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seiberwingI went out walking in the botanical gardens with Theo yesterday and apparently it's taught my fingers how to write again.
If you don't know the layout of UNCA, the botanical gardens run around and partially through the edge of the campus. Flowing through the gardens is a large (well, medium-large) creek, containing mostly minnows and large rocks that allow you to walk along a large part of it without getting your feet wet until you get into the more obscure areas of it. I had my sandals on and Theo left his Speedo flip-flops at the creek's edge under one of the bridges, which gave us a bit more freedom of movement in the flowing water and shifting sand.
So, totally unplanned, we went exploring.
Going off to the right as we approached the official boundaries of the gardens took us down a slightly narrower creek, where things were more overgrown and the rocks were covered with algae and moss. We stopped under another bridge and spoke for a time, occasionally waving up to the children who peered down at us from the bridge or to the elderly couple who had paused to rest in the sun a few yards away. As we continued upstream, little bits of purple blossoms floated by us and curled up around the rocks. We began to find broken glass and bricks (and for some reason, a cracked CD). Aroundabout the time we neared the highway we came to a pair of rectangular concrete tunnels, a dry one to the left and one with shallow water trickling through it to the right. To avoid the deeper water in front of the right tunnel, we took the dry route.
The entire inside of the tunnel was covered in colorful grafitti. Unsurprising, given that it's right next to a university, but this is Asheville and hence the vandalism was a bit more...creative.
There were a lot of arcane marks on the walls mixed in with the conventional urban florid yet indecipherable signatures, including some rather elegant depictions of the atomic structure and a Sephirah in grey tones. On the ceiling someone had written "Death Squad" in yellow, below a pentagram. As I mentioned to Theo, I'm a person of logic but I'm not above wanting a little superstitious protection just in case. Theo agreed, and bemourned the lack of wood to knock on as a loud motorcycle drove over our heads.
At the other end of the tunnel was a large pile of tree branches, mostly dry and rotting. Scrambling up onto the other side revealed more of the creek, and trees covered in vines that bore the little purple blossoms we'd seen earlier. Google’s not helping out, so I’m still not sure what exactly they were.
Of course, the thing that struck us first as we climbed out was the scent of rotting flesh. That, combined with the numerous odd blankets and cushions that had apparently made their way downstream and gotten stuck on various fallen branches, made us wonder if we were going to find an actual corpse down there.
No such luck, sadly. Theo and I found a few strange looking bricks as we kept going until the tunnels were out of sight, but that seemed to be as far as we were going to get. I went up on the bank to figure out where the hell we were in relation to campus (apparently the tunnels were near the cross of Broadway and West Weaver) and what was ahead, but the creek didn't seem to be ending anytime soon. We decided to turn our noses towards home again and wandered back downstream.
We finally discovered the source of the smell once we got back to the tunnels, now coming from a different direction and perspective. A large dead rodent of some nature (might have been a woodchuck, going by size and teeth, but the skin was stretched red and tight over its head and the head was too far gone for me to pick out anything useful) was half-buried under the large pile of branches we'd scampered over earlier. I couldn't even find where its eyes had been on its skull, and a bit of poking with a stick showed that its innards were now home to a soupy writhing mass of maggots.
It was both disgusting yet intriguing. If I'd been at home I might have set it in the sun and come back for the bones a few weeks later; as it was, we left nature to do its work and kept going.
Climbing back over the branches and gopher corpse into the dry tunnel would have been too much effort, especially for Theo and his still-bare feet, so we took the watery route. That tunnel had less writing on the inside, but what was there was just as strange as the writings of the dry path.
Someone had painted, quite elegantly for someone with a limited number of spray colors, a five foot high lotus held between a thumb and forefinger. Even more strange, the message GONE MOSES MAFM MINE (well, the F was actually just a line with a half-bar at the top and a straight line down, but I can't properly make that symbol with my keyboard. Might have been an I that never got finished, but GONE MOSES MAIM MINE still doesn't make a lot of sense) was repeated in black spraypaint several times throughout the length of the tunnel. Nothing much happened when we read it out loud, but then again we never said it three times while doing anything particularly special. Ideally it isn't one of those things that waits a while and then does something nasty during a full moon.
As we came back to Theo's shoes we came across a white ibis fishing in the creek (and accordingly, I looked it up afterwards, as is traditional. Like I said, a little bit of superstition doesn't hurt anyone.) It waded about for a while, snapped at something, and took off over the bridge and out of sight.
By this point Theo and I had developed an interest in dinner. Theo reclaimed his flip-flops and we went up the other branch of the creek, heading towards the road. The trees crept in closer, and a woodpecker (Pileated, as it turned out) sat and watched us for a time before flying off.
There was another inch-deep-water tunnel under the road up to the dining hall, shorter and mostly free of interesting writing. The greenery on one end gave way to straw shoring and startlingly orange rocks to rival the Arizona desert. Scrambling up those took us to the road, stark black and yellow against the trees and grass of the botanical garden that crept up on the other side of it. And so we climbed the hill up past the parking lot, called up Theo's roommate, and went to get some edibles.
Also I had one sandwich too many and at the moment I've got a rather nasty case of indigestion. All interesting things have their morning after, I suppose.
If you don't know the layout of UNCA, the botanical gardens run around and partially through the edge of the campus. Flowing through the gardens is a large (well, medium-large) creek, containing mostly minnows and large rocks that allow you to walk along a large part of it without getting your feet wet until you get into the more obscure areas of it. I had my sandals on and Theo left his Speedo flip-flops at the creek's edge under one of the bridges, which gave us a bit more freedom of movement in the flowing water and shifting sand.
So, totally unplanned, we went exploring.
Going off to the right as we approached the official boundaries of the gardens took us down a slightly narrower creek, where things were more overgrown and the rocks were covered with algae and moss. We stopped under another bridge and spoke for a time, occasionally waving up to the children who peered down at us from the bridge or to the elderly couple who had paused to rest in the sun a few yards away. As we continued upstream, little bits of purple blossoms floated by us and curled up around the rocks. We began to find broken glass and bricks (and for some reason, a cracked CD). Aroundabout the time we neared the highway we came to a pair of rectangular concrete tunnels, a dry one to the left and one with shallow water trickling through it to the right. To avoid the deeper water in front of the right tunnel, we took the dry route.
The entire inside of the tunnel was covered in colorful grafitti. Unsurprising, given that it's right next to a university, but this is Asheville and hence the vandalism was a bit more...creative.
There were a lot of arcane marks on the walls mixed in with the conventional urban florid yet indecipherable signatures, including some rather elegant depictions of the atomic structure and a Sephirah in grey tones. On the ceiling someone had written "Death Squad" in yellow, below a pentagram. As I mentioned to Theo, I'm a person of logic but I'm not above wanting a little superstitious protection just in case. Theo agreed, and bemourned the lack of wood to knock on as a loud motorcycle drove over our heads.
At the other end of the tunnel was a large pile of tree branches, mostly dry and rotting. Scrambling up onto the other side revealed more of the creek, and trees covered in vines that bore the little purple blossoms we'd seen earlier. Google’s not helping out, so I’m still not sure what exactly they were.
Of course, the thing that struck us first as we climbed out was the scent of rotting flesh. That, combined with the numerous odd blankets and cushions that had apparently made their way downstream and gotten stuck on various fallen branches, made us wonder if we were going to find an actual corpse down there.
No such luck, sadly. Theo and I found a few strange looking bricks as we kept going until the tunnels were out of sight, but that seemed to be as far as we were going to get. I went up on the bank to figure out where the hell we were in relation to campus (apparently the tunnels were near the cross of Broadway and West Weaver) and what was ahead, but the creek didn't seem to be ending anytime soon. We decided to turn our noses towards home again and wandered back downstream.
We finally discovered the source of the smell once we got back to the tunnels, now coming from a different direction and perspective. A large dead rodent of some nature (might have been a woodchuck, going by size and teeth, but the skin was stretched red and tight over its head and the head was too far gone for me to pick out anything useful) was half-buried under the large pile of branches we'd scampered over earlier. I couldn't even find where its eyes had been on its skull, and a bit of poking with a stick showed that its innards were now home to a soupy writhing mass of maggots.
It was both disgusting yet intriguing. If I'd been at home I might have set it in the sun and come back for the bones a few weeks later; as it was, we left nature to do its work and kept going.
Climbing back over the branches and gopher corpse into the dry tunnel would have been too much effort, especially for Theo and his still-bare feet, so we took the watery route. That tunnel had less writing on the inside, but what was there was just as strange as the writings of the dry path.
Someone had painted, quite elegantly for someone with a limited number of spray colors, a five foot high lotus held between a thumb and forefinger. Even more strange, the message GONE MOSES MAFM MINE (well, the F was actually just a line with a half-bar at the top and a straight line down, but I can't properly make that symbol with my keyboard. Might have been an I that never got finished, but GONE MOSES MAIM MINE still doesn't make a lot of sense) was repeated in black spraypaint several times throughout the length of the tunnel. Nothing much happened when we read it out loud, but then again we never said it three times while doing anything particularly special. Ideally it isn't one of those things that waits a while and then does something nasty during a full moon.
As we came back to Theo's shoes we came across a white ibis fishing in the creek (and accordingly, I looked it up afterwards, as is traditional. Like I said, a little bit of superstition doesn't hurt anyone.) It waded about for a while, snapped at something, and took off over the bridge and out of sight.
By this point Theo and I had developed an interest in dinner. Theo reclaimed his flip-flops and we went up the other branch of the creek, heading towards the road. The trees crept in closer, and a woodpecker (Pileated, as it turned out) sat and watched us for a time before flying off.
There was another inch-deep-water tunnel under the road up to the dining hall, shorter and mostly free of interesting writing. The greenery on one end gave way to straw shoring and startlingly orange rocks to rival the Arizona desert. Scrambling up those took us to the road, stark black and yellow against the trees and grass of the botanical garden that crept up on the other side of it. And so we climbed the hill up past the parking lot, called up Theo's roommate, and went to get some edibles.
Also I had one sandwich too many and at the moment I've got a rather nasty case of indigestion. All interesting things have their morning after, I suppose.
