OLD SINKY
Prior to this past week, I did not know the meaning of the word “karst”.
I really don't remember anyone ever having used the word in my presence. I met with it a few days ago when I overheard an eleven year old girl talking with a boy of about the same age. It didn't sound meaningless enough for it to be the label of their rock group or rap star, but they used it naturally several times. It took me a while to realize they were speaking of what I have long known to be called a “sinkhole”.
When was the last time you heard a “sinky” referred to by its proper geological name? It is not a precise term in that it generally refers to any limestone area which is unstable and given to the formation of caverns. sinkholes and underground streams. It is a German word and the name of a limestone region near near Trieste.
The young people were speaking especially of a large sinkhole we all knew, which was located near our usual camp site in the deepest area of the forest.
We have all know such areas, especially if we have lived it the mountains. Most of us simply consider them to be underground cavities which have collapsed. We think of each of them as miniature Carlsbads. Think of them as a cavern which has dribbled for years; formed and reformed until – in time - the roof structure became unstable and the whole thing fell into itself. What kid - or grown-up, for that matter - has not wondered at the imagined magnificence of such a discovery.
There was always one killjoy character in every such group - realists they call themselves now-a-days - who would insist it would a matter not unlike that story of: ”If a tree fell in a forest and no one was a there to hear it,would it make a noise?”In that narrow frame of mind, our critic would say our mysterious underground caverns were “blah”. It would be all black as is the inside of a watermelon, or a grapefruit without light reflected from it to give it color in our view. It could not be seen and, therefore, could not be judged as being either beautiful or ugly.
Our “sinky“ showed man's art. It was several hundred feet across and was like a big pond being filled, but never quite full, of rocks and debris and set in the middle of high trees. From the air it must have looked like a strange lake of some sort.. On the far side of the sinkhole there were grain fields. They were farmed by people who lived on the far edge of those fields along the main road which went though there. All such gatherings of such places as are populated by people produce plenty of garbage, discards, waste material, used or broken do-dads and endless leagues of used wire fencing. Automobile, truck and tractor tires form the latest modern layer for future detritus diggers to wonder about. Rather than “junk”, we now prefer to refer to it all as the normal detritus of our Time and Culture.
Think ”karst:” It sounds somewhat more dignified than “sinkhole” and it is a term your teenagers comprehend. They are, after all, tomorrow's sinky searchers ...or, should we say “karst keepers”?
A..L.M. August 18, 2003 [c543wds]
