After some days with mild, but wet- and relatively terrible weather it looks like the frost is returning with full force. Most of the days the temperature have been around +5 Celsius, except one day when it jumped to a summery +15, and the last days it its been around 0 degrees.
It is no fun at all searching and digging when the soil is muddy and heavy, and so cold that it feels like needles of ice are stabbing through the flesh and you can feel it pulsating in the fingertips hours after returning home to the warm house with its red hot fireplace.
Nevertheless I`ve been in the woods doing some probing this week. Trying to find a couple of ditches to dig next season.
The first trip went to the Luftwaffe field hospital where I have found many interesting things before. It is darker longer in the mornings now, so I think it was around 10 when I started searching. The ground had a cover of snow, but a light rain removed most of it the following hour. It was very cozy walking around in the silent forest. Other than the detector and the crunchy noise from each step I took the only other sounds were from a raven couple talking somewhere in the treetops. Mornings like that are invaluable.
I opened up the forest floor to check a signal and found it to be from a food tin. Together with it were several bottles, a fork, a car battery connection and some rubber from a rubber boot. The latter had some interesting markings: " Gr.11.XII.40 ", which I guess is either a unit or maybe more probable a date.
Close to the foundations of one of the field hospitals garages I struck upon a rust deposit. It was a six or seven meter long ditch with some signals spread out through it. I spent the next hours digging a couple of holes to get a sense of what it could contain. Of course the ditch had been topped of with layers of river rocks which were just awesome to dig through with cold and increasingly painful fingers, but the hassle was kinda worth it. Ca 45 centimeter below the surface I found the first piece of metal. A small aluminum box that had contained a medical syringe. Then a pair of belt support hooks, perfume- and medical bottles, gaming pieces, a blue- and a green dice, bits of a leather coat, uniform pieces, and a few cream tubes.
Digging deeper more bits surfaced. Parts of a radio headset, a few tools, a bucket, a tin full of hardened paint, bits of a door and two vinagre bottles. On the bottom was some kind of a mystery piece, which I think might be from a small sink as it had a faucet tube which came loose in the process of digging it out. A bit farther along the ditch I made another small probing and pulled out a pile of food tins. This ditch could certainly hold interesting things and it ll be fun digging it next year.
Four-five hours after I began searching I had enough. I was soaked to the skin, cold, hungry and happy, but needed a warm fireplace and a deep comfy chair and perhaps even a glass of red wine.
Some days later the mild weather returned so I went for another little excursion. I had some Tetra fire extinguisher racks piled up behind a tree from earlier in the season and wanted to collect them. I swung the detector around the trees there a little and found two more racks, one of which for a large extinguisher, nearly a meter long, and I have such a large extinguisher, which I need to go get now, stashed away in another camp.
I spent a few hours strolling around fantasizing about dreamfinds like a Luger or Schmeisser, or handfull of EKMs, but in the end all I got were creamtubes and a thermometer, bottles, a shovel, a hammer and a razor, and I ended the day with a very nice tent peg marked Nowa 1938.
If the weather report for the next week has any truth to it I guess it is safe to say that we are shutting her down at this point. Doing full days of digging in near sub zero temps and snow doesn`t tempt me at all and it is time to begin focusing on the winter projects. Cleaning finds, writing and making art and continue working towards getting our own place and opening a museum.
We are not completely done before the snow hits though. The last days I have been spending with books, maps, coordinates and Lidar, and might have discovered four or five "new" camps. We will try to visit some of these areas to locate the camps and we have plans to check out a relatively large coastal fortress complex as well.
It has been an amazing season, lots of great nature experiences and I have found rare things I didn`t even dare dream about digging out of the ground.
I am very grateful for all yours support and thanks for reading :)
Have a great week.
It is no fun at all searching and digging when the soil is muddy and heavy, and so cold that it feels like needles of ice are stabbing through the flesh and you can feel it pulsating in the fingertips hours after returning home to the warm house with its red hot fireplace.
