Posted on 10/17/2015 8:10:25 AM PDT by ETL
On a rafting trip in early September, Christine Hutton, her husband, Richard, and a dozen of his corporate colleagues paddled to a flat, outcropped rock just a few miles from their push-off point at Jerry’s Three River Campground in Pond Eddy. The trip had been sluggish; the Delaware was at its lowest level in some 50 years, they’d been told. The group, in its triumvirate of rafts, stopped to have lunch.
“One of our associates stepped out to a rock in the middle of the river, and picked up what looked like a stone tablet,” recalled Christine Hutton. It was large, and it was heavy. When the man began to read from it aloud, his friends thought he was joking - parodying Moses holding the commandments in stone. “But then we quickly realized he wasn’t making up the words. And when he turned the rock around and exposed the writing ... our mouths gaped open.”
Compelled to try to trace the story of the stone, the Huttons took it from the river that day, and when the camping trip was over, brought the tablet home with them to Leonia, New Jersey.
The stone slab is about 20 inches in length and its upper portion is just as wide, estimates Hutton. It weighs somewhere between 40 and 50 pounds. The words, etched deeply in neat, block letters, are poignant:
“I’ve been called away from this place, my task here is done
I leave early but don’t be troubled for my soul is always with you
I’ve left behind a story, one in which [you're] all involved
And now it is your turn to fill up the final pages
My love will always stand like mountains mighty and unmoving
Look for me each night for I will rest underneath the stars
Hear me in the winds as destiny blows us closer
Forevermore”
“It’s beautifully worded in a simple way,” said Hutton. “I tried to research phrases from it, but I could not find any trace of an existing poem. I could not link the language to anything on the Internet.”
The Huttons’ daughter posted a picture of the mystery stone on the image-sharing site, Imgur. Thousands viewed it (actually 314,000) and hundreds commented, according to Hutton. Some thought it to be a gravemarker; others said it reads as a suicide note.
Hutton herself romantically theorizes that it was once a sitting stone in someone’s garden ... that a loved one left behind would sit on a bench ’neath a willow tree, remembering the one who’d been “called away from this place ...” Perhaps high waters had washed the stone away, she surmised.
“It’s all speculation,” of course, stated Hutton. The stone, she said, doesn’t appear to have been submerged for long. Its edges aren’t worn smooth; the lettering is sharp. And those letters ... well, either they were painstakingly chiseled long ago, or “they could have been done with a Dremel for all I know,” she said matter-of-factly.
It could be a “loving epitaph, or a craft project,” Hutton concluded. “Maybe there’s a kind of throwback dude who lives on the river, makes these things, and takes them to market every week ...”
No matter the tablet’s origin, the words it carries are haunting. “I’ve left behind a story ... and now it is your turn to fill up the final pages ...”
The Huttons are making a plea to anyone who knows something about the stone to help solve the mystery. It was found on Sept. 11 on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, in the general vicinity of Homeyer Road in Sparrowbush.
Some bloggers on the Imgur site have commented that removing the stone from its riverbed is tantamount to invoking a curse of sorts. “I’m not superstitious,” said Hutton. However, if the owner of the stone can’t be located, “and if the consensus of the people of the area is that it should be put back in the river, then that’s exactly what we’ll do. We want to have peace with it.”
the circular scratches are evidence of grinding a flat surface
i suspect the stone surface was ground flat with an ordinary grinder and might not really be old at all
The face of it has been ground flat with a power grinder. See the round swirls. Modern. Look for a high school/college male with a couple of power tools.
Looks like somebody wanted a handmade memorial stone for a grave to me. Not all that old, the text was stained for legibility.
I've been called away from this place, my task here is doneMaybe it was a greeting card company employee.
I leave early but don't be troubled for my soul is always with you
I've left behind a story, one in which [you're] all involved
And now it is your turn to fill up the final pages
My love will always stand like mountains mighty and unmoving
Look for me each night for I will rest underneath the stars
Hear me in the winds as destiny blows us closer
Forevermore
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Thanks!
Thanks ETS
Slowly it comes to me.....
the stone is contemporary, crafted from stone, soft and easy to work. the face was ground flat and the words carefully scratched into the prepared surface
it in not a tomb stone or grave marker. it is an ashes marker. it marks where the ashes of the departed were scattered into the river
We do seem to have trouble with contractions. :D)
“The group, in its triumvirate of rafts”?
Pat got just enough education to show how little she really knows.
Good or it could have been a prank by the friend who “accidentally” found it.
why does poetry make me want to barf...?
anyone?
Since it has a misspelling, it must be a hoax! /insidejoke
I inhale the sweet breeze that comes from thy mouth(Amarna-era poem from KV55 tomb)
I contemplate thy beauty every day.
It's my desire to hear thy lovely voice like the north wind's whiff.
Love will rejuvenate my limbs.
Give me thy hands that hold thy soul I shall embrace and live by it.
Call me by name again, again, forever and never will it sound without response.
I hope you have a VERY good alibi!
I think you have something here. The inscription looks very recent and the grammar error of your instead of you’re is interesting. I say it’s a prank.
“it in not a tomb stone or grave marker. it is an ashes marker. it marks where the ashes of the departed were scattered into the river”
You’ve done it again, Sherlock.
—Watson.
Reading it again, it could be a carved copy of note left to a loved one by the person who was dying of an illness.
An ashes marker is a brilliant deduction!
Ashes marker sounds very probable.
I found a really old stone was.
And I know it was old, because it was dated 12 B.C.!
Pond Eddy.
Hmm.
I note the misspelled “you’re”, means it was likely a shop class student from Port Jervis with a dremel.
I would have put fictitious script and a Cthulhu image.
Grinder marks on it, not very old.
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