Arizona L.O.W.F.I

Archive for May, 2009

There I was,
There I was,
There I was,
In the Congo…

No, actually somewhere near Mexico, walking across a dry alkaline lake bed that hadn’t even approached the word “lake” in some hundreds of years. Even after the Monsoon, the wettest this place can do is to transform into a small sea of grayish muck, clinging to everything, trying to have you join it in  eternal muckdom. Or is it ” consummate muckiness”?
Once dry, however, it is a sea of hard plaster, screed flat by wind and gravity.

To my left, Lot’s wife. Still a pillar of the community, I see.

To my right, Lot’s abandoned 4×4,  half muck-sucked in, and doing a sort of freeze-frame La Brea Tar Pit thing.
You can imagine it screaming as little Suzukis tear at its quarter panels.

A half mile past that, nothing but view. And nothing in view, except blue sky above, grey dried mud below, and the cool mountains in the distance.
As much as I love the forests, particularly those of the ancient Appalachians, I also love the desert.
Space, light, distance, focus. Unlike any other wild place on earth. The Sonoran Desert is rich with life, diverse and eclectic, most of its animals hidden. Somewhere not far from here, the last remaining Sonoran Pronghorn are probably keeping tabs on me.

 The flats are barren, boring to some. But the sense of scale one gets is truly unique, especially in  bright daylight. With so little around to break the horizon, or call the eye, one can get a feeling of being overwhelmed by the vastness, tiny in this huge harsh land.
I find myself looking for “galloping stones”, as this would be a great place for them to gambol about. Or do the Electric Slide (hey, that’s what they DO).
But they tend to favor the Mojave.
Other times, one can feel expansive, somewhat bigger than life, as the miles pass underneath your feet and that horizon gets perceptively closer.  “Fastwalking” the Navajo call it. Although that comparison is weak.
It’s more like something Dr. Manhattan would feel when he does the giant blue body thing.

A  raven may be the only life you see, flying over to see why you might be here.
The usual comment : “Roark”.
The polite response: “Roark”.
That’s usually enough for ravens, but they’re cool enough to acknowledge your presence.

With the scale so grand about you, but at a distance, it seems the mind is compelled to look for and focus upon, any little, close object or anomaly in this otherwise flat, bright Kafkaesque limbo.

And there, away off over there, it was.

As I got closer, it took a familiar form. And the questions began…

I thought about out-of-place-artifacts. Yup. Certainly. But Who, When, Why?

The style was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Anasazi? Hohokam? Archaic? And how about the placement? Looks like it had been exposed to maybe a dozen rains, not the thousands it would have endured if it had been left some time longer ago.
It certainly looked melted into the hard pan of the lakebed.

I was reminded of the hoard of Roman coins that was unearthed in Tucson some decades ago. Genuine Roman mint, coined in the year 500 A.D. or so. Found by locals during construction.
May have been a hoax, but how was it explained that the coins were recovered in soil strata that corresponded to the time of their minting?

That cube of alloyed metal, near perfect in its dimensions,of  unknown composition, that was found in a seam of Cornwall coal 30 million years old.

The recently discovered wristwatch in a Chinese tomb, 200 years out of place.

Maybe it was left behind by some trading visitors long ago. Even then there was trade between those here in Tuc-Son (”beneath the Black Mountain”),  the Aztecs, and the people of what is now California.
This one could be explained a bit easier. Maybe, some pot hunter left it here recently, after taking it from its original resting place. As an  Archaeology student, I find looting to be a crime against heritage and culture. Abhorrent.
I decide to leave it place. As out-of-place as it is, I’d only add to it.

 Still does not explain it being on top of the drimuck, instead of a few feet down.
Hmmm…

As I was still in a pondering mindset, I began to wonder again about our sense of scale, and how we often assume that all is scaled to our limited mindset. All of History is abstract, but one lifetime is the yardstick. Ours.
Time is measured by how much we’ve got under the belt, and how much might be left. To us.
Distances are meaningless beyond that which we commonly experience.

A twenty-three mile commute is either a drag or a dream, but 23 billion light years just does not enter the discussion.

We seem to ignore the microscopic, or simply forget to remember that nano-tech, of a natural sort, begins and maintains life itself.
Kinda makes us sound  parochial, huh?

Hynek called it “Temporal Provincialism”.

Such is the human condition.

As I took photos, I heard a noise, like scraping, from inside the pot. Looking in, it was made by something long, green, and alive.
 No bout a doubt it.



Its head resembled something fierce, with weird, horizontal jaws. I was not about to stick my hand or anything else in there. I respect any animal, and I LOVE my limbs and digits still attached, thank you.
Taken aback (two steps back), the first thing to come to mind was the Mongolian Death Worm.
But aren’t they supposed to be red? The climate was right, but the continent, wrong.
But there it was, coiled in that pot like a snake charmer’s cobra in its basket.

And I knew that there ain’t no field guide gonna he’p me now.
Thinking along paranormal lines, I reminded myself that “nuts and bolts” solutions are rare when confronted by the raw unknown of anomalies. Especially when the item at hand seems to have an element of deliberate existence.
Sometimes, as in the entire field of ufology, we’re dealing with an intelligence  that may or may not comply with our preconceptions, expectations, and provincial behavior.

That’s OUR problem. Especially in efforts to communicate with the “other”.
Even a purely physical interaction could be communication (i.e. I broke the pot to see the creature. The creature was made to feel unsafe, and face-hugged me).
But, especially through language, people expect an exchange of concepts. Abstracted out, so we don’t have to convey ideas like very bad mimes (I still can’t do the “Man-in-Box”).
Clear communication is best when between two intelligent entities who think alike, have shared concepts, and have a middle-ground medium with which to exchange them.

I’m hoping that the entities we have had some interactions with (ETs or Extra Dimensionals)
Are at least similar enough to us to find this common medium. Some telepathic exchanges, as reported by abductees and experiencers, go both ways, good and bad. Very good and Very bad, it seems.

It is quite possible that there will be contact with entities that have almost no common ground with us at all. No shared views or concepts whatsoever.  The Truely Alien. At that point, mutual avoidance might be the best course of action. Let’s hope we do not compete for resources.

As for the artifact and the possible face-hugger?

 My mystery was only a question of scale. *

Mutual avoidance seemed best.

 

 

*No Potter Wasps were injured by  this article, but the inchworm inside is PISSED about  being  used as baby food.