Summer Field School

---

6 months late...

Monday, May 21st
I am EXHAUSTED after last night’s flying fiasco and a little nervous about starting the field school a week late. At least I know almost everyone on the crew. I had to get up really early this morning to make it to Lander and pack before 8, but it was also nice to get the update from Adrienne before we started, so I don’t feel that much out of the loop. We met at the Lander CWC Center at 8 this morning, though only half of us made it. There was a bit of car trouble and such, so I guess the rest of the group are joining us either at the highway or at camp. Buying groceries was interesting. We must have had four carts out there, with people running all over the store fetching things back. Quite funny. Andy, the darling, rear-ended my vehicle at the gas station, no damage done, but it did afford us a bit of hilarity as we drove out. I think I may like our ability to laugh about anything the most. Three others met us at the trailhead and the last at camp. Camp is really cute. There are two little cabins kept up by the Nature Conservancy that we have set our tents up around. The big one has a stove, so we have a really luxurious set up. I’ve even heard rumors of pie! Jim joined us as we were setting up the tents, and the last, unofficial, member of the group came right after lunch. Charles was on last year’s trip, and lives just up the river, so I gather he will be joining us for the rest of the week, which is great because he’s very funny. The afternoon’s assignment was to map a spur of the Trail, so we split up into two groups and set out, but there was a slight miscalculation and our group, having been robbed of our original assignment, continued further down the river to another possible spur. Todd deemed it a 1940’s ranch road, so we didn’t map it, but Adrienne did find the remains of a Fraser’s Axle Grease can, which we recorded. On the way back to the rest of the group we stopped and climbed up the slope to a spot that they recorded last year. The ruts of the Trail on the way up are about four feet deep in spots and there are charcoal stains washing out of the pale, dry soil all the way down to bottom of the ruts. The Trail then breaks apart into several swales where the wagons would have split up, each trying their hardest to convince the teams of oxen or mules to haul their heavy load up to the top, where it narrows again into one trail and drops down the other side of the ridge. Last year, just over the crest of the ridge, they found a broken repair link from a chain used to rough lock the wheels of the wagons as a crude breaking mechanism. All the way down the slope were bent nails and small twisted pieces of metal that was all that remained of what was probably a massive wreck. I drive a team, and I cannot imagine descending that slope with our old ranch rig, let alone a prairie schooner that is half as wide, three times as tall, on iron rimmed wheels, and packed with all of your worldly possessions. Standing at the top with the wind rushing in my ears I could easily imagine, as Todd says, “babies screaming, women crying, men cursing, and cattle bawling.” And that would be on a good day. It’s good to be reminded that archaeology isn’t all about the artifacts we find. Those little pieces of metal are all that is left of the crushed dreams of one of the hundreds of thousands of pioneer families that flooded West, pushing the borders of the nation to the coast and really founding the country we know today. Ok, well, moving on. We headed back to camp and our amazing chef-in-residence started dinner. Apparently Bill has taken over the kitchen and we are unbelievably grateful. He fired up the grill and in short order we were served steak, ribs, baked potatoes, a lovely salad, and even a dessert, baked apples! The meal far exceeded what I generally expect at camp, and I sure took advantage of it. Yesterday caught up with me and I am heading to bed early tonight. I am feeling a little concerned about being behind the learning curve when it comes to recording and using all of the equipment (not that there’s much of it) but I’m sure I’ll catch up tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 1st
Best sleep ever! I woke up at 6:02am completely refreshed and joined the few who were moving about that early,, namely Todd, Bill, and Gale. Bill, the angel, already had coffee on. We had scrambled eggs, steak, and potatoes for breakfast! I’m pretty sure this is heaven. We loaded up and left at eight, right when Chuck fortuitously appeared, and convoyed out to the trail head to meet Jim and then on toe the tipi rings that Todd, Cheryl, Adrienne, and I found on the first ride out there. We split into two groups again, and our group mapped two sites: one with four tipi rings and several hearths, and the other with two rings and a projectile point. I now feel MUCH more confident in all aspects of what we are doing here. We take turns so that everyone has a chance to handle the GPS, take the notes, photograph, and sketch the site map. The only annoyance was the swarms of bugs that rose like a plague out of the tall grass as soon as we showed up. God bless DEET. After lunch our group continued walking along the base of the ridge to see if we could find anything else of interest. There were several more stone circles (not definitively tipi rings, oops), some of which were at least six feet across, apparently that is huge. This place is sublime. The views from all sides of the ridge are gorgeous and the topography is quite…strange. If we were at sea I’d call where we were coves. Rita spotted a snake on our way back (shiver). We tossed what was left of our equipment in the truck and took the long way home, finding Agate Flats Road and then bumping home from there. I sure love these people. It seems like we were laughing and singing the whole way home, though I do have a cute photo of Spot sleeping on a sleeping Rita’s lap, so there was certainly some quiet on the ride. Dinner was already on when we got back, as the second group beat us home. Chili and cornbread for dinner, and then I kicked some butt in cribbage. Lee joined us this evening. She has been our NPS angel, as Todd puts it, organizing the funding for this field school. She’ll be with us for the rest of the week, which I hope is a good thing. I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t fall in love with us a first site, a scruffy bunch of college kids who haven’t bathed ☺. But really, we laugh so much it had better be contagious. A little rain cloud swooped in while I’ve been writing and now the sage smells glorious. I might just have to live here forever. I’m off to bed. Oh, note to self, I should really remember sunscreen tomorrow. I haven’t burnt yet, but I’m bound to!

Wednesday, June 2nd
I woke up at six again. It is quite a surprise to me that I am waking so consistently at six with no sort of alarm. My general morning routine is to bury myself under the covers and play mind games with the alarm clock. Never works, for some reason… Perhaps the cowboy coffee and good company draw me into the little cabin so early, but I have nearly no desire to stay in bed, no matter how comfy the sleeping pad is. Everyone woke a little earlier today, and there was, regrettably, no chance to repeat our former trick on Andy, he was ready for us this morning. Breakfast was again at seven, and again amazing. We hit the road at quarter to, in the opposite direction this time, and joined Jim and Chuck at the ranch headquarters, where we redistributed people and I set off for Cooper’s homestead at the front of the convoy as official gate opener. My role soon changed to truck jockey, as a few of the gates were…stubborn. But I got to drive through, which was fun, as it’s been a while since I was behind the wheel of a nice truck. We stopped and clustered around Cooper’s foