The Shrine

The first day we arrived Katie and I found well, the wierdest of things in the dirt in front of her cabin. A flattened hard winter cured chipmunk stuck into the dirt tail facing outward. Waaa!?

So um....I suggested we make it into a kind of funky ridiculous sundial to catch the shadows. And so began "the shrine". At first we just raked a tiny circle around it and added little knick-knacks and trinkets to the edge decorating. Snail shells, feathers, rocks, little pieces of plastic trash, and foreign coins.

Once the students found out about it more things began to appear. Each morning there would be another piece added. A birds nest, the jawbone of a muskrat, pistachio shells, a deer skull, or dead bumblebee. Now, "the shrine" as its been deemed is huge!...and stranger than ever. Now I have to turn away students who want a part of the fun bringing over all sorts of strange dead things....no rotting fish please. One student likened it to "the place where things go to die". HA! And the other day a school group was passing by the cabins and I couldn't help overhearing the children, "Whooaa! Look at that?...what is it!?...Magic, don't touch it...." It took all my control to keep from bursting out in laughs.

We are like kids up here. This place does that to people. When someone told our friend Scott, the Ethnobotony instructor about our little trinket shrine of dead things he laughed out loud. He said, that kind of thing keeps you young.