A Chimney Fall

I was in the woods down at Quantico today, looking for, among other things, an old house site said to be marked by a standing three-story brick chimney. I thought this would be simple enough; what kind of archaeologist are you if you can't find a site with a three-story brick chimney standing in the middle? It turned out to be a little harder than I expected. The woods were dense, and on our first walk through the study area we didn't see a thing. So I kept looking. After about an hour I found a little private graveyard with plain fieldstone markers, a common enough sight in the Virginia woods. Exploring around the graveyard I found an old road trace, and I simply followed the trace a hundred yards through the woods until I stumbled upon the chimney. It had fallen down, which explains why it was hard to spot. Along the way I spooked a great horned owl, which flew up from a branch only five feet above my head.