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