Oh man, what a good day I had yesterday. Even burs and falling through thin ice couldn’t make it any less than awesome.

So I went to Nicollet Island again, and I drove straight up to the north end of the island by the old bridge to Boom Island, but instead of going straight to the bridge, I climbed down the little bluff there to the river bank, and got a good look at the local geology.

The first layer of bedrock under Minneapolis is limestone, which varies from 5-20 feet thick. Under that is a very soft sandstone. Downtown Minneapolis lays the foundations of it skyscrapers on the thick part of the limestone. There are also lots of tunnels under the river, beneath the limestone, in the sandstone layer. The sand is very fine and white.

So as I climbed down the bluff, there was an overhang of limestone, which left a nice little bit of a cave there, and there was clear evidence that people have been making use of it. It would be foolish to think that I was going to discover anything new. Anyway, down on the bank, there is the usual detritus you find on the banks of the Mississippi, bricks and bottles and bits of steel and concrete from god knows what. There were also slabs of the limestone that had fallen off the bluff. In a couple of thousand years, Nicollet Island will be quite a bit smaller, I think.

So that was cool, and I shot the last few pictures I had on the roll of 3200, then I loaded up a fresh roll of normal ISO 200 colour film and headed down the bank to the bridge.

It was an old train bridge, built in 1901, now just a pedestrian crossing. But I was down on the bank, so I got a look at it from underneath. It has a couple of massive iron girders that span the water, and above that is a large open truss, which together must make it pretty sturdy. The deck is new wood planks over the old wooden beams that sit on the girders. It’s a very lovely bridge, if you’re into that sort of thing, which clearly I am. I got pictures of it from several angles and both banks.

So then I walked down the trail to where the railroad would turn and cross over a curving steel girder bridge on concrete piers to the right bank. It’s quite high there, a good 25 or thirty feet above the water, but there was a way down to the bank again; I suppose there always is. Next to the curved bridge is an older straight bridge on massive black stone piers. That one is still in use; it goes straight across the island and over to the left bank. The old bridge was pretty interesting. Half of it looks original, big iron girders and all, but the other half is new concrete sitting on the old piers. I went a little ways further down the bank, then climbed up the slope to the road. It was getting a little late, as I had to pick up my mom from work at 2:30 and I’d left the house at 1:00.

As I was heading back towards the car, I met a group of hipsters on the disused train bridge, and asked for the time, and it was 2:17, so I just went straight back to the car and everything was fine; I got to her place of work at 2:32. Then I took the black and white film in to the shop, and unfortunately, they do have to send it out, so I don’t get it until the 19th or so.

While I was at the shop, I decided to ask about circular polarisers. The lady said she might have a used one that would fit my lens, and indeed she did, and she said that it was $10, and I said shut up and take my money. I didn’t say that. But I bought it.

On the way home I stopped at Lake Johanna and I fixed the filter on the front of the lens and I took a picture of the lake and the clouds in the sky and the clouds looked really cool.

It was about 50 degrees outside, which is 9 or 10 Celsiuses: viz., it was warm, but people were out on the ice, fishing, and I walked along the ice by the shore, and I saw a couple of small holes in the ice and I reached down to feel how thick the ice was, and it was about an inch thick. I kind of laughed to myself about how crazy the people out in the middle of the lake were, and I headed back towards the beach and my foot went right through the ice.

I was by the shore, so the water was only 6 inches deep, but I got my foot wet. It was funny, though.

P.S.: as I was going back to the car at 2:17, I thought of that line about meeting a group of hipsters on a disused train bridge and laughed a lot. But I mean, they were clearly hipsters. They were wearing skinny jeans and coats and had piercings and one of them had a DSLR and one had a fixed-gear bike. I’m not judging them or saying any of that is bad; they seemed like nice people, it’s just really funny to me.

Tonight at dinner I was reading about Alexander Ramsey and Ignatius Donnelly.

Ramsey was the first territorial governor of Minnesota, appointed by Zachary Taylor in 1849, then he was the second governor, elected in 1859, and later Secretary of War under Rutherford B. Hayes from 1879-1881.

Donnelly was lieutenant governor under Ramsey and he was a bit of a queer bird.

He was a writer and amateur scientist and he had wild theories about Atlantis, catastrophism and Shakespearean authorship.

His first book was about Atlantis, and it was very popular, though it was also complete bullshit. It was he, though, who popularised the idea of Atlantis as an antediluvian civilisation. 

His second book detailed his theory that the Flood had been brought on by a near-collision of the earth with a comet or something.

His third book was called The Great Cryptogram, and it’s about his theory that Francis Bacon actually wrote the works of Shakspere.

After the publication of that one, he went to England to arrange for publication there, and he spoke at Oxford and Cambridge, but they weren’t having it and the book was a complete failure.

But the fun part is that I have a copy of that book. Given that it was a failure, I don’t imagine they reprinted it after the first printing, so maybe it’s rare. That’d be cool. I haven’t actually looked into its potential rarity yet.

Well, that was fun.

I went to the solstice thing and I got out my tambourine, and then Ken was like, hey, why don’t you play the bodhrán instead!

So I played the bodhrán, even though I’m not particularly good at it, and it was fine, but it wasn’t until after that Ken kinda showed me how he plays the bodhrán that I got a bit of an idea, though I find it easier to hold the stick the traditional way rather than the way he does it, but then he played a reel and then a jig on the fiddle and I drummed along and that was nice. Ken is a really good fiddler. He also plays guitar, mandolin and banjo. He’s awesome.

A bodhrán, if you don’t know, is a kind of Irish frame drum with crossbars on the inside and you put your hand in between them and the head of the drum, and then you can put more or less pressure on the head to change the tone, or control how much it’s dampened and whatnot. And the stick, or cipín, is shaped kinda like a dumbbell and you hold it in like a pencil grip and hit the drum in a kind of sweeping motion, letting the stick swing from side to side. It’s kinda weird, but when you get used to it it’s easier.

The bodhrán is probably something I could be pretty ok at playing with some instruction and practice. But I’d have to buy one and I already blew most of my money on a didgeridoo.

This is now making me think of the movie The Man From Earth, which was about a man who said he was like 20,000 years old. He tells of his youth, and unknown years living amongst hunter-gatherer societies, and then into historical times, where he was Jesus of Nazareth, and how he knew historical figures.

That’s a pretty good movie too. It was written by Jerome Bixby, who is a renowned sci-fi writer, and David Lee Smith plays the part of John Oldman very well.

I recommend that film to sagacious persons who enjoy speculative fiction.

And there were the handprints. Lots of red handprints all done by the same guy, a guy with a crooked little finger. He had to have been at least 6’ tall, which is really remarkably tall for 30,000 years ago.

A tall guy like that was probably a leader of his community. His father was probably important and provided him with a good diet to allow him to grow so tall.

It is so interesting to try to imagine how people were then.