I love digging into the past, it’s kinda my thing.
Recently I was able to get my hands on a metal detector. Seems an obvious hobby for somebody like me, since I’ve always been in love with the romantic notion of finding buried treasure.
Let’s set the scene: the grounds around the Plantation House — the Master’s house. Now an idyllic old-time colonial property, covered in climbing ivy, with pool and tennis courts and manicured flower gardens. In times gone by there was a factory, and a mill, and slaves to work them, and overseers to oversee them. Sugar and Rum by the barrel to be exported throughout the Great Empire.
This was my first place to search.
Unlikely place to find treasures, you might think… but one man’s trash, as they saying goes.
Clawing away layers of time with the dirt, sticking under fingernails, at last exposing that meaningless and mundane object sitting there for God knows how long. An old rusty nail! How splendid. Undisturbed and forgotten.
It’s not really about the thing.
What was the world like when you were deposited here in the soil? Now among the flowers, what little children's garden playtime pitter-patter footsteps above shuffled you in your shallow abode? What cruelties soaked your soil with sweat, and tears, and salty blood.
In a way, these discarded items are like little seeds sprouting connections to the past that I can hold in the palm of my hand.
The closest I’ll ever be to 1723.
I know that many of my followers have done so because of my photography posts, well I also do some writing occasionally!
If you like sometimes disjointed sappy dramatic prose and personal essays you may like some of my other ramblings:
Thoughts On Death & Time Travel
Krishna at the Farmer's Market — A Lesson in Non-Attachment
"Poo-Poo" The Kitten, and the Pain of Little Tragedies
The Grandfathers: David of St. Matthias
How I Gave Up 'Truth', And Lowered My Expectations
Image used is a commercially licensed stock photo
