Of Unknown Origin

I first encountered these objects while horseback riding in the woods of southern Indiana as a child.  They were in a clearing made inaccessible by a dense tangle of honeysuckle vines, blackberry bushes and sumac shrubs.  I only discovered the place because my dog, a German Shepherd named Bruno, got himself stuck in the thorny bramble.  The more he tried to get out, the more trapped he got.  In the process of cutting him loose using my pocketknife, I created enough of an opening in the underbrush to see that it thinned out about 10 feet beyond.  After some sweaty, scratchy effort I was able to cut away enough foliage create an opening large enough to wriggle through. This is the first time I’ve told the story of what I saw that day.

 

It was a grove of ancient oak trees that had formed a clearing over time by shading out the undergrowth.  Dangling from their massive, gnarled branches at various heights were dozens of pods like these, ranging in size from that of a robin’s nest to human scale.  Some were constructed as a single unit, others seemed to have been added onto over time.  There were a few that looked freshly made and others that were just a tatter of decaying twigs.   

 

Even though I was only 9 years old, or maybe because I was so young, I remember not feeling afraid.  In fact, as an aspiring archaeologist, the main reason I spent so much time exploring the woods was to make discoveries.  This was better than the time I found a pipe and tobacco pouch hidden under some rocks; better than when I discovered a crumbling springhouse and bottle dump from the 1900’s.  Better, even, than the time I stumbled upon a graveyard so old that mature trees were growing up through where the bodies were buried.

 

I returned to the clearing many times over the next three years, bringing back “specimens” and storing them in the hayloft of our barn.  After that I went off on a decades long tangent distracted by figuring out how to be an artist and learning how to deal with men.  To my regret and relief, I’ve finally realized that those few years exploring the woods with my dog and horse were the most whole I’ve ever been.  I’m beyond grateful to my child self that she kept these artifacts to rediscover and remind me of that while there’s still time.

 

My next steps are to consult with an anthropologist to figure out who made the pods and for what purpose.  They seem to have been made by an animal with some degree of manual dexterity, but whether they were made as shelter, for storage, ritual or trade, I can’t tell.

 

Lynn Basa is a Chicago-based artist, writer, and founder of The Corner Project.  She was raised in Monroe County, Indiana where she developed a love of animals, wild places, mud, mushroom hunting, the smell of horses, Twilight Zone, and banana cream pie. She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MPA from the University of Washington, and a degree in studio art from Indiana University.  Even though her work is in numerous public, private, and museum collections, she feels like she is just now figuring out how to be an artist.

 

To learn more about Lynn Basa’s work, visit www.lynnbasa.com