Fantastic!
Ooh, this stuff is fun.
Just to get it over here in case I don't back up properly.....
My favorite life experience started when my Anthropology professor handed me a course description. Southern Utah State College was offering an 8 week archaeological dig this summer - was I interested? Finding a way to fund this, my next adventure, was the only thing keeping me from responding YES! Immediately. Within five months, I was on my way to the most southern part of Utah and one of the most unique experiences of my life.
From Cedar City (where the college is located) a wobbly 12-seat plane flew us, skimming the tops of red and peach mesas and canyons. It dipped and bounced its way to Saint George where it landed atop a mesa which was just big enough to fit the tiny airport's one or two runways. Driving north on highway 9, we turned at a seemingly random telephone pole on to a nearly invisible track. We wound up the side a mesa, skirting an odd black-rock and scrub-brush mound which seemed very out of place in that sea of buff and baby-aspirin orange. After passing through a couple of dry, sandy washes and jiggling over several washboard-like frost heaves, we pulled into camp.
The camp had been reused year after year on that mesa as there were several sites on or near it. The kitchen structure was there as were the outhouse sheds, the tent platforms and the raised water tank. We had to open up and clean out existing structures, dig outhouse pits and build the shower stalls from scratch. The boss, Doc, and archeologist extraordinaire and kitchen witch, Jackie, guided us through the process of establishing camp. Tents were erected on platforms, cots were unfolded, and sleeping bags were unrolled. After such a long day, dinner and bedtime couldn't come soon enough.
The next morning, Doc drove the old Ford pickup. With a handful of us in back, out to the site. The rutted road only brought us so far: sage brush and rocks had to be pulled up and tossed aside to allow passage to the actual dig site. The site disguised itself as a mess of scattered rocks, named with an archaeological site number. The whole pile lay in a heap next to a lone, large shady pinon pine. More work needed to be done to clear the dig area, more sage and some small trees were ripped out and tossed off-site. Late that second afternoon we covered the very thing we had worked so hard to uncover - with heavy plastic sheeting. Returning to camp in the back of the truck, the rich scent of sage.and dust was over-powered by the stink of diesel fuel and road dust. Anyone who wanted one had their allotted 5-minute shower, we ate what ever food Jackie put before us and quietly moved towards our cots.
Narrow red footpaths wound their way through camp. They were edged with pinons and enlivened with the loud and beautiful pinon jays which lived in them. Some of the paths led to tents, some to outhouses, but they all eventually led to the kitchen. Every morning Jackie awoke one poor soul extra early to help her with breakfast. Those dark, cold desert mornings had a hint of dew to them which impishly tricked us all by becoming days full of hot, glaring dryness.
At the dig site, string was run between evenly spaced rebars forming a grid over the entire site. A site map was hand drawn and each square of the grid coordinated with a piece of that map - both were given a section number. We were each assigned our own section to dig,and started brushing aside the light, seedy blow dust, throwing rocks, large and small, north of the ruin to uncover the past. We used cement trowels and ice picks to slowly peel away the years between us and the Anasazi who once lived here. We found little pieces of pottery and tiny razor sharp bits of flint and stashed them in the little paper bags which were labelled with our section's number. We settled into the routine of dig-life quickly and the days repeated themselves without much variation until the weekend we went to town.
We drove down through the Virgin River gorge, a wonder of steep, winding lines, passed a gigantic Mormon Church and found ourselves in Laverkin where there was a public campground complete with electricity, washing machine, real showers, a pool, and a telephone. There was even an ice cream shop across the street. I stood before the dimly lit, slightly grimy mirror in the camp bathroom as my laundry was being cleaned of grit. I had scene my hands become rough, dry and tanned since the dig started, but I hadn't had a mirror to look in until now. I was shocked. I was already tanner than I'd thought I could be, my hair had bleached shades lighter and my eyebrows had gone wild! How many days had it been? Nine? Yes, just nine days.
Back at the dig site we started to find more intimate items. We continued to find bits of pottery and flint, but we also started to uncover walls and rooms, pits and hearths, floors and mud kiva benches. We uncovered manos and metates which were left behind, too heavy to travel with. They still nestled in their divided bins and had bits of ground nuts and grains embedded in them. We wondered why the people left and thought of the women using the manos to grind food against the metates. We watched a low storm tumble down the highway, trapped between mesa walls, and a high storm come to us across the mesa top like a stampeding heard of buffalo with sparks shooting from their hooves. We considered the mini, red tornadoes called dust devils which appeared out of no where and blew dust in our eyes. Scorpions, black widows, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes made us scream. Outhouse pits had to be redug.
During the eight and final week, one excavator struck a small, ancient skull. As we all stood to observe his find, a giant dust devil suddenly spun up, red and demented. It tore through the site, sucking up bags full of found potsherds and flint stones and tossed them aside. As quickly as it appeared, it was. And, a few days later, we were gone, too.
