Memories are minted moment by moment offering a bread crumb trail of sorts with which we can retrace our steps, finding our way back in time. But memories fade, blur, and mingle. Artifacts and ephemera enable another sort of time travel. Throughout my Rosslyn adventure I’ve stumbled upon time capsules rooted in the physical world rather than the mind, and these often wrinkled or rusty relics transport me from present to past with a different sort of efficiency than memory. Let’s take a quick look at two, one that was disinterred by Glen today, and the other that was scribbled by me coincidentally a dozen years ago today.
Today’s post highlights a few quotidian artifacts that offer a bridge into an earlier time. (Source: Artifacts & Ephemera: Regattas & Ferries)
The first artifact falls into that mysterious maybe-this-maybe-that category I may have first introduced in “Carriage Barn Artifact Triptych” many moons ago.
[This] artifact is more puzzling… [It] is but a fragment of some larger mechanism… [and] the utility of this artifact has long since expired… Perhaps you have some insight? (Source: Carriage Barn Artifact Triptych)
I’m going to venture a guess that this steel or iron artifact is an incomplete pulley block. If the cottar pin were removed and the small pipe/shaft slid out, it would be possible to fit a pulley wheel into the mechanism. Once the shaft and counter pin are reinstalled, this pulley block could be used as part of a block and tackle mechanism to lift heavy items up to a higher elevation, for example. 
Plausible hypothesis? Or way off base? In any event, I welcome any and all corrections and suggestions.
Before bridging this backward wondering relic to the next, I return to an idea I’ve touched upon before.
It’s not really accurate to say that these artifacts were exhumed or excavated… Instead, I would say that Essex artifacts have a way of finding me. Like homing pigeons. I’m freshly surprised each time, but I’ve come to understand that there’s a mysterious force of nature that helps things find their way back home. Eventually. Slowly. Adventurously. But home. At last. As if the entropic forces of nature are somehow balanced with a coalescing force that draws like to like. Perhaps a bit like affection? (Source: Artifacts & Ephemera: Essex Memento Medley)
I’m drawn to the romance of archaeology, literal and metaphorical. The wandering. The wondering. The puzzle. The adventure. But unlike the artifacts I mentioned when looking at the Essex memento medley, the possible pulley block was literally disinterred, pulled from the Earth, by Glen. He and Tony are still cleaning up an area north of the orchard where a circular water tower/tank/cistern collapsed long ago. While removing masonry blocks and steel strapping and miscellaneous debris he came upon the item above.
Now for the second artifact, an example of the sort of marginalia that I habitually leave in my wake as a doodler and visual processor, I offer a fragment of ephemera less mysterious and more easily deciphered.
I no longer remember why I doodle the boathouse hastily, but the perspective suggests I was looking out my former office/study window. 
This scene was familiar to me for many years. And enamored as I was (and am!) with Rosslyn’s boathouse, I’ve often found myself penciling portraits of this lakeside folly. My guess is that I was probably sitting on a phone call, absolutely looking out the window and rendering Rosslyn’s boathouse in green fountain pen ink (my favorite) that was supposed to be used for taking notes during my call. A wandering pen. A wandering mind. A wandering spirit…
And a wandering blog post! 
What do you think?