The Wild Rose

This past weekend BT and I packed the dogs into the car and headed North into Bucks County. It baffles me as to why people here distinguish places by county. No where have I lived, ever, has county mattered unless there was a tornado warning or a fair. Yet the county reigns supreme here, perpetually forcing me for further enquiry, “yes, but where in Lancaster County?” I digress, now back to Bucks County, more specifically, Upper Black Eddy. After driving on narrow backwoods roads for over an hour, we pulled into a small parking area nestled on the edge of Ringing Rocks County (ugh) Park. There was a group of about 20 people, of varying ages and genders, all headed for the trail head. Ordinarily this would have been a normal sight, but then I wouldn’t have much to write about, would I? No, this is where things take a turn, for you see, everyone from grandma to the 5 year-olds had swapped their hiking sticks for hammers, wrenches, axes and hatchets. If ever there were a time to reconsider the day’s agenda and head toward a more populated, less armed area of the county now would have been it. But no, we unloaded the dogs, grabbed our hammers and followed the ringing. In order to describe what the trail led to, we have to go back 200 million years. Because I’m not a geologist and don’t understand all of their jargon, I’m going to keep this simple and short. Back in the Jurassic Period magma made its way near the surface of the earth, creating these submerged fields, or sills. In the most recent Ice Age these sills surfaced, and eventually eroded and broke off into smaller rock formations. Thus, scattered around the globe you can find these rare boulder fields, and if you’re lucky they will sing for you. For reasons unbeknownst to man, this particular boulder field sings, or more accurately, rings. Certain boulders when struck with a metal object will ring, sounding similar to a bell. Musicians have flocked to this field, hammers in hand, and the first “Rock Concert” was conducted here in 1890. While scientists don’t know exactly what causes the ringing, they have surmised that it has something to do with internal stresses and they’re happy to leave it at that. Some people, however are not. They have taken it upon themselves to expose the field for what it really is ranging in theories from spirits to UFOs. Regardless, it was great fun to dodge the wolf spiders and leap from rock to rock in search of a perfect ringer.