I first learned about the cabins while staring at the ocean. They’re full of trash, my topless friend said, but it’s cute how they’re all lined up like that in a row.

My hybrid’s chassis scraped across the potholed dirt road towards 11 Eden Way. The tan and white-haired flesh of an older man’s back sharpened into view. As I exited the vehicle, Kurt Schürch ascended out of a shredded lawn chair. Hallo, he boomed, his right shoulder rolling back like punctuation. Kurt sent a puff of breath from the right side of his mouth to blow a few gnats back, if only momentarily. Good afternoon.

I looked around the property. Ferns and barberry choked the edges alongside pine trees that loomed skinny and tall. Widowmakers, Kurt’s toothless cousin murmured under his breath.

Kurt had originally purchased the cabins in 1969, allegedly on his way back from Woodstock. He claimed that Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin joined him, as he hospitably put them up free of charge.

Over there, he motioned to a log; Jimi and Janis used to poop there, Kurt said.

It’s perfect, Kurt said.

The contents of the property included but were not limited to: nests of several species, a gray leather couch filled with bones, Donald Trump’s memoir, a refrigerator crammed with rotten condiments, a lidded saucepan full of soft green matter, hand tools, a portrait of a child from 1895, approximately 75 issues of Playboy and Seventeen Magazine stored in a large wood and leather chest, a Tupperware full of wet stuffed animals, and a Ben Franklin wood-burning stove known for its exceptional inefficiency.

Somewhere between the first and second cabins, a dump of unknown magnitude loomed. In archeological terms, this is known as a refuse pit or a “midden.”

Bolstered by the confident likelihood that it contained traces of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and potentially other Woodstock 1969 performers, I emailed Dr. Myrgjǫl Hinx, Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Middlebury College, whom I met playing bisexual soccer in 2018.

I had previously assisted Dr. Hinx on a dig at Tilden Beach, NY, on January 1, 2021. At 12:05 am, our mutual colleague misplaced their cellular device. In those early morning hours, advanced tracking technology verified that a specimen was located on a patch of beach where our group had previously been stationed on woven blankets. Dr. Hinx led a small team of volunteers (including myself) in an impromptu dig of the premises. Employing driftwood and fishing line to establish an X-Y grid, we formed our hands into trowels to expertly scoop sand towards the outer edges of the square, exposing untouched strata, and eventually, one iPhone 11.

My inbox pinged with an auto-reply; Dr. Myrgjǫl Hinx was unfortunately in Iceland conducting a 7-month expedition funded by the Mellon Foundation. Academics will do anything for an accolade, I grumbled to myself. Reminded of Kurt’s ingenuity (the main cabin was held up by whatever spherical items he could find on site, such as tree stumps and concrete-filled buckets), I reached for a red-and-white self-help book that came with the property. Academia is a pyramid scheme built on student debt, I thought; you don’t need a doctorate to learn. Following a few irrelevant pages about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, I landed on a quote, a slap in the gut: Nobody is a total failure if he dares to try something worthwhile.

Heeding Kurt’s lingering ideologies, I hightailed it to Neversink True Value Lumber in Port Jervis, where I invested in one spool of neon orange string.

At 1:13 pm on June 28, 2026, I returned to the premises and began to establish a four-by-four-foot quadrant of what is now known as the Hendrix-Joplin Midden (HJM). Descendants of the 2019 gnats staged a family reunion as the ferns surveilled my progress.

There were many months during which I debated whether or not to purchase 11 Eden Way. The property was far cheaper than anything else available, but half of it was built from a rotten gazebo; there was neither insulation nor heat, and several ghosts existed on Squatters’ Law. During one tense discussion with Kurt, when I politely asked if the price could come down on account of the rusted iron septic tank’s cheese-grater-like condition, he yelled to his cousin to retrieve The Towel.

Jimi used this. He slept in that cabin, Kurt said, gesturing towards Cabin 2. And this was his towel.

With Kurt’s back turned to us, his cousin leaned in. You know you need to clean that, right?

Following my purchase of 11 Eden, I noticed that The Towel’s fabric care tag dated it to the early 1990s, decades after the untimely passings of both Hendrix and Joplin.

At 2:27 pm on June 28, 2026, I began the slow and meticulous process of discovery. I had expertly established a grid, mapped datum, and consumed twelve pretzel rods and twenty-four ounces of seltzer.

HJM-X1Y1Z1: A disembodied doll head is the first finding. Dating to roughly 1961, the doll head is of Victorian-inspired provenance.

HJM-X2Y1Z1: Rusted stovetop grate. Date: unknown.

HJM-X3Y2Z2: Red cracker tin. Contents expired in 1985.

By 6:58 pm, it was darkening, and my pomeranian Liberious had begun barking at the shadows. I had dug into Z3–the third layer of sediment–when a dappled sheen caught my eye. I grabbed a loose toothbrush to sweep clean its smooth exterior.

There, in HJM-X3Y2Z3, was a medium-gauge Fender 351-shape celluloid pick.

