The dictionary says ‘enigmatic’ means ‘ambiguous, obscure or perplexing’. It’s what some researchers prefer to call the large boulders of ‘foreign’ rock that turn up around areas of ancient glacial or periglacial activity, such as the West Sussex coastal plain around Bognor. Like its admirers, one of them contemplates where it came from:
I’m an enigmatic boulder on this ancient Sussex strand,
Atop the brickearth soil and Chalk that underlies the land.
I have been called ‘erratic’, and I’ve wandered*, it is true,
But I’d rather be ‘perplexing’ to geologists like you!
I haven’t always been here, I’ve come from far away.
Did floating weed transport me? Improbable, I’d say –
I’m much too dense and heavy, I’d have ended in the drink!
Ice-rafted from a glacial source? That’s what some people think.
Or maybe a tsunami or dire catastrophe
Picked me up and carried me? Geologists can’t agree:
Some reckon I was ballast in ships that dumped me here
But that’s unlikely. So it seems my pedigree’s unclear…
- Erratic comes from the Latin word errare (to wander).