Just rambling

[+user13371]

Just a rambling commentary on my morning's benchmark hunt. Any commentary or critiques welcome.

 

Original title:

One out of four, not bad.

 

I had my car serviced in Oxford Michigan today. Knowing I'd have a few hours to kill, I looked up a few benchmarks and decided to go hiking. Within a mile of the shop, there were four benchmarks listed, though two were "skulls."

 

The fun part: The datasheets mostly gave landmarks that no longer exist. Once upon a time, a railroad ran through here. But where tracks and yards and depot buildings once stood, there's now a patchwork of rails-to-trails conversions, abandoned right-of-ways, industrial sites, some new housing developments, and a few strange buildings in various stages of decrepitude.

 

Here's what I found:

 

NE0409: A skull, not-found in 1988 by US Power Squadron nor by me this morning. Still an interesting site because the datasheet describes the benchmark set vertically on the wall of a railway station. The building has since been razed. The site is now a fascinating collection of rubble and dirt-bike trails, which Mother Nature was doing a good job of reclaiming for herself. Mother will have her way until the gang I found down at NE0411 gets up here...

 

NE0410: Found it, logged description. Hurray for me, but the carsonite witness post did make it easier. I'd wager the streets and lots were re-platted since 1930, because the centerline of the street is about 20 feet closer to the benchmark than the datasheet said.

 

NE0411: Another skull, reported not found in 1988 by US Power Squadron. Site was interesting because I couldn't really get to it. Enough redevelopment has gone on here that the land contours no longer match the topo maps. There's a large pond where the benchmark would have been, and lots of earth-moving equipment was in the area today. And what are they up to? Further flattening of the contours and putting in drains -- to get rid of that pond and make room for "luxury homes."

 

NE1706: Pretty sure I found the right area but did not find the marker. Was last described in 1992 by MIDOT. The coords on the datasheet put it square in the middle of a fairly new condominium parking lot, and even allowing for hundreds of feet in conversion errors it would likely be under the asphalt or in one of these buildings. Just to be sure, I walked the perimeter of several buildings, lawns, etc., didn't find it.

 

Main observation through all of this was how temporary both the works of man and Nature are -- but Nature has more patience. Years ago someone built a railroad here, then abandoned it. Nature started taking the land back until someone decided they could use it for something else. And so it goes.

 

I expect in the long term Nature will have her way :-)

[survey tech]

I appreciate your philosophical attitude, our entire epoch is less than the blink of an eye in geologic time, or as Omar Khayyam put it in The Rubaiyyat "Our passing, this world shall heed, as the sea may heed a pebble cast".

[+embra]

The surveyors who placed these things were often trying to pick places that they thought would have a good chance of "surviving." Part of my fun is seeing how well they fared in that venture.

 

As survey tech notes, permancence doesn't seem to have much staying power in our world. The Buddhists distinguish between Samsara (the world of change) and Nirvana (the condition of stability). Guess where we live.

 

Max

Often wrong but seldom in doubt