Nature, particularly at Acadia National Park, is always teaching us.
About four times the size of a football, a large rock found on a walkway at the park’s Thunder Hole inlet gives ample testimony to one of nature’s most fundamental lessons – nature is a powerful force indeed. Park workers posted photos of the rock on their Facebook page on Friday.
Lest there be doubt of the full force of nature, a boulder of reasonable girth is believed to have been tossed by…
Posted by Acadia National Park on Friday, 6 April 2018
The boulder easily fills about half of the concrete walkway, and one photo — of a gap in the railings — suggests that if the boulder came through that way, it was a snug fit.
Posted at about 10:30 a.m., the album of photos was on its way to viral status by Friday afternoon, having been shared about 2,118 times in four hours.
Commenters had fun passing around the pictures and remarking upon what kind of power it took to heave the boulder that high from the surf.
“It’s like a Stonehenge thing. We see it. We know it got there. But how???” queried Jenn Barber Masuka.
“Wow!” was a common refrain.
“Don’t mess with the ocean! It will carry you away,” Johanna Smith wrote.
“That was there Sunday when we visited. The kids were very curious about how it got there,” wrote Kaylee Buker.
“I just got tired of lugging it, so I left it there,” deadpanned Tom Croteau Jr.
The waves at Thunder Hole gather force from the small cavern at the lowest part of the inlet’s most landward end. Carved out of the rocks from centuries of erosion, the cavern helps create waves of as high as 40 feet on windy or stormy days, with an accompanying roar that gives it its name.
It’s one of Acadia’s biggest draws.
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