Sorry, all: (Spoiler alert . . . if you want to go to Cosmos Mystery Area without bias, don't read further.) Like the page boy's lone voice of dissent in 'The Emperor's New Clothes,' citing the Emperor was, in fact, naked, I have to be a lone voice of dissent when it comes to the Cosmos Mystery Area outside of Hill City, South Dakota. This place was actually recommended to us as a 'must see!' attraction. "You won't believe it! Nature just goes topsy-turvy there, trees bend unnaturally into each other, water flows uphill; you've got to go there!"
Okay, great lead-in . . . we had to go there. Except my hubby was being a little bit chicken. He wouldn't go on the tour, citing 'Things aren't natural in this place.' What did he think, the 'unnatural' forces of the area were going to make him shrink? Get heavier? We're both headed that direction without worrying about pinning it on some strange energy vortex. A blog I read about the attraction said many people make a dash for the restroom either during or immediately after the tour from the wooziness of the area, so those of you who know me well and know I battled vertigo on and off for a few years can understand my reticence to go up that hill, but I decided I was going to brave probable severe nausea all by my lonesome to bring you the best scoop about this place.
Meh. Not surprising my skeptical side kicked in within the first five minutes when they began touting the 'bent and twisted' trees. Right. Um, we live in Northern Arizona and see saplings of oaks and pines doing this bending phenomenon all the time. The phenomenon is called snow drifts and wind. A storm blows in from one direction and dumps a bunch of snow on struggling saplings, they bend over from the weight of the snow accumulating on the one side. Then later if a storm blows in from the opposite direction with loads of snow carried on its wind, I bet you can guess what happens. After one experiment that actually did give me a little pause, knowing that it is some slight of hand but not quite able to figure it out, then we came to the cabin. They have two; the original cabin, then they decided they wanted to get more tours fitted in on a given day so they constructed another. Below is a diagram I made of their cabin(s) . . . I should have taken a picture of the outside, but I was just too distracted/disgusted to think to click the camera. Having a little background in construction, engineering and a fairly healthy dose of common horse sense, it was immediately apparent how they were getting balls, water, etc. to roll uphill.
Looking at my pitiful sketch (sorry, I didn't have a felt-tip pen or ruler while on the road) you can probably see how they do it as well. If you tilt your head to the side so the built up floor in the 2nd, interior sketch looks level, then you see how the other section of floor (A) looks like it's going uphill, when in fact it is still at a slightly downward angle so a tennis ball or water will still roll downward, but inside it appears to be going uphill as your sense of balance adjusts to actually standing somewhere around 30 degrees. They do their 'slight of hand' with a series of built-up floors, built up even more than the slant of the mountain. They can even make a chair appear to hold steady on just it's back legs perched on a ledge, but it is all in the center of gravity. They have to adjust the chair back and forth until they find that center of gravity and only then do they let go. With our tour, the little girl sitting on the chair fell back about six inches and hit her head against the wall twice because the tour guide couldn't quite get that exact center. Needless to say I never had a moment of vertigo or nausea, because all I had to do was look down at the floor and see exactly what was what.
There was only one set of 'experiments' they did that had me scratching my head. They had two separate slabs of concrete on the ground which are parallel and about two feet apart which they prove are level by setting a contractor's level on them, then a tennis ball and also a water bottle on them at different points. They also take the level and place it perpendicular to the slabs, bracing each end on either slab to show the slabs are also level to each other. These two slabs are about one foot by four foot each in size. The guide picked two people, each one to step onto the middle of each slab, facing each other. We studied the height difference between the two people, then they changed places and there was at least a five inch difference in height. Hmmm. At the end of the tour they had a cement slab shaped like a capital T. The entire slab was also shown to be level. I was asked to stand at the bottom of the T, and two people were placed at opposite ends of the top of the T. The guide asked me where my P.O.V. showed the top of the shorter person's head to fall on the gentleman opposite. Then he had them change sides, sure enough the shorter person grew by five inches. I wasn't satisfied . . . I asked to have the two slowly walk towards each other to see what happened. As they walked toward the middle their heights adjusted to almost exactly the same height. I'm sure this was also some type of optical illusion, I just haven't figured out how they did it yet. The guide was right; he told us we'd be saying 'That is so weird' by the end of the tour, and over those two experiments I did, but as for the rest . . . If I seem a little bah-humbug, it's because I handed over almost ten dollars for a 'slight of hand' show. But I will say, even knowing it was a hoax, it is still fun to see how all of us on tour reacted to our world suddenly being tilted off its asses . . . oops, axis.
My point in this post is two-fold; to alert you to spend your money here only if you want the fun, but to me, it is this kind of bogus trivializing of those elements of the earth we don't understand that make it more of an uphill battle to actually accept those things we don't understand. I firmly and truly believe there are many things of this earth we haven't begun to scratch the surface of, so I keep looking and researching to expand my knowledge base. Tomorrow we head for Sicca Hollow, a legendary forest the Sioux Indians of Dakota believe is haunted. I will give you my impressions of this forest in the next couple of days. Later, friends.
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