Category Archives: Toy Avatars

As stated before, it was a beautiful day in the mountains, a little on the cool side but fine once you start hiking around and building up some body heat. I just wore my regular flannel shirt, a toboggan hat, some light working gloves, and I was fine to go.

Pictured below are rocks near the top of this ridge of Wealthy Mtn. I’ve visited this particular set of rocks before, but it could have been up to 15 or 20 years ago. They are fairly much what I remember them being.

Also from about the same spot, I took this shot of Bass Ackwards Lake through the now mostly bare trees.

Detail of another interesting rock here. Almost looks like hieroglyphics.

Back in Lion’s Roar, everything is starting to shape up as the day progressed. The “Dalek Temple” can be seen in the background, protrusion pointed almost directly at us. Quiver! I’ve determined that this passageway through various bottles and other objects into this “temple” is one of two determinable roads of Lion’s Roar. Maybe Temple Way would be a good name?

Lion’s Roar as shot from across Byng Creek, featuring most of the town.

Another shot of that “Temple Way” mentioned above.

3 more colorful bottles were set up inside the railroad, and against the main bulk of the Lion’s Roar rock itself. These are in left to right order, Green Bottle, Orange Bottle, and Pink Bottle. I didn’t realize it until drawing back and taking an overall gander at what I’d done when positioning these bottles in a creative frenzy — almost all the more colorful bottles were set on the inside of the track, and all the clear bottles on the outside. Is this possibly some unconscious reference to racial segregation? Probably not, but I just thought of it anyway. If so, the “colored” bottles are more valuable here, although I don’t see the bottles as people but more as buildings of some sort.

Note: I dare not think too deeply about what could be in the sealed orange bottle. We don’t want to see it break either (!)

More bottles, with the centerpiece here being “Pretty Bottle”, again, like with the colorful bottles mentioned above, set against the main rock wall of Lion’s Roar for further protection. In front of it are two flat, natural rocks of the location. To its immediate left (if we see it as facing away from this wall) is Pale Green Bottle.

Another interesting part of Lion’s Roar, closer to End Line or Low End. Almost seems to be 2 pillars backing another temple of some sort.

Looking toward the center of Lion’s Roar, uphill from the town. The smaller pot in the back is Center Pot, once more. The larger pot more in the foreground doesn’t have a name yet, like many other Lion’s Roar objects. Interesting that it has a door.

Another shot of the biggest of these objects once more, the “Robbie Robot head” temple. It too is helping to prop up the train track a bit here.

Another great hiking and art making day in and around Byng. Actually went over into the next valley *north* of Byng for the first time this hiking season, or into the drainage area of the fabled Lost Valley. If I keep my focus on Byng, I believe this valley will become quite important.

But the bigger story today, probably, was the further evolution and refinement of Lion’s Roar itself, the heart of the Byng mythology. In several shifts this crisp, blue autumn day — 3 to be exact — I seemingly perfected Lion’s Roar’s railroad (note to self: maybe better to shorten the name to Lion Roar), while simultaneous setting up the “town” itself around its lower end. 37 pieces of track total were used.

I’m simply going to move into the pictures themselves for further explanations. Below we have a picture of the “town” near the beginning of the day, with the bottles still on the ground and the track still getting into shape. However, I notice here that the old timey coffee pot (left) is already being used to prop up a curvy part of the track, which means that I’d already done some work before taking this midday picture, actually. Original tests for this part of the track, taking place the day before this one, had it set up slightly higher on part of the rock juts themselves, which turned out to be impractical in my estimation. The new track was instead set up on pots such as the 2 shown in the picture, with a lower, rounder example propping up the track to the extreme right in the below photo.

Subtracting the railroad track itself (pieces numbering 37, as mentioned before), Lion’s Roar is now composed of 45 more or less permanent objects, including 30 bottles and 15 other objects, mostly pots, hauled in from neighboring Yards Mtn. (see this older post, for example). Below is the largest object currently residing in the town, a dome effect that puts in mind the head part of Robbie the Robot for some reason. Interesting, because I’ll compare another object of Lion’s Roar with another famous robot in just a moment. As for what this particular object’s real life purpose was, I don’t have a clue right now. Its large presence and unusual shape also reminds me of the similar qualities of Billfork’s B-Hivia, made from an old stove belly in that case. More on the comparisons of Billfork and Lion’s Roar in a moment as well.

