Field School 3, through July 16

7/14/06, Friday

It was very hot today but less humid. The forecast for high temperatures was truly frightening, so I determined to live five minutes at a time. There were some five minuteses today that were a little hairy. Many other five minuteses were perfectly lovely, or, at worst, perfectly lovely if somewhat too hot. I had the recent graduate Megan for a pit partner. It is strange to find myself being more butch, more violent, and actually more effective at the test pit thing than someone else. I suggested she channel her inner rage into cutting the turf. "Unfunded federal mandate!" Ka-chunk! Take that, you roots!
Actually there aren't all that many roots that go below 20 cm. The geologists suggest that the river flooded over this contour sometime after the Paleo people were there. The handful of charcoal Mimi picked out of her layer is drying out in the lab.


Mimi finding charcoal, as George enjoys the view

If Dick can persuade the geologists to help pay for carbon dating, we should be able to get a terminus ante quem for the layer of alluvium under it.
Our pit went down 90 cm, nice and featureless and empty of cobbles. Dawn was proud of us. Meanwhile, Nathaniel (who is well over 6 six skinny feet) and Mimi went down 1 meter 30 cm or so and found lake bed ripples. Alan and Nancy (not Nancy DeCourcey) found a bunch of good-sized stones in a layer much closer to the surface. We will probably open that 50 cm square pit up to a full square meter next week. Today Dick spent most of the afternoon teaching the newer people to use the laser transit, a measuring device that allows us to know how far below a set datum a given thing -- a layer of soil, a feature, God should only bless us with an artifact-- to within a few millimeters. We usually go for half a centimeter's precision. The thing beeps. We have three ranging rods, with the target atached to the top of them, which should allow us to measure three different pits at the same time. Since we are now trying to work in 5 cm. levels, we have to check fairly often.



Dick showing Brook how to use the laser level

We stopped an hour early in honor of it being Friday. Mimi and Karen decided to stay over till Saturday morning, and Karen tried to assure that I would not mourn their departure after all by refilling my wine glass without telling me. We stayed up talking till midnight.


July 16, 2006, Sunday

That Karen was an evil woman. I woke up with an impressive hangover. I am averaging maybe 5 or 6 hours’ sleep a night, as birds wake me up, or bladder pressure, or something, and despite my inebriation I didn't do any better Saturday morning. On the plus side, I had some quiet time with the computers and managed to get the little PDA to do more of what I wanted. Now I can have pictures of the kind of thing we find at hand. I also put on some pictures of my parents and kids because I understand normal people carry pictures of things other than rocks and flowers.

So then Monica took Brook, Alan, Catelyn, and me in her car and we set off for Mount Washington. We went via Lancaster and the famous Paleo Route 2, with me pointing out the car window at places we have dug or shopped. One of the two 'all moose, all the time' shops in Gorham is closing, but the bookstore is still going.

We reached the Mt. Washington Auto Road about 11:30. It was promising to be another hot humid day, but we had been able to see the summit buildings clearly from Jefferson. None of the others had visited the mountain before. Monica read the driving instructions carefully and we set out with light hearts.
This lasted till we pulled over near the tree line to stretch our legs and noticed that the radiator was boiling over. Monica, understandably, got worried, but we made it to the top without incident. The summit was pretty well socked in by wispy fog; we had glimpses of steep green hillsides that looked like Scotland, only more so.





The most noticeable presence there was the clumps of people getting their pictures taken at the sign that marked the summit. Among them was a very small child of 3 named Lulu. She climbed the symbolic pile of rocks around the sign, rejecting any help, saying, "I like climbing mountains! Let's climb some more mountains!" She seemed to be enjoying it more than most of the hikers. Probably wearing a red sun dress helped. It was observed that the hikers had great legs and that none of them looked tired. The one I asked said it had taken him about 3 and a half hours to climb up. (I later learned that the hiking route, usually very windy and pleasant, had been absolutely airless and full of biting bugs.)

We bought shot glasses (empty), and lunch (chili), but no sweatshirts or bandanas (ugly), and we tried to help Monica pull herself together. There is a big-deal meteorological station on the mountain top; they had a wall of TV screens with various forms of New England radar. A storm was shuddering over Vermont and moving toward NH. Monica invoked driver's privilege and wanted to leave before she had to drive down the precipitous slopes (partly unpaved) in a rainstorm. We didn't particularly disagree.

So we left. At one point I suggested that we might go a bit slower, and she replied that she was pushing as hard on the brakes as she could. She didn't really get calmer when the brakes started smoking. I said they smelled like single malt whiskey. She expressed a strong desire for something in her shot glass. We took a couple of long breaks to let the car cool off; I photographed wildflowers.








We eventually reached the foot of the mountain and supported Monica's decision to have a cigarette. The gift shop at the base had no sweatshirts or bandanas up to Brook's standards or mine either, so we checked Monica for seaworthiness and set off for the bookstore in Gorham. I had been naked without a bird book. We remedied this. Needless to say the warbler at the campsite at which I got a _ good_ look doesn't exist.
The driver decided she needed ice cream, so we headed to Berlin and the recently rebuilt Dairy Bar.



Old sign

I had missed seeing it in its former incarnation before the fire, but the new one looks like a hotel or an office building. The ice cream was good, but there was no atmosphere at all, sort of a 'hygenically dispensed frozen treat' vibe.



new building

From Berlin to Errol the road runs along the Androscoggin River. We had no air conditioning so I had my window open and got to see loons, a mother Canvasback Duck with a small flotilla of ducklings and the moose. I think it was the First Moose Sighting for most of the people in the car.



Madame Moose

She was walking parallel with the road, not more than 15 or 20 feet away, and she really did not care if we stared and took pictures. Her rump was covered with insect bites and a cloud of blackflies followed her. I can't think why moose have no tails. It was a lovely ride and we weren't digging pits in the sun. The storm never appeared anywhere near us.

We reached Errol just as the big sporting goods store was closing, but I gave the locker-up guy a pleading gaze and he let us in. They had really pretty bandanas, tie-dyed in India. Brook found a suitable sweatshirt. It's made in sky-blue camo fabric, which will be useful when she learns to fly, or maybe on mountaintops. We were all greatly cheered by the sighting of the moose and the successful shopping. Monica, largely restored, drove through the pretty neat pass at Dixville Notch and got us home around six.

I had a very good evening eating leftovers and cleaning up the hard drive of my laptop. It was, as they say, Having Issues: It made the pictures from Friday disappear until mid-morning today, Sunday. Which for a change is a perfect cool almost crisp New England summer day. As well as doing stupid computer tricks for a long time this morning, I have showered, done laundry and fulfilled a very deep ambition to sleep through the heat of the day instead of digging pits. It was good.

I got up around 4pm and ate the last of the leftovers. A bit later Will said softly, as is his habit, that he had just seen a moose down at the lake. He had lent George his kayak. So a bunch of us went down to the lake and took turns crossing the lake in Will's kayak to approach the moose.



Alain in Will's orange kayak


It was dark enough that my pictures came out fuzzy, but I did not mind. I was more excited to be kayaking and trying not to get too close to the poor moose, who was trying to eat. She was in the water almost up to her belly, plunging her head under for twenty or thirty seconds and coming up dripping and shaking the water off her ears.



Wet moose

She did not care about kayaks. I was delighted. The kayak was was bright orange plastic and handled really well. Linda and Megan and I took turns. We each wore the life jacket. A lovely refreshing weekend.