Nevertheless I`ve been in the woods doing some probing this week. Trying to find a couple of ditches to dig next season.
The first trip went to the Luftwaffe field hospital where I have found many interesting things before. It is darker longer in the mornings now, so I think it was around 10 when I started searching. The ground had a cover of snow, but a light rain removed most of it the following hour. It was very cozy walking around in the silent forest. Other than the detector and the crunchy noise from each step I took the only other sounds were from a raven couple talking somewhere in the treetops. Mornings like that are invaluable.
I opened up the forest floor to check a signal and found it to be from a food tin. Together with it were several bottles, a fork, a car battery connection and some rubber from a rubber boot. The latter had some interesting markings: " Gr.11.XII.40 ", which I guess is either a unit or maybe more probable a date.
Close to the foundations of one of the field hospitals garages I struck upon a rust deposit. It was a six or seven meter long ditch with some signals spread out through it. I spent the next hours digging a couple of holes to get a sense of what it could contain. Of course the ditch had been topped of with layers of river rocks which were just awesome to dig through with cold and increasingly painful fingers, but the hassle was kinda worth it. Ca 45 centimeter below the surface I found the first piece of metal. A small aluminum box that had contained a medical syringe. Then a pair of belt support hooks, perfume- and medical bottles, gaming pieces, a blue- and a green dice, bits of a leather coat, uniform pieces, and a few cream tubes.
Digging deeper more bits surfaced. Parts of a radio headset, a few tools, a bucket, a tin full of hardened paint, bits of a door and two vinagre bottles. On the bottom was some kind of a mystery piece, which I think might be from a small sink as it had a faucet tube which came loose in the process of digging it out. A bit farther along the ditch I made another small probing and pulled out a pile of food tins. This ditch could certainly hold interesting things and it ll be fun digging it next year.
Four-five hours after I began searching I had enough. I was soaked to the skin, cold, hungry and happy, but needed a warm fireplace and a deep comfy chair and perhaps even a glass of red wine.
Some days later the mild weather returned so I went for another little excursion. I had some Tetra fire extinguisher racks piled up behind a tree from earlier in the season and wanted to collect them. I swung the detector around the trees there a little and found two more racks, one of which for a large extinguisher, nearly a meter long, and I have such a large extinguisher, which I need to go get now, stashed away in another camp.
I spent a few hours strolling around fantasizing about dreamfinds like a Luger or Schmeisser, or handfull of EKMs, but in the end all I got were creamtubes and a thermometer, bottles, a shovel, a hammer and a razor, and I ended the day with a very nice tent peg marked Nowa 1938.
If the weather report for the next week has any truth to it I guess it is safe to say that we are shutting her down at this point. Doing full days of digging in near sub zero temps and snow doesn`t tempt me at all and it is time to begin focusing on the winter projects. Cleaning finds, writing and making art and continue working towards getting our own place and opening a museum.
We are not completely done before the snow hits though. The last days I have been spending with books, maps, coordinates and Lidar, and might have discovered four or five "new" camps. We will try to visit some of these areas to locate the camps and we have plans to check out a relatively large coastal fortress complex as well.
It has been an amazing season, lots of great nature experiences and I have found rare things I didn`t even dare dream about digging out of the ground.
I am very grateful for all yours support and thanks for reading :)
Have a great week.
Mini dumping pit.
Syringe box.
Belt support hooks.
Half full perfume bottle.
Medical tube with moisturizer for dry and sore skin.
Strange fungi on an ice covered treestump.
A bucket of paint.
Screwdriver and a primus burner.
Headset part and top of a linesman tool.
Vinagre.
Parts from a door.
Part of a sink?
There was a U-shaped faucet tube on the hole in the corner of the plate.
The terribleness covered everything one morning.
Tetra racks.
Hammer.
Shovel.
Digger.
Cream and thermometer.
Tent peg.
Another strange fungi.
A small root found its way inside the thermometer.
Nicely preserved tubes. The bottom one was to help with a runny nose.
RSS Feed