The Story of Serpent Rock



DeAnne and I were on a mission. Many missions now. This one was different. No poetry reading this. No poet publisher, arts support story this one. This was danger. Why, we could slip on a rock, fall into poison oak, get sunburned even.

We armed ourselves with our trusty Minolta DiMage digital camera with the super big memory magazine and fast accurate semi-automatic and fully automatic firing potential. We went off to shoot a rock.

You are probably thinking Morro or one of its sisters. Nope. Nothing that big. But, hey! It wasn't just any rock. It was a Pismo rock. Not just any Pismo rock but a rock with a name. Not a name generally known but the few who know its name call it Serpent Rock.

No one would ordinarily pay much attention to Serpent Rock. Sure, the occasional group of kids from Judkins Middle School, on whose property the rock lies, might spend some time trying to carve grafiti into it - with hard wrought success.

The folks who had sent me to the rock, though, were not your ordinary attention payers. Karl Kempton is, is, is, well, Karl Kempton is Karl Kempton. His photo is attached to this article. That will enable you to home in on the most basic of Karl's manifestations. But once you find that, you will still have to devise the best fit for you method of getting to the real Karl. But the effort will be rewarded — primarily with information — information you might think at the moment you just don't need but unless you are a real zero, information you will find a use for by and by even if it is just grist for an awe and wonder session.

Norm Hammond is not your average guitar player. I don't mean his guitar playing is above average. I mean Norm himself is above average. He knows if you talk with him a while he will entrance you with stories of people who lived — and died in the Oceano Dunes, and stories of some Dunites who just wondered away and weren't heard of again — like they had been heard of anyway. And just when you think all this retired fireman knows is Dunite stuff, you might start hearing words like analema, ecliptic, azimuth, and you mouse hand starts reaching for the favorites button to bring up Merriam-Webster Online. Of course you should be talk to Norm or Karl with a laptop open, else you are going to sorely miss some good stuff.

left is Karl Kempton   right is Norm Hammond

These guys are concerned about things like whether the talked about new Pismo interchange will have a requirement to protect Serpent Rock. They want people to contact superintendent Sears of Santa Lucia School District about protecting Serpent rock.

According to Norm and Karl and others in the area, reason exists to worry about whether Serpent Rock will be protected.

The natural question is what is so important about Serpent Rock that it needs protecting? Karl and Norm are convinced that Serpent Rock is a Chumash astromical observatory. After spending several days watching sunrises and sunsets during the winter solstice, DeAnne and I are inclined to agree.

Click here to see some photos and notes about Serpent Rock

My take on the question of preservation is that once you have destroyed something, determining what it was and what value it has is a lot more difficult. As usual we go about things backward. Shouldn't everything be protected until it is determined to what extent it does not need to be rather than leave it unprotected until it is too late.

What does this have to do with poetry? For starters if the carving on Serpent Rock are as Karl and Norm think an ecliptic pattern then it is to me as much a poem as studying the sky and drawing constellations and dieties in them. As it happens, that is exactly what the Chumash did.

More about that in our next episode of poetic history.

Meanwhile, here is a link to Karl Kempton's timeline of his study of Serpent Rock

                                  jack mothershed