Hazards of Time
There are a few problems with blogging about collections. One is the problem I’m having blogging about Fort Raleigh. I know I was there, I remember crossing the bridge to Roanoke Island and taking the detour to a beautiful patch of flora along the Albemarle Sound.
But other than that, I don’t remember anything.
I can imagine the same problem with other collectors. “Who gave me this alpaca Beanie Baby?” “How did this otaku manga get mixed in with my Marvel comics?” “Where did I get this train car covered with illegal aliens?” … hmmm, actually a model train car covered with illegal aliens sounds pretty nifty. 🙂
I guess it’s appropriate that the one site I seem to have forgotten is Fort Raleigh, for Fort Raleigh marks the site where a colony of 116 men, women & children simply disappeared while their captain sailed for supplies. To this day, it’s not known what happened. Some say they were slaughtered by nearby natives, others think they moved inland looking for food and died, others think a storm swept them all away. The truth, of course, is they were abducted by aliens.
Here’s what I really want to know: did I forget about Fort Raleigh because of time? Age? Maybe I was so giddy after visiting Kitty Hawk I didn’t absorb anything from Fort Raleigh. Or maybe Fort Raleigh doesn’t really have anything to teach us. The story of the Roanoke colony is taught in grade school (or at least it was, maybe it’s not on any No Child Left Behind test). One of the key reasons I travel to the parks is the opportunity for locational learning, where one can see and feel the space where an important event happened or a particular natural wonder is showcased. But at Fort Raleigh, there’s really nothing to see. Yes, it’s a beautiful park, but other than that, there’s nothing really to connect one to the event it’s supposed to commemorate.
Without a connection, there’s no opportunity to learn and, for me at least, no reason to remember.
[I didn’t own a digital camera when I visited Fort Raleigh. Pics are from Wikipedia Commons (see comments).]
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Links:
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
America In Context 
The photo of the Elizabethan Gardens is originally from Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabethan_Gardens_-_sunken_garden_04.jpg
I am glad you could use it in your blog post. The gardens in Manteo are a wonderful place. Wikimedia Commons is an excellent resource for images that can be freely used.
Thanks for the correction, I fixed the original post. I honestly thought I pulled it off the NPS site, but I scoured and scoured their site and couldn’t find it. I’ll be more careful in the future.
Not a problem, glad you could use the photo.