Oh, and here we are already at a picture of the other object in Lion’s Roar reminding me of a robot head. Can you guess? Fans of Dr. Who probably picked up on it right away: yes, it looks kind of like a Dalek head, hehe. I’ll have to get proper names for both of these “robot head” objects asap.

Another interesting object used as a kind of doormat into Lion’s Roar. I believe it may be an old stove door. Unfortunately, I jumped on it from a rock above at one point and broke it in two today.

Angle into the heart of Lion’s Roar. Sue is still standing on the rock ledge near this center (small red object).

Another, smaller coffee pot also used to prop up part of the railroad.

Yet another. This happens to lie under the piece representing the exact center of the railroad, or the 19th counting from either end. Seems significant. More on that soon also.

Sue directing the construction of the railroad. I can still hear the echoes of his thunderous roars even now hours and hours later. Is he the *true* Lion of Lion’s Roar, then? Perhaps *he* thinks so. And just where *are* his traveling and exploring companions Stu, Spit and Sid? I can’t find them anywhere. But he seemed pretty happy today doing all the shouting and ordering himself. He’s OK alone right now, seemingly, or as OK as he gets.

Upper end of the railroad track. I logically call the two ends of the rail Upper End and Lower End. Maybe shorten those to Up End/Low End. To remind, Lion’s Roar proper exists at the lower end of the rr.

Btw, I call that large, pale stone in the below photo Overturned Rock, because that’s exactly what I did with it when first discovering some kind of animal poo on its surface. Problem solved.

More near the center of the rail, with Sue unseen in the photo just above. Very interesting ledge effect here, and I’m sure a name will be attached to it. Seems almost like a meeting place (?)

There’s Sue again. He’s almost standing above Center Pot, as I’ll perhaps start calling it, or the pot that holds up the very middle track of the system — 19th again. So there’s 18 track pieces uphill from this and also 18 track pieces downhill. This is the most interior part of Lion’s Roar.

Close up of the split log discussed in the last blog entry, with Kentucky’s Bee Line passing almost directly through this separation.

3 grouped trees (species?) near the uphill end of the Bee Line. The mysterious rock piling is to their left, just on the other side of the line running next to them.

The rock piling itself. Difficult to take a great picture of, but I’ll try again soon. It looks like it could be the dirt covered roots of an overturned tree, but although there’s an old tree trunk nearby and pointed in the right direction, there’s still a separation between it and this mound. Plus we have all those rocks on top of the dirt mound, if that’s what it is. Could it be rock all the way through instead? It still could be that a dig is in order here. Am I scared? Certainly!

What appears to be the base to the bottle that was shattered at an unknown date in Kentucky. It has turned into quite the miniature terrarium in the meantime, and I hated to move it because of this and disturb the still quite green and alive moss and plants growing within. Its position is a couple of yards off and perhaps also below the Bee Line a bit, behind the gap between two trees that may mark its true beginning.

Moving away from Kentucky, then, I continued to hike clockwise around the west side of Wealthy Mtn., soon coming across this rock outcropping with its own small cave or enclosure…

… but *nothing* like what was only about 20 to 30 yards beyond this: one of the very few, legitimate caves I’ve found in the Blue Mountain area on my many, many hikes. The sucker is about 20 feet deep, and prism shaped — that is, its front entrance and back wall both make pretty even and symmetrical triangles, with straight side walls and a level floor connecting them. The cave is also fairly wet inside, and I didn’t feel comfortable entering even on a bright, sunny day like this. Perhaps it was the foreboding poison ivy growing all around the top and sides of the enclosing rocks that put me off, when no other examples of that species were found anywhere in the immediate area that I saw. Upon returning home, I was also *quite shocked* to also find an “orb” in one of my two pictures of the cave itself, and shaped, for all the world, like a *coin*, similar in dimensions to a Roosevelt dime but whose “face” appears more like Eisenhower on his commemorate 70s dollar piece. Hucka D. and I talk about these and other possible significances of the “Prism Cave” or “Coin Cave” in a post just below.

A picture of the blowing poison ivy adorning the top of the cave. Quite dense and a seeming warning of danger.

Keeping on in a clockwise direction around Wealthy Mtn., a distance of several football fields brings us to another ridge of rocks, which appears to be just above the upper end of Green Oz Creek and on the edge of a long and basically impenetrable rhododendron bramble separating me from it.

Sadly having exhausted my days off this particular week, I left Sue in charge of all the loot at Lion’s Roar, and promised to return and reunite him with exploring companions Stan, Spit, and Sid. I dare not back out on this vow for fear of consequences.