The other day I was vacationing up at Lost Lake (apparently rediscovered) where I was conscripted to help clear an overgrown homestead.\u00a0 A couple days into it, first with a chainsaw, then a sickle and finally just mano y mano with the downfall and the ivy and the blackberries, I was full bore into what was a veritable archeological dig.\u00a0 I see how Mayan temples disappear under vines and sediment, lost civilizations stumbled on by accident centuries later.<\/p>\n
The Lost Lake Dynasty didn\u2019t appear to be quite centuries old, but some of it had slipped under mud and mulch.\u00a0 If I was hoping for discovered treasure, I was sorely disappointed.\u00a0 A couple more days of burn piles for the brush revealed old shrubs, creeping myrtle, hidden rhododendrons, plenty of daffodils and hyacinth pushing greenery into spring, all the telltale of someone\u2019s old homestead next to the lake.<\/p>\n
History here doesn\u2019t lead back generation after generation to a distant Vanishing Point.\u00a0 Much as some of us want to believe, the South End isn\u2019t the Cradle of Western Civilization and Lost Lake isn\u2019t Mesopotamia on the Stilly.\u00a0 This was virgin ground and scarcely trod upon much less inhabited even by aboriginals who, like us newcomers, preferred the waterfront real estate of Puget Sound\u2019s Big Sea Waters.<\/p>\n
Most history, you stop and think about it, is lost.\u00a0 Oh sure, we remember the Big Stuff:\u00a0 wars and conquests, religious beginnings, Hot Shot Philosophies — but most of human endeavor is lost to rot and rust and ruin, covered over by the neglect and detritus of the next generation busy with making their own history.\u00a0 Civilization is built on burial grounds.\u00a0 Down here on the South End, we got the dubious distinction of being the bottom layer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other day I was vacationing up at Lost Lake (apparently rediscovered) where I was conscripted to help clear an overgrown homestead.\u00a0 A couple days into it, first with a chainsaw, then a sickle and finally just mano y mano with the downfall and the ivy and the blackberries, I was full bore into what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1940,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/1940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}