Note to my Readers

I have decided to move Discovery at Little Hog Island to a new blog. I know you've already been complaining I have too many blogs and it's confusing, but this blog was intended for retreats and for a variety of pieces, and it has become focused on a single story which I am working on every day or nearly every day. I am going to slowly work at transforming both blogs. One, Discovery at Little Hog Island, will be the serial story, and this one will go back, eventually, to being for retreat work. I apologize to those of you who find my plethora of blogs confusing. Ask me, and I'll explain. Or go to the View my complete profile and navigate that way. Thank you for reading. Please leave me a comment occasionally so I know you're out there and I am not adrift in a sea of hungry black holes. Have patience, because this is slow work, and be gentle, because the first posts are first drafts.

I am not going to have the links up to date for a while, so please navigate within the story blogs by using the monthly archives. Thank you, and visit again soon.

Audubon Roseate Tern Collage 

Discovery at Little Hog Island, Part 36

Part 1, Part 35

"Yeah, well, at the time, we decided that the larger ruins were an old, partially fortified settlement. A settlement that probably failed because of the rocky soil and the bad storms. Apparently it was one of those bad storms that did in the lighthouse and further crumbled some of the downed walls of the settlement ruins.”

“Check out this picture, Dana” Ross said, holding it out to Dana. He had been peeking ahead at the pile of items in the folder that Rheta had laid on the table between them. “Oh, look, there are more. And a stamp. I don’t recall that you got so into the terns, Rheta.”

“These aren’t all from when we were kids. I sort of collected these as I came across them over the years. I like this one best, because it is most successful at showing the rose color on the neck,” Rheta said, holding up one of the Audubon prints. “The part I didn’t like about Audubon’s paintings is that he killed 38 terns before he made the painting. What a jerk. I don’t even believe in killing one of them, but thirty-eight? Was that really necessary? No wonder they’re endangered.”

“I don’t think Audubon himself is solely responsible for their status, Rhee,” Ross said. He sounded fond to Dana, rather than critical. Maybe she should forget this project and head to Idaho and study the wild horses instead. That had been one of her other ideas. Why was she feeling so jealous of this one night stand?

Part 36

Roof of Settlement house at Little Hog Island. 

Discovery on Little Hog Island, Part 35

Part 1, Part 34

“If I remember right, you told me is was part of the PSSC Physics and Calculus deal with Gary, some sort of thank you for all his help, and that you hoped I’d understand because you’d love to go with me. Of course, I thought you were shrugging me off and didn’t like me.”

“I thought you liked Ami and Dorothy anyway.”

“I thought Ami was going with Billy Owens. Then I heard Dorothy was going with Billy Owens. I always thought you were cute. I asked you because I liked you.”

“Our mutual admiration society probably isn’t much fun for Dana.”

Dana was staring at the map Rheta had made of Little Hog Island, doing her best to ignore Rheta and Ross. She did get jealous easily and she felt as if Rheta were trying to horn in on her territory with Ross. But Ross had made no promises to her. She looked back at the map. “What’s this?” She asked, pointing.

“It’s a first people’s shell midden,” Rheta said. “And there were some projectile points there, too. I didn’t know what it was when I drew it; I just copied it off the old map. But someone before us had discovered a first people’s campsite, located right near the settlement.”

“Settlement?”

Part 36

Discovery at Little Hog Island, Part 34

Part 1, Part 33

“I’ll show you what I’ve got handy, and maybe later dig out some more. I happened across a few of these when I was cleaning out my hope chest. I’m not sure exactly what I was hoping for when I stuck these in there, Buck. And yes, somewhere I have notes on the terns, although that part wasn’t my project—and I have some of Buck’s notes.”

Dear Wendy,

Gary and Rude both asked me to the Prom, can you believe it? Gary asked me first and I said yes, because I like him and I didn’t think anyone else would ask me. If I’d known Rude would ask me, I’d have said no to Gary so I could say yes to Rude. Now I am trying to figure out what to do. I’ve been obsessing about it, but I need to take more notes on Little Hog Island. Mr. R. (Raymie) Wadsworth wants me to make a topo map of the island showing the location of the ruins relative to the mainland and the other islands and to write a little essay proposing why I think they were located where they were.

I got a copy of the topo maps of the area at the library, but the details aren’t too clear because the scale is too small. It shows the ruins I drew yesterday as buildings and also some (other) ruins we haven’t seen. I rowed out alone to look and see if they are still there—I wanted to be the first person to find them if they were. Guess what—they are. So I’m going to get to tell everyone what I found. I don’t know why we never looked at the maps first. I guess that’s why we have teachers—to help us learn stuff. Only this stuff is more interesting than what we usually learn at school.

