practices and the connections between various people groups in the area, but it is very speculative. More study is needed.  The sign at the miniscule Davis Memorial Wildlife Refuge in North Kingstown, Rhode Island is covered with rules. It prohibits loud playing and jogging. My parents always told me to go play outdoors, but maybe in Rhode Island people play indoors instead. The refuge is supposed to be a quiet place to enjoy nature – exactly the type of place one might have a picnic – except that picnics are prohibited as well. I quietly walked the trails and soon decided that this was one of the noisiest places I had been. No fewer than four types of birds were singing at once and screaming curses at me. Stopping beside the pond, I was repeatedly harassed by a bumblebee, forcing me to break the rules by jogging away. I think it wanted the shore all to itself. I walked around the short trail loop, but I didn’t see much of note. I did see a fragment of green wood and strange, metal trees with wires strung between them. The map called these “power lines” and the rules also prohibited going past them. I also saw a hanging branch that had clearly broken and healed several times before. Maybe it was all the noise. What a weird place.
The Sea Of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick is the true story of incompetence, jealousy, ego, needless conflict, revenge, and abuse of power for personal gain. Either the leader of the six-ship American expedition Ex Ex in 1838 Charles Wilkes was the worst manager in history or his officers were the most petty and intractable members of the navy ever – or maybe it was both. In spite of Wilke’s often misguided orders and abrasive personality, the crew miraculously escaped death several times, succeeded in charting the Fiji Islands, the coast of the Oregon Territory, and confirmed the continental size of land south of sixty degrees latitude, naming it Antarctica. Wilkes and four of his officers returned home to courts martials. All were found guilty of some charges and acquitted of others. All held grudges against each other the rest of their lives. It was very nearly forgotten what they had accomplished together.
The Sea Of Glory is a microcosm of human society. We have poisoned our seas, fought wars of global scale, exterminated entire races, protected slavery, twisted justice, outlawed speaking the truth, and cheated each other our dues at every socioeconomic stratum. I’ve worked with terrible managers who couldn’t give good instructions and terrible employees who couldn’t follow good instructions. It is truly a wonder we haven’t gone extinct a dozen times over, let alone that anything gets accomplished. Yet in the past few thousand years, we have eradicated polio, created the internet, and put a man on the moon. What have you accomplished?  Sometimes even short trips to small places can be something special. This April, my grandfather wanted to get out of the house, so we visited Wilcox park in Westerly, Rhode Island. I noticed that in several places the road there split in such a way that I could not tell which was the main route and which was the turn, and road signs were often absent, but we got there somehow. Rhode Island roads are not user-friendly. The park is so small that one can see all the way across it from most spots within, but this is no mere field of grass. There are interesting trees, flowers, hills and uneven walkways, a concrete-lined pond, benches, and artifacts of historical interest. Right next door is the city library. My grandfather had wanted to show me “Harry Lauder’s walking stick,” a form of mutant hazelnut that grows there. Unfortunately, we found out it had died years ago. Instead, we looked at a giant birdbath-thing that used to be a drinking trough for horses. Then we walked around the pond before going home. For such a small place, I somehow managed to take a lot of great pictures:     Later at Burger King, I spied this strange, painted stone outside. Could the same mysterious cabal of stone-painters that inhabit Florida have followed me to New England?   The first time I visited Ryan Park, I only found it because I happened to be driving past its northern entrance. I could not find it on any map. It was only after I explored the western half – thinking I had finished with it – that I discovered a map showing it had another side. I had completely missed the main entrance. There were a couple of ball fields but not much else. A trailhead was marked, but it looked like there was too small a space between it and the pond to be worth much. Still, I decided I should at least make a quick check the next time I drove by. What I found was astounding. Between the lobes of the pond ran a narrow isthmus on which sat the trail. On either side was just enough brush to feel hidden but not so much that it blocked the view. I was soon way out in the middle of the water. It was quiet except for some frolicking geese. This idea of having long, thin walkways connecting distant islands across the sea is exactly how I would design a planet. In some places, the land was wide enough for there to be side trails, which I took. In other places were forests of densely-packed reeds over nine feet high. Around every turn was something new. I had discovered a world of intense beauty. This was the prettiest park I had been in. It was still morning, overcast, and sprinkling off and on. It was cool and comfortable. There was no harsh sunlight to hurt my eyes or cast dark shadows in contrast. The lighting was just right for all the colors to pop. Color makes all the difference. Moss and lichen were everywhere.   I reached the mainland on the other side and found a complex web of trails that seemed to go on and on forever. The trees still had not grown out their leaves yet since it was still March and so I could maintain a long enough line of sight not to get lost. I could even see other trails from the trail I was on. Here and there were small, black ponds of the same kind I saw on the west side of the park (where I heard the “fairies”). There were also bowl-like depressions of roughly the same size that I thought should have filled with water, yet had not. Why? I also saw the same green briars I saw on the west side. In three places I encountered them hanging across the trail and did my best to tuck them away so they wouldn’t catch other hikers. This is harder than it sounds. The thorns kept getting caught on the surrounding twigs and the vines were spring-loaded, requiring me to get a better grip on them – a grip I was unable to achieve without getting thorns in my hands. One time, by pulling on a vine and trying to force it through a narrow opening between two others, I unwittingly pulled a branch of it down so that a thorn hit the corner of my eyelid! There was a lot to see. I saw a pair of very large blackbirds. I saw a cardinal. I saw a tree with a tumor the size of a large watermelon. At the edge of the park is a stone wall beyond which are houses. Most yards have openings in this stone wall with short trails connecting to the main trail. All these people are lucky to have their own private entrances to the park. I also saw this mysterious writing. What does it mean? Is it a warning? Is it a welcome mat? Is it graffiti? Or did some animal just scratch the ground to clean off its paws?  