Chapter 3: The Student

So ... I guess I should tell you a bit about me. I'm 22, single, virgin, overqualified for dumb jobs and under-qualified for smart ones.

Michigan is not a great state for paleoarchaeology so I went to Montana to study. Both Universities have good programs but Missoula is buried in smog 9 months of the year. I have allergies.

Nerd slash geek in high school, I was too busy getting grades and ducking bullies to even think about getting laid. By the time college ran me down, I was too interested in what was hiding in the dirt to bother with what was hiding in panties. I knew too much about artifacts and too little about the female gender. I'm shy. And cheap.

Rosie Palmer and her five daughters are cheap and don't expect dinner, movie and romance.

The proverbial 98 pound weakling, my six foot frame made me uncoordinated and gawky. Broomsticks have better legs.

I never missed a day through all 12 years of school ... mostly because I had no reason to skip and I was so damn interested in the things I read in the references of books the teachers were using to teach from. Sometimes it makes a guy wonder where, exactly, did the quote in the school book come from. I read the referenced book and the information presented didn't present itself here.

I kept reading though, chasing down reference after reference, studying what the author meant rather than what they wrote.

Suffice it to say, I graduated number three out of almost 1500 seniors. Number two was a 14 year old even geekier than me and number one had a 210 IQ. I hated those girls!

When I presented myself in my first college archaeology class, nobody knew who I was, by the end of spring semester I was 'that crazy kid knapping Folsom points in 20 minutes' and sorting tiny bones and minuscule flakes from sand for extra credit. Just for fun, I assembled a perfect folsom point from the flakes ... perfect outline that is. I had the chert hunk glued together outlining the missing point. I love extra credit.

Summer school was 12 credits of 4.25 on a 4 point system. I discovered my loves:

I loved digging in the dirt.

I loved the 'chink' of the trowel as it hit the tip of whatever was buried in the dirt.

Veterans I have met tell me combat is 90 percent boredom, eight percent dumb shit and two percent sheer terror. Archaeology is 90 percent mind numbing work, scrape away ... keep it level, square the walls, measure everything ... eight percent book work ... what you did (scrape), what you found (nothing) Depth of nothing from the stadia line (deep) and like that. The 'chink' is the bullet sailing past your ear. Your heart rate tops out ... the adrenalin flows ... you are in 'oh shit' mode.

I loved the shovel work moving a meter of overburden to get at 'the good stuff.'

Even though you KNOW there's nothing there it's still 10 centimeters ... keep it level, keep it square, haul the buckets to the screens, log it at the end of each level.

A typical log sheet for a meter square: 'Level 1= 0 to 10cm. Roots. Black topsoil trending to grey. Pebbles in the screen. Bagged: No. 12.'

When the log sheet is completed the sheet is inserted in the Field Notes.

Each 10cm level is described because it's as important to know what's NOT there, too.

Digging on down to:

'Level 35=90cm to 1 meter. Grey dirt, well compressed. Cicada core continues (see map 35) 1cm x 1cm. willow charcoal in the screen. Bag 36, Envelope1, ' Professor's note: Shame on you, David. You missed the charcoal. Note from crew: First Organic. You're buying beer tonight!'

Deeper still:

'Lvl 36=100cm to 110cm. Exposed fire pit (see map 36) 16 burnt, water tumbled fist sized rocks (Professor notes rocks are heat treated stream tumbled cracked granite, locally collected) Mass of willow charcoal. Collected C14 samples by clean, distilled water washed trowel. wrapped samples in aluminum foil tray pockets. Latex gloves. (Did not touch inside of foil pouch or charcoal with hand. Witnessed by LBD Ph.D.) Samples in possession of Principal Investigator. Laurel leaf projectile point found in-situ on rock number 3 (see diagram 6). Point 1: length 11cm. Bag #163. Placed bag in possession of Artifact Collector. Witnessed disposition. Signed Collection sheet Number 3. Initialed bag. DJA Excavator.'

Doesn't sound very exciting ... but it is ... if you like that sort of thing. I do.

I loved the camping and the hike to the dig through forest sided cricks. (A Crick is a stream in some states, creek in others. Some places a crick is a Branch. A crick could be a neck problem ... but it's not.)

A sample campsite: Elevation 6300 feet. Mountains to 8500 to north. Campsite level, about 15 acres. Cook tent to the south end. Stream to east side. Many archaeologists tents erected along the west side of the stream. Most are typical pop tents. There are two painted tipis ... mine and the one I gave to Roy Reynolds.

This description also goes in Field Notes. Ph.D.'s have been awarded describing archaeological campsites. We are Anthropologists first. Archaeology is a subset.

Of a Saturday, I took me to the woods. I, my pack, my fly-rod and my snake stick headed for nowhere in particular.

Behind the cook tent the stream tumbles into rapids as the canyon begins. 100 yards farther downstream there is a 250 foot waterfall striking a jumble of boulders. There begins a pool of clear water 65 or so feet deep shelving to a sandy beach.

A shadow of a road on the opposite side tells me that people once visited here ... and drove to get to the pond. I walked the rim to the east. Three ruined cabins and a two track road. The road led me down to the pool.

On the south west side of the pool the rock canyon wall shows the evidence of thousands of years of erosion, the pond drains along the cliff base.

Hiking down the rushing stream, fly rod in hand in hopes of some catch and release, I turn a corner. Sudden silence ... as my ears adjust to the lack of waterfall music I sense the more muted song of the stream. The canyon narrows ahead, grey cliffs rising vertically, hugging the stream. There is a path of boulders down the center of the water, like giant's steps down to the bottom of the canyon. I jump from one boulder to the next, pausing now and again to dip a fly ... a rise! A swirl of flashing color. A strike! Playing the Rainbow, I step to the next level of boulders, a flick, the trout swims slowly away, as if to say, "Hey! That was fun, why did you quit?" Another 300 yards down the stream the canyon abruptly quits. I am standing on a huge upthrust of rock in the very lip of a 600 foot waterfall. The ground vibrates from the suicidal rush of water tumbling to the valley floor.

The valley ... oh my. From my perch high above the floor I can see the stream as it serpentines its way through the forest and swamp. There a bull moose raises his velvet rack, peering this way and that, until his gaze rests on me.

As from an immense distance, my ears pick out the bugle. He looks again, a second high pitched whistle and he returns to his noonday lunch. I am no threat.

I sit on the very edge of the upthrust and eat my ham and cheese on rye. 'If this rock collapses, I'm dead ... What a way to go!'

Suddenly, an osprey dives from nowhere, flies through the mist and emerges clutching a huge trout that had swum too close to the edge of the falls and was borne away, over the edge, headlong to the pool below. I heard the screech of victory ... I heard the cry of defeat ... the fish was too large for the bird. It dropped, where a grizzly bear grabbed a free meal.