The new ruins, new to us and perhaps also newer in construction time, are higher on the hill and are constructed of different materials than the old ones. The woods are thinner there, and the ground underneath is rockier. A mostly solid hump of what I think is granite, like everything else. (I took a rock sample to find out.) One of them is an old lighthouse, I think. It’s round and made of stuff that looks a lot like the Rock Island lighthouse. I was wondering why there would be two lighthouses here, and I decided that the Little Hog Island Light was built first and that something happened to it and they replaced it with the Rock Island lighthouse. The other building, which is partly intact, looks as if it were the lighthouse keeps quarters. That doesn’t explain anything about the original ruins we found—Ami found. This is all just my guess, but I have taken samples and pictures at both sites and drawn some sketches and am going to take them all to R. (I mean Raymie, not Rude—Raymie is pretty cute too, but we’re not allowed to even think of dating teachers.).

I gotta work on that map for R. He showed me a way to measure the elevation so that I could make topo map lines between the ones show on the big map—he wants me to make more of them closer together to show the lay of the land and the shape of the hill. I guess I’ll try to draw (copy) the original topo map first, only make it a little bigger. I won’t put all those details in; that would take forever.

Meanwhile, while I am writing these words, I can’t stop thinking of Rude and Gary. ACK! What will I do? Mom says I have to go with Gary, since he asked me first and I said yes, and that Gary is really nice and cute. She’s probably right. Gary is cute and nice. I like Gary. But Rude is so . . . so wonderfully Rude. I want to say he’s sexy but I can’t write that in case Mom finds my diary under my mattress. (I didn’t write that, Mom!) Oh, darn. I will have to tell Rude something—what can I say?

Part 35

Discovery on Little Hog Island, Part 33

Part 1, Part 32

“I’d forgotten that you had a crush on me, Rheta. What a dolt I was, sorry,” Ross said.

“Now I am jealous. Did you take the tent because you were jealous of my being with Ross?” Dana asked.

“Ross, who’s Ross?”

“Buck. Are you still in love with Buck?”

“Ross, huh? Kind of suits him. I think he’s pretty cute, yes. But I took the tent because Garrett called and said Wendy had left her tent at her campsite and would I pick it up for her. He said he’d explain later. If you hadn’t run into me taking pictures of those starry false Solomon’s seals, I would never have known I was being used that way. I’m sorry.”

“Wendy? This is getting way too complicated. Was Wendy one of your friends?”

“No, my middle daughter.”

“You weren’t writing to her in high school, were you?”

“No, that was Peter Pan’s Wendy, left from when I was a kid. I liked the idea of never growing up. From my vantage point at the time, grown-ups didn’t seem to be very happy. All they did was work; they never got to play. They always had to worry about money. So Wendy was like my alter ego. I was writing to my child self, I guess. Sort of. And I named my daughter after her, because she’d been so important to me as a child and a teen. But the terrible irony is that we do need to grow up, and my daughter Wendy has real issues assuming the mantle of adulthood. I wish I had named her something else. I’m not sure what. Every name seems to have some baggage attached to it. Like Darcy. I almost named her Darcy, but I was afraid she’s be murdered like Darcy Farrow.”

“I’m sorry about your daughter Wendy, Rheta. I don’t know much about it, but I hope she is able to be successful integrating into adulthood. And that she can retain a childlike sense of wonder. And I am glad I got my tent back. Do you have more notes from your high school project?”

“I think Wendy will always have a sense of wonder, which is good. I saved all the high school project stuff from Little Hog Island. Some of it is in the file here. Other stuff is in the attic.”

“Could we see some of it? Do you have any notes on the terns?”

Part 34

Rhee's First Map of the Ruins

Rhee's first map of the dunes. Not included is this notation to "Wendy:" I had drawn a heart with a cupid arrow through it and my intials and Rude's and then realized Rude would see my map and so would all the others and Mr. R. Wadsworth, so I tried to erase it. It didn't completely erase hope no one sees it. Look top right under "hole in roof." (It says RW + RS! Shhh!)

Discovery at Little Hog Island, part 32

Part 1, part 31

Dear Wendy,

I’m going to tell you about the ruins on Hog Island, Little Hog Island, that is, of course. Mr. Wadsworth (everyone calls him Raymie, but you know MY mom says that’s rude) assigned me the task of taking notes on everything. I’ll copy out the parts that we need for class later—I like telling everything to you, you’re the only one who really understands. Like about Rude and Billy and Gary and Glenn. Golly, they are all so cute. Everyone says Billy is the cutest. He is pretty cute. Blond and blue-eyed and so, SO sweet. I like Rude the best, but he likes Ami best and then Dorothy. I can tell by how he acts with them, batting his eyelashes like a girl. He’s so obvious, the way he follows them around, it makes me sick. Next best, I like Glenn, then Gary. Don’t get me wrong, I like Billy a lot, too. Gary is so smart. He helps me with PSSC physics. I’d never get it, or calculus, either, without his help.

