THE PIT
It started out like this, a giant footprint stamped into the side of the road. The city work crews attributed it to a small cave in caused by the recent rainstorms. That was the day I took this picture. The city crews told me that they would be by in a few days to fill in the hole and asked that in the meantime, I not park my car nearby. Thanks for the tip.
By the following day, the hole had grown in size. It was almost twice as deep, and there was no way it could be attributed to a simple washout. The city crew returned, and told me it was nothing to worry about; they would be by to fill it in another couple days.
When they finally did return, nearly a full week later, the pit was almost ten feet in diameter, and nearly three times as deep. It was not quite visible to the naked eye, but if you were to walk away for an hour and return, you could see the subtle changes: an extra bit of asphalt or lawn tumbled into the hole, or a new boulder exposed.
They decided to call in the city planner and a geologist to examine the strange pit. When they returned three days later, the hole had engulfed half the street and the better part of my front lawn. Another few days and it would have reached my house. Another week after that and I was afraid my house would be swallowed into the abyss.
The degradation appeared to be accelerating. You could see the bottom churning now, almost like sand sifting through an hourglass. Curious, was all they had to say. To their credit though, they realized that just dumping a load of cement in would not really solve the issue.
It was my idea to use the camera. I suggested that if we attached a night vision camera to a length of rope and tossed it into the pit, it would eventually be sucked into the opening beneath. The sand had to be drifting somewhere, and this would tell us where.
We were not prepared for what we discovered down that pit. It wasn't just a hole, it was a whole new civilization, or at the very least, it had been...
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