That night, Liberious and I could barely contain our excitement. We built a fire suitable for a Nordic sacrifice. I removed my pants and waggled my genitals at the flames, delirious from our discovery. Liberious and I ate a dinner of boiled hot dogs, buttered saltines, and yellow Powerade. I checked us both for ticks (4 removed from my panty line, 7 from behind his ears) and incinerated them in the fire, much to the delight of our unseen guests.

I showered under the spout, deadbolted us in Cabin 3, and tucked in for the night. Liberious snored, still as a river stone at my feet.

The next day, I chucked my tools to the side and embarked upon a more brutish approach to excavating the “layer cake.”

Garbage shreds erupted out of my deepening hole. My cuticles were stuffed with illegally dumped chemical waste, and it had been hours since I had checked my work email. I was technically on the clock as a part-time assistant for GreatLife, a Dubai-based investment agency focused on buying commercial real estate and claiming indefinite vacancy as a loss on tax returns. As I was only paid $18 an hour without benefits, I incentivized my own package ad hoc by residing in their vacant 80,000-square-foot, Bronx-based property (which I affectionately dubbed Daddy’s Loft, or “DL” for short). I stayed at DL whenever I needed to visit the city, reasoning to myself that my bosses might even be pleased to learn that I was personally invested in their holdings.

I have always thought it was unjust how much office space sits unused in New York, so my sporadic personal use of DL was not only justified; I deemed it political. In the words of Robert Schuller, “Don't reject an idea because it's illegal. You might be able to get the law changed.”

Which is to say, I needed to maintain my inbox if I wanted to retain free access to my urban palace furnished with a full-size organic cotton Saatva mattress, a 15-pound pail of peanut butter, a pallet of 5 Gallon bottles of Mountain Valley drinking water, and a portable composting toilet.

I logged onto my employer-issued MacBook Pro and opened my Outlook account. In my inbox was a request to view DL (part of my duty was to routinely “show” it to “potential clients,” as is “legally required” by the IRS). I reluctantly offered several appointment times and began packing my overnight bag.

The past few weeks at the cabins had produced a long list of discoveries. Although my findings had been indexed by color, size, shape, and location, my capacity to analyze them for invisible data had become limited. I ordered a fingerprint dusting kit to be delivered within 4 hours, packed the specimens in my hybrid, and began the 96-minute drive to DL––Liberious tucked between myself and the emergency parking brake like a warm sandbag.

On my way, I pulled over at a gas station in New Jersey, where it is illegal to pump your own gas. In the time it took for the attendant to fill me up, I had rush-ordered a set of white archival gloves, an Alvin Comfort Curve Dusting Brush, a microscope, a Kastle-Meyer (Phenolphthalein) Kit, a blacklight, a 40-foot white waterproof tarp, a 1969 Gibson Hummingbird, and 500 acid-free archival boxes in a variety of sizes.

I began to write a song as I drove, using Liberious as a temporary tambourine.

Over the following weeks, I drove back and forth between the cabins and the DL, yielding promising results. Most significantly, I unearthed a “ball and chain” amber ring resembling one worn by Janis Joplin at the 1967 Monterey Festival. By now I had dug into Z11. When standing inside the HJM, the top of my head was no longer visible. The Hendrix-Joplin Midden Baulks (HJMBs) revealed walls of earth left standing, showcasing a variety of matter, such as leaves, twigs, bottle caps, doll arms, bones, hair, cleavers, clothing, shoes, rope, industrial-grade sheet plastic, and a 12-foot logging chain with hooks.

Back in the Bronx, my collection included but was not limited to: the aforementioned amber ring, the guitar pick of unknown provenance, a maroon-stained (cotton!) beach towel, a lard can large enough to indicate the hosting of groups, and a plastic butterfly resembling those featured on the car mural Janis Joplin commissioned from a roadie in 1967.

The longest stint that I was able to spend with the midden was in the latter half of August––after I was unceremoniously let go from GreatLife––after being discriminated against for making residential use of their commercial holdings, which they claimed in a strongly worded email was “not only against company policy, but illegal as well.” When I lightly suggested to my supervisor that one could argue my utilization of the space was in the service of work-related activities, they reminded me that there was no working plumbing in the facility and that my personal use was “biologically hazardous.” I reminded them that I had provided my own composting toilet pro bono. They piled on, expressing concern about my tarp covered in "dangerous weapons,” such as the three antique machetes I had recovered the week prior. I reminded them that I was first and foremost an artist and second an administrator. They reminded me that I was no longer an administrator, as I was no longer an employee of GreatLife. I fingered the guitar pick, bidding farewell to my former warden with some parting Kurt-via-Schuller wisdom: Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities. Most artists wouldn’t even bother extending such an olive branch; but, considering myself an empath, I know it can hurt just as bad to be a boss and/or a landlord.

Despite a check engine light that had been passive-aggressively taunting me for the past week, I revved up, making my way back towards the midden.

That night, Janis spoke to me. Her gravelly voice shared a secret and made a promise. Jimi put his warm arm around my shoulders, as he smiled at me, not saying a word. The three of us (naked) walked together slowly through the ferns, making our way towards a mossy log, Liberious in tow. Kurt spied on us through a single-pane, lead-painted window, his body hidden from view. The pervert.