Fantasy Junkyard

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.