Passing by an area with several black ponds I again heard the strange, gurgling, duck-like voice I had heard several days prior on the west side of the park. There seemed to be many more voices here. Just as before, every time I approached one of the ponds it would fall silent. I tried being extra quiet and slow, but even when I stayed on the trail, the moment I was visible from the pool the voices would hush. I stood next to one pond for a long time waiting for it to start up again. I scanned back and forth across the sixty-by-thirty foot puddle looking for even the tiniest movement. I wished I had someone else to experiment with to confirm that the voices stopped for them too, but there was no one around at all. Finally, I saw dim, grey shapes in the water. Frogs! They would float just under the surface totally still as if dead, but the moment I raised an arm, they would rapidly descend into the brown gloom below. Before I left, I also saw a twisted tree and a hole in the ground next to a creek.   By this time I was in a pretty good mood. Then the sun came out and I thought it was a good day for a drive with the windows down. This was how I ended my March.
How did you end your March?  I had been tipped off about the existence of the swamp monument weeks earlier, but decided to visit Walmart for some fluorescent gear first when I found that it was a hunting area and it was required. I was told that the monument at its end was also known as Indian Monument and was erected to memorialize some Indian war from the colonial era, but I could find no information online about it. Then in late March I decided to first visit Cocumscussoc State Park, but it was difficult to find an entrance. Some maps showed it recessed behind residential property far from any streets except for a single, narrow connection to the main road. Other maps gave it two narrow connections. Other maps showed it enveloping one of the side streets. It was as if the park existed in some sort of quantum superposition of states measured differently depending on what map one used. The northmost connection I was unable to find. The eastmost connection I narrowed down to a small area where every single point along the road was clearly part of someone’s yard except for a single driveway heading into the woods. This was absolutely the only place the park could have been. I thought I would stop at the tourist information building immediately adjacent to the driveway for some maps and suggestions of where else to visit before I walked up the driveway, but the lady inside insisted it was not the entrance after all. She seemed very keen to talk me out of ever visiting the place, claiming it had no trails, was too dense with foliage to navigate, and was infested with ticks. After looking through the pamphlets, I decided to visit the swamp monument after all. Heading south on Route Two, I briefly stopped at the Barber Pond Fishing Area. This is a tiny spot on the side of the road with two benches and a picnic table next to a beautiful blue pond. It was nice, but it was too cold and windy to stay long. Next I stopped at the end of Swamp Monument road and took the trail into the woods. The main trail is a raised, grassy road about a mile long. From there I could only see trees forever, lending a feeling of calming isolation. The only sound was the breeze and my own feet. Most trees lacked leaves still, but there was some Holly here and there.   Only in the final third of the trail does the surrounding area become swampy. Then I saw the monument. It stands maybe 20-25 feet high and is a single stone. On the side it mentions some war from the seventeenth century. It is surrounded by four boulders on which are carved the names Masachvsetts, Connecticvt, Plymovth, and Rhode Island. There is also a flat stone in front giving some additional information, but it is nearly illegible. The place seems very nearly forgotten. I say nearly, because I did happen to run into one lady with a dog while I was there.  From the monument clearing a trail runs west until it skims the northern edge of the Great Swamp Wildlife Reservation. I knew this because as isolated as it seemed out there, I still had a cellular signal and I was curious how close I was getting. I thought that maybe the trail might be a back way into the reservation, which might be helpful to know if I ever got trapped there or something (I really just like to know stuff for no reason). Unfortunately, the trail became impassibly mucky after maybe fifty feet and I turned back.
Nearer to the entrance I saw another trail heading east. This one also skimmed along the northern edge of the GSWR. It was a bit overgrown, but passable, and I made it a couple hundred feet before reaching a very large puddle I was not in the mood to tangle with. There were more leaves here and it was shadier. There were even patches of snow still left where sunlight did not reach. After marking my territory in the name of the empire, I returned to the car. Since it had been a shorter day than I had planned on, I attempted again to visit a bookstore that had been closed the last time I was there. It was closed again. This is not the only place that seems to have staffing problems and an irregular schedule. There is also a pizza place closer to home I had been curious about that is always closed when I go. Also, Ryan Park does not show up on any map and I only found it because I happened to drive by one of its entrances one day. Now I can’t find a way into Cocumscussoc Park even though it is on the map. I’m beginning to think that Rhode Island doesn’t want me here. At least I found the swamp monument! |
AuthorMy name is Dan. I am an author, artist, explorer, and contemplator of subjects large and small. Archives
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