Dead Horse Bay: Part Two
I finally had some time this weekend to clean and sort through the treasures that I brought home from Dead Horse Bay, one of my very favorite New York adventures to date. I tried not to go crazy grabbing bottles and trinkets to take back with me, both because I didn't want to carry a ton with me all day, and because living in a teeny tiny city apartment has made me super picky about any new non-essential acquisitions.
When I read about the abundance of horse bone pieces leftover from the bay's history playing host to horse-rendering plants, I half-joked that I wouldn't be happy if my backpack wasn't overflowing with skeletal remains by the end of the trip. I say half-joked because that's basically what ended up happening, minus the "overflowing" part.
When we arrived at the beach and started poking around, I was initially worried that I wouldn't be able to find any horse bones at all, but once I found the first one they became much easier to spot. I was actually so excited when I plucked that first bone out of the water that I yelled to Trent, who had gotten ahead of me, and did a crazy dance as I waved the bone over my head — which I assume is a totally normal reaction to have when finding 19th-century equine remains. I set the bone on a rock with the intention of coming back for it before we left, but I failed to account for the rising tides, which eventually swept the bone back into the ocean before I could grab it. Luckily we found more and more bones the further down the beach we got — so many, in fact, that I was able to sort out the better ones to keep, and leave the rest behind.
While Dead Horse Bay is most known for its bottles and bones, there were plenty of other interesting tidbits to keep us fascinated — irons, tires, basketballs, floor tiles, chairs and heaps of unidentifiable rusty parts, including what looked like it may have been a safe at some point. I lost count of how many different items I spotted and Trent and I had fun trying to identify some of the more puzzling pieces. Spark plugs, enamelware pots, railroad spikes, old metal signs, lawn chairs, bottle caps — there's probably no end to the different types of things you'd be able to find, depending on the day.
Horses weren't the only animals to meet their end at DHB either — we found plenty of carcasses in varying states of decay, including totally creepy/prehistoric horseshoe crabs, a seagull and a few very pungent fish. Horseshoe crabs don't just look prehistoric, they actually are prehistoric — they originated 450 million years ago and are thus considered to be 'living fossils.' None of the ones we saw were currently living (unless the one above was just sleeping off a Doritos binge), which was probably a good thing because look at that thing.
Even though the trash on the beach comes from an actual landfill, I was annoyed that people seem to think this gives them a free pass to leave their current-day trash behind. Maybe it's just a matter of perspective, but I feel bad for the people of the future if all they get to scavenge for is our left behind Doritos bags and plastic Gatorade bottles, while we get intricate glass soda bottles and beautifully patterned bits of china. Aside from the bones, my favorite beach discovery of the day was definitely the baby doll leg that I photographed, but didn't disturb, in hopes that it will continue to creep out visitors to Dead Horse Bay for many more years to come.