Fish Out of Water 7

This letterbox is a joint placement between FungusWoman and SpringChick. The stamp was carved by FungusWoman; the log was added by SpringChick, who planted and maintains the box.

Getting There…

At a park that now occupies the property once owned by a Muskegon Hotel Proprietor, remnants of the former homestead are still evident, including the cement pad where the boat house once stood, an old stairway, several sections of foundation and a sunken cement vault that was the former fish pond. Make your way to this park and locate the cement pond.

Clues…

This is a story of Wyatt, the fish. For years Wyatt spent his days swimming back and forth in the cement pond. The trees overhead provided shade from the hot summer sun and cool lake breezes kept his water from getting too warm. If he listened carefully, he could hear the surf from Lake Michigan waves lapping at the shoreline not far from the fish pond. The man often came to sit by the pond and on Wednesdays the gardener gave him fresh water.

Eventually the man stopped coming around to sit by the cement pond and Wyatt wondered if perhaps he had taken ill. Not too long after that, strange people began stopping by with a man in a suit, talking in hushed tones, asking questions about acreage and lake frontage. The gardener stopped coming on Wednesdays and the water in the cement pond dried up. Every night as the moon reflected brightly off the lake, Wyatt dreamed of finding water. And so one day he leapt up out of the cement pond and decided to head off in search of water.

Out of the walls of the cement pond, the world suddenly looked very different, and very big. Wyatt spotted a sandy path at 300 degrees. It looked like it headed down a hill so he thought perhaps that was the way toward the water. He tumbled down the hill and then veered left a bit, ending at the foot of a small maple tree. From here the path went left and the path went right. As he was sitting there trying to decide which way to go, he saw people walking to the left and decided it would be safer to head right. He followed the path through a meadowy area, searching for water. At the edge of the woods, the low, outstretched arm of a locust tree welcomed him, but still he did not see any sign of water. To the east he spotted a path that headed up a hill filled with beach grass. Perhaps there was water that way — at the very least he might be able to get a view of the area from the top of the hill. So up he climbed, through the dune grass, past the funky pine trees, to the top where a big, straight pine tree stood at 190 degrees. From here he saw Lake Michigan to the west. Following the running root of the big pine tree, he headed along the path.

And then he heard it, faintly at first, then louder — a cat! Quickly he looked around for a place to hide. Standing at the place where the root disappeared into the sand, he spotted a fallen tree at 160 degrees, just a few feet from the trunk of a standing dead tree. The arm of the fallen tree seemed to be saying something, its broken arm pointing up toward the sky. But how to get to it? He headed up the trail a bit and found a side path that lead him there. “Good,” Wyatt thought, “there is a nice little hollow spot under here… looks like a perfect place to hide until that cat is gone.”

But little did Wyatt know he was hearing a catbird, not a cat, and since the bird was nesting in a nearby thicket the meowing sounds continued day after day after day. And so he continues to hide at the base of the fallen tree, longing for water, waiting for the cat to pass.