I’ve seen some interesting things (car tires, a bicycle, a host of big, random, nameless metal things), mostly on a specific trail in the Chugiak State Park, but I think the one that stood out the most was an airplane engine. Yes. It was an airplane engine.
(Sorry, I don’t have any photos. It was a while back).
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Oh, and in a different area, a car with numerous random things inside. Flipped onto its side. I don’t have any photos of that either.
I once left a GPS in the field. Went back a week later—I’d written the coordinates in a data sheet—and found the GPS. Unfortunately, someone had stepped on it and broken the screen. Since it was off trail a ways—and the nearby trail was barely used in any case—that someone was surely me. Oh well.
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Yeah, that ol’ blame-mirror never loses its shine! Onwards…
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You and I are clearly spending time in different parts of the southwest. :-)
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It’s mostly all near train tracks near the cities. But I see them everytime I am in this habitat!
Realized my link no longer works, here’s an observation of survey whiskers showing all parts: the plastic, the clasp, and nail. Often mistaken for grass or fungi.
Yesterday, while walking along a pond, I found some tea bags just hanging from a tree. I wonder how they got there.
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There’s a state park near where I grew up that used to be an estate about 100 years ago. Some of the family’s old cars have been out in the elements for decades now and have basically disintegrated but are right along the trails.
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In the Carolina low country, “gut” is a term for a small stream that empties into a large river. Deep in the backcountry of Congaree National Park, there is one named Windshield Gut. If you get there, you recognize it by the classic windshield (without a car) at its outlet.
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That’s interesting. On the island of Nevis in the West Indies, a “gut” or “ghat” is a stream that runs from high up the mountain to the coast, usually in a ravine for part of that way.
I often find doll shoes, like this one here:
No doll, just the shoes. I think I’ve seen a dozen or so just last year, but did not find them interesting enough.
I would say though, the “strangest” things I find, are often dangerous. In 2016 or 17 I think, I was planning to go and take a stroll through some sandhills in my neck of the woods to see local flora (atypical winter rains and stuff like that). I was immediatly warned to not go there alone by the locals (and most of the time they’re certainly right!) so I took an aunt of mine who lives nearby. She began feeling uneasy when we got to the sandhills in question, and when I asked why she pointed towards a heavy wooden cross and at its feet were a bunch of shaman offerings (tobbaco, “agua florida” (“flowering water” for rituals), some burnt papers and stuff.) She told me to get the hell out of that place, and so we did (she’s very superstitious and wasn’t in a good health condition so I couldn’t just stay and let her go) Sadly I lost these photos, I think.
The other was this year when recording a mass flowering of Encelia in a canyon somewhat afar from the main city. After being chased by a huge whirlwind, I made it to the mid-part of the canyon where I found a lone sneaker (very new!) and a dirty knife’s handle, neatly nestled in a cavity of the rock walls. Needless to say I don’t go there alone anymore, especially since it’s so deep in the desert there isn’t any signal for phones to call or send messages!
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Must’ve flown. We all know tea bags can’t climb trees.
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It’s an “e”!
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Of course! It must’ve been resting for the winter migration.
Back when Third Millennium Alliance was a fairly young organization, and Jama-Coaque was a fairly young reserve, I did an internship there. One of their community service/data collection projects was picking up ocean plastic from the local beach.
Among the numerous motor oil bottles, all of which had been cut to convert them into scoops (that’s Ecuadorian thrift), I found this:
On the bottom, the embossed lettering can barely be made out: “Mini Max U.S.A.” A cup made in the USA, now ocean plastic in Ecuador. I thought, “I’m going to repatriate this. The liquid holding part is still intact; it will have a new life with me.”
Where might it have traveled? Maybe it was local, lost or discarded by someone in Pedernales or San Lorenzo. But then again, how long can plastic drift in the ocean before it starts to break down? Maybe it traveled much further.
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When doing a park cleanup with the girl scouts at a very small local park, we found a large chunk of rotting, waterlogged carpet that had been dumped in an extremely muddy area near a stream. With the help of shovels and a large knife, we managed to dig the whole thing out.
More recently, while walking in a different local park, i found an old pizza box and a no trespassing sign (the sign was old, on the ground, it likely came from the neighborhood near the park originally, as i was walking on a public trail ive walked many times before.)
In the creek near my home, numerous glass bottles and jars, all shapes and sizes, some seemed quite old.
In my yard, shortly after moving in, a small metal figurine of Ulysses S. Grant, various coins, a number of glass and pottery shards.
In the woods near my home, several ruined old lawn mowers.
While walking along a road years ago, but in a residential area, several glass chess pieces, broken and unbroken.
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When I was stationed at Pearl Harbor, I made a point of visitng the neighbor islands when I could. On a beach on Lana`i I found this plastic bin, which I assumed had come from Japan (don’t worry, this was before Fukushima):
Of course, it might not have drifted all the way from Japan; it might have come off a Japanese freighter or fishing boat, or it might be Chinese, given the volume of that nation’s shipping and high-seas fishing.
The thing is, I don’t think these are standard kanji. The first one, especially, appears to have a radical that doesn’t exist; I can’t make heads or tails of it. The second and third characters might mean “refrigeration,” but if so, the third one is missing some strokes. My Chinese dictionary was published in Taiwan, so it only has the traditional characters; I have been trying to find charts of shinjitai, but no success yet on that first character.
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I asked my friend who is from Singapore and speaks & reads a lot variations, she says “This is kanji. I only read the last 2 characters that mean ‘cold storage’”
So…solved last two but not the first.