Pots Rock

Where we lived in Maryland was a suburb plunked down in the middle of farm country on the 

out-out-skirts of Baltimore.

A nice middle class suburban neighborhood surrounded by farms and the less fortunate.

It was also south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

A fact I never fully understood until the day I ventured to Pots Rock by myself.

Pots Rock was a large, recliner shaped rock we liked to play on in the middle of 

Little Gunpowder Falls.

Little Gunpowder Falls was a smallish river, filled with stepping stones. You could have probably walked the length of the entire river jumping from stone to stone.

We played there quite often, but always as a group.

One day I decided to venture there alone.

To get to Pots Rock you had to walk out of the neighborhood, past the run down (scary) shack, across a field of tall grass and through the woods to the river.

Once you reached the river you still had to walk along its edge for a mile or so till you reached the rock.

At one point the river widened and there was a small island in the middle.

We never went to the island because the river got deeper there and the rocks were submerged.

But it had been visited.

As I passed the island I got the feeling someone was watching me and as I glanced over I saw a very LARGE charred cross!

It must have been thirty feet tall, wrapped in rags that were obviously blackened from being burned.

I was about thirteen. Not exactly a child anymore but not what you’d call worldly or sophisticated.

I wasn’t quite sure what it meant but I definitely knew how it made me FEEL.

It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I was scared as hell!

I turned around and slowly started to walk back the way I had come and when I got about six feet down the path I ran for my life!

I ran the whole way home.

I told my parents what I had seen and they had to explain to me what it was and what it meant. From then on we were forbidden to go to Pots Rock, even as a group.

That day had a profound effect on me.

It also drove home the sage advice my mother taught us; ‘When the hair on the back of your neck stands up, listen to it! That’s millions of years of evolution telling you to get the hell out of there!’