There it was in the woods, half buried in the steep creek bank, one hundred years old, rusted, abandoned, forgotten, beautiful.

There it was, half buried under the ruins of the building, corroded, falling apart, forgotten.

It is inevitable that when walking through forgotten places, you uncover forgotten artifacts. They might be modern or ancient, recognizable or unplacable, but always forgotten.



The places men used to live, and the tools men used to live, laid aside, and forgotten. But these pieces of rust are not garbage, they are not items to be thrown away– certainly they are not items to be pocketed and sold. These are our inheritance as humananity. A hundred years, a dozen years– why were they abandoned for so long? Were they once so common to be tossed aside without thought?

A wreck in the woods is more than just garbage. It is history. It is beautiful. How we treat the memory of the people who got us here is how we deserve to be remembered. Two hundred years hence, will we be remembered kindly by the artifacts we leave behind? Will they judge us by plastic trash on our beaches, or by a lunar lander laid aside, left abandoned, a wreck on a grey hillside?