Anyway, I’m getting off the topic, as usual, and into my favorite topic, which is boys. Boys boys boys. I’d like to kiss them all.

Well, not all of them, I wouldn’t want to kiss Clifford Masman. He’s so fat. Mom says I should like him anyway. He’s okay, but I really can’t get past his fat even though I know I should. Or Karl Heney, he’s such a creep, and he smells bad. I mean I’d kiss any of my boys. Rude, Glenn, Gary, Billy or Harlan Hardan. He’s pretty cute, too.

Darn it, there I go again. I’m supposed to be talking about the ruins. They are all made of rock, rock from Little Hog Island. Whoever made them spent a lot of time fitting them together very carefully. The walls that are still standing are thick and strong and secure. Well-built and stable. The ones that are collapsed probably did not fall down by themselves. That’s my opinion. I think something happened to them and I am actually interested to find out what. Wouldn’t Papa be surprised to hear me say I am interested in learning something related to school? He thinks all I want to do is talk on the phone and go to school dances and drink soda and eat brownies, but he’s wrong. It’s so annoying when grownups think they know what you’re thinking and they don’t.

I am going to drawn a map of the ruins. I wish I could climb up on something really high and take a picture, but the highest thing is the ruins themselves. Well, some of the trees around them are higher, but I can’t get up in them to get above the ruins, so let me try to draw them. Your friend forever, Rhee

PS: Billy and Gary have both taken to calling me Rhee, and I like it. Rude sometimes calls me Rhee-rhee. He says it in a special voice and it gives me the shivers.

Part 33

Line at Pier 

Discovery on Little Hog Island, part 31

Part 1, Part 30

She yanked desperately, pulled and tugged. At last the zipper moved an inch or two. She stuck her hands the hole and pulled them apart. Finally the door opened. She dove through and up, breaking the surface, gasping for air, and then turned to help pull the door opening over Ross. They dragged the soaked tent and bedding up onto the rocks, and stood naked in the heap looking toward shore. The bikes were both lying on their sides and the contents of Dana’s bags had been scattered across the site.

“Glenn is going a little too far with his animosity,” Dana said, “We could have been hurt, or killed. The bikes might be damaged.”

“I’m not sure that was Glenn,” Ross said.

“Then who?”

“Well, it could be Glenn. Or it could be Dorothy and Yllsa. Or Willie and Simon. Or it could be Byron.”

“Byron, why?”

“We don’t know what the motivation was. The may not have intended us harm. It may have been a joke. Or, not. Dorothy is clearly jealous of you.”

“How could someone so pretty and slender and and young-looking and in such good shape and so talented be jealous of me?”

“You’re pretty and talented, too?”

“Not as pretty as she is!!”

“I think you are. You’re pretty to me.”

“Well, I think whoever dragged us into the water could have killed us. I don’t think it was a joke. If it was, it wasn’t funny.”

“Let’s check the bikes. Good thing it’s such a warm night, or we’d be getting hypothermia!”

Ross picked up the bikes and examined them. Dana picked up her belongings. She put on dry clothes, and gave Ross one of her largest T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. They went to a 24-hour Laundromat and washed all the wet clothes, sleeping bag and tent. They dried everything but the tent. Ross suggested they hang it up to dry at the site and that they go to a motel for the night, his treat.

In the morning, when they went back to the site, the tent was gone.

Part 32

Roseate terns. 

Discovery at Little Hog Island, Part 30

Part 1, part 29

“I love the smell of the sea,” Dana said, slowly, “and the warm balmy summer evenings.”

“Mmmmmmm,” Ross murmured, “It’s definitely balmy in here. A little beyond balmy—it’s downright steamy. Glenn’d say that it smells like a bloody fish market, but I think it smells like contentment, like comfort.”

“Like serenity.”

Dana rolled over and laid the length of her naked skin against Ross’s and breathed in the joy of having him beside her. “A gentle female rain after a long dry spell,” she whispered. “Ahhhhh!”

Suddenly the tent was yanked, battered and pulled down over the rocks and into the icy water. It collapsed around them. Ross thrashed and clawed at the fabric beside her. Wet tent closed over her face. Dana scrambled for the zipper, found it, fought with it, but it stuck in her hand. She yanked and yanked, lungs burning, but it wouldn’t budge.

Part 31