The Little Moose Island Project

Little Moose Island -- August 2006(When you could see it)
Ever seen the movie The Blair Witch Project? It's a weird, creepy, well-done movie about three student cinematographers who go into the woods to document the area believed to be still inhabited by a woman labeled as a witch and banished from the town of Blair, Maryland, hundreds of years ago. Afterwards, so many people came up missing that the townsfolk abandoned the town and many years later the town of Burkittsville took its place. To this day, people in the area keep coming up missing and -- as the story plays out -- so do our three students, whose film and video gear eventually show up undamaged, giving us the main footage in the movie. Along the way, however, they encounter an area in the woods that has bundled stick figures hanging in the trees and little artistically done piles of stones on the ground everywhere. Well, I had just watched the movie only a few days ago (my first viewing ever), and the creepy effect was still with me as a Resource Management Intern and I went over to Little Moose Island to map and document erosion areas on the tiny island's meager trail system. And what do we find emerging from the fog as soon as we get over there? This:


Now, I'd be the first to admit I have an overactive imagination, but this was just downright spooky. Don't get me wrong -- I still think this could be classified as an art installation, but coming on the heels of Blair Witch, it was . . . well, spooky. While Logan was getting his GPS gear up and running, my curiousity overcame the creepy feeling and I dashed over to document these guys further. Here's another example:


Just look at this work, would you? This is some high-quality, gravity-defying craftsmanship, folks. I looked closer at the ones using the almost perfectly round stones and there are tiny little bits of gravel surrounding them holding them in place and keeping them from rolling off. These guys knew what they were doing. Normally, on the trail crew, we would see a group of cairns like this and send the stones flying to the four points of the compass, but the artist in me begged me to let them be, and so I did.


Again, the worksmanship here has me speechless. Those stones on that black, triangular rock are defying the laws of physics and gravity -- and a couple of local statutes, I'm sure -- as they should not be there. I would definitely like to meet the person responsible for this little display and shake their masterful hand.


Now it's time for a couple of portrait shots of these guys. There were two in particular that leant themselves well to being singled out for display. This is one of the best of these "portraits" with the round verticality of the cairn contrasted with rectangular horizontality of the granite base. The lines streaking criss-cross through the rock add an element of almost kinetic energy, while the fog-draped land and rock massses in the background are calm and quiet. This is my computer's new wallpaper, by the way.


But for me, this one by far wins the portrait prize. Can you believe these two flat, oval, rounded stones are standing on their ends -- vertically? This guy -- or gal -- was a freakin' magician!!! That's all there is to it. If you click on the image, it'll enlarge so you can see the teeny-tiny pebbles used to keep these stones so perilously erect. Absolutely amazing. I'm going to have to try this myself some day, given my penchant for building.


Okay, so you won't think this was a total boondoggle -- hey, the Government is famous for that kind of stuff -- here's Logan hard at work measuring the amount of tread (trail surface) loss. He was showing me how it's done so I could take over the task, as he has his hands pretty full with photos, papers, maps and the yellow Pocket PC. My part of the job was to run the measuring wheel to help locate the site of the last measurement (iffy at best), then measure the depth of the tread, and finally take a current picture of the site to match as closely as possible the picture taken five years ago to see the difference in appearance. Whew! Tough day.


At lunch, we went to Land's End (the southernmost point on the island, not the clothier) and I just couldn't resist taking a picture of this big black basalt rock sitting amongst all the pink granite ones. The contrast was just too much to pass up. This contrast in rock types was brought about by Mother Nature, of course, in a process known as an intrusion. Due to extreme pressures, the pink granite develops cracks in it allowing the volcanic magma underneath to intrude its way through the cracks up to the surface. This results in what is known as a "black dike," of which Little Moose Island is ribboned. Usually, the dike runs along at the same level as the granite, but the effect of the ocean's fury over the milennia -- not to mention the effects of icing and thawing -- probably had a lot to do with this one being so prominent, as granite is a softer rock than basalt and chunks would therefore break away and fall into the sea. Anyway, this guy was absolutely captivating to me, and so it had to be included. You know me.

Well, I do hope you've enjoyed this little show, and by all means check out the other show sometime -- if you dare! It'll creep you out, guaranteed.