(sælsoms, yes, I am integrating that Danish word into the English language – and with the audacity to use it as a noun rather than its traditional adjectival personality! The horror!)
Yesterday I found myself wandering the dragonfly dunes of Assateague. Later that day, I heard a man refer to it as Gilligan’s Island, but more on that further on. There was a historic exhibit in the Assatague Island park, and, driven both by genuine interest and a need to relieve myself of the confines of my trusty Ford Focus rental, I went to check it out. There was much poison ivy. And even more dragonflies - you can hear them approaching, hovering, checking you out; their presence is about as non-intrusive as those helicopters that would hover over the fields when I was little. Their buzzing/humming sound is so inherent to the ambience of the Island that you can believe you can feel it in your bones, not unlike the sound and feel of the high tide crashing upon the rocks.
But back to the exibit – there was a worn plexiglass sign, barely legible in its entirety, but what it read is certainly worth transcribing:
“Some local Indians, including the Assateague tribe, had an unusual burial custom. They removed the skin from the body after death and scraped the bones free of flesh. Remains were then placed on shelves in a log structure. Periodically, the remains were collected and buried in a common grave or ossuary. Several ossuaries have been discovered on the Eastern Shore.”
That sounds infinitely much as though they were in contact, or were at some point, with the natives of Central and South America, who also had a tendency to keep groups of their dead around for a while. And why not, the trade routes between more westerly Northern American Indians leading all the way to South America have been verified – if they could get from Cali to Peru, no reason the East Coast should be made to feel like a stranger.
Perplexed by this fascinating albeit morbid detail on the life of the long-gone natives, I walked further onto the wooden, fenced-in viewing platform, located seemingly –nowhere- interesting, there was simply a small parking lot surrounded by bushes and a small Coast Guard boathouse of questionable purpose. How could anything of any historical interest be here? It’s just sand and dragonflies – even the droppings of the local wild ponies, which freely roam the island, seemed to be very old, abandoned like so much else on the island to dissolve under the beating sun. A shipwreck greeted me. I never did find out when it was from, but there was still one metal tubish part rusting in the salty breeze, so it certainly wasn’t of Viking origin, despite the way the corroded skeleton of woodwork reminded me of the turfed roofs of Viking huts and the ancient blackened bows of dragonships used in burials. Apparently, naturally, the sands around here seem to be littered with the remnants of unlucky vessels.
Being 50% Danish, having spent most of my life traversing the Atlantic, I have always felt a certain kinship with my forefathers, knowing that some of them as well have spent large portions of their lives crossing that stormy ocean – for this reason I also wondered if not once, over a thousand years ago, a dragonship might’ve faceplanted itself upon the dragonfly shores where I now stood. If so, I felt somewhat sorry for the poor travelers. The island is stark, back in the Viking times, there was still another good thousand years until the Spanish galleon would wreck itself upon the Assateague shores, breaking open, hatching like an egg to let the ponies on board escape and eventually become the hardy breed of Assateague ponies we now know and love. Misty of Chincoteague anyone? In any case, if ancient Scandinavians found themselves lost on the island, they might still have felt at home. You see, there isn’t that great a difference between the Danish west coast and the Maryland coastline – the dunes might be a bit bigger in Denmark than they are in Maryland at the moment, but the stark dunes and wirey plantlife is just the same. I could imagine in a world touched only by people of nature, it looked very much alike. Another notable archaeological find relating to this is the correlation of North American Indians engraving tattoo-like patterns on their teeth – and so did the Vikings. Cultures in contact. Then there is also the issue of mound-building as well as building those stone settings. But that is a subject for an entirely different historical article. I still think it is fascinating that looking at a pile of rubble on a beach can set off all these connections.
After my trip to the park I stopped past the highly recommendable Smokers’ BBQ Grill – if you EVER get the chance, go – it might be because I haven’t had pulled pork in a couple years, but their pulled pork sandwich was to die for! I brought the sandwich back to my apartment, where I got myself a nice cold alcoholic beverage and went out to sit on the deck, watch the boats pass by in the inlet between myself and Assateague.
Not 5 minutes had passed before a horrendous cracking noise echoed across the inlet. It was almost the crunching sound your shoes make when you are walking in snow and its gathering under your shoes, but much, much louder. A beautifully expensive boat coming northwards up the coast had planted itself on the rock jetty sticking out from the end of the opposing island. Danish expectations of a drunkard having a long day at sea immediately kicked in, while the elderly bearded fisherman next to me had suspicions of theft, a loose captain-less ship or drug-running.
In the hours that followed, I entertained myself watching the coming and goings of police boats. According to the elderly fisherman, there wasn’t a Coast Guard vessel to be seen. Initially they sped out to the wreck with red and blue lights a-flashing, but upon arrival their lights became blue flashers, much more like those of ambulances. But they didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry at any point. When the boat wrecked, no emergency lights came on or anything, it was all dark until the police boats arrived. In the gathering darkness, we could barely make out the figures of 3 people walking along the top of the jetty, but whether they belonged to the wreck or were rescuers, we had no idea. For hours the boats shone spotlights, occasionally making odd up-and-down movements at 45 degree angles with their searchlights – I assume this was some sort of communication with others on the mainland, it was more than just the motion of the ocean and in any other context it simply makes no sense. At one point a truck came driving slowly up the island, as if they were looking for someone, but otherwise uneventful. Eventually all the police boats went home, the projectors shining across the inlet were darkened, and the wreck was left with nothing but its own company overnight. After the lights went out, all you could make out was a pale trapezoid ghost flailing about at a wild angle every now and then.
In the light of morning, the wreck has become a tourist attraction. All sorts of boats are congregating across the inlet, even a large tourist boat was contracted to ferry the gawkers closer to the wreckage. It seems to have been ripped to 3 large pieces by the tides and rocks.
As for me, I can’t help but feel that having a shipwreck in plain sight of my hotel room is the perfect spice for this American adventure of mine. Between the palm trees, the hammocks and the sea gulls, all I needed was a wrecked vessel in the distance to complete the image. I still haven’t been able to find any news articles or any information at all pertaining to all last nights activity in the inlet – and it would be nice to satisfy my morbid curiosity in regards to the people involved – but for now, I just watch and write such things for myself instead. And I cant help but wonder at the coincidence of my first genuine interest in a historical wreck happening the same day I get to see a modern vessel plow right into a jetty in front of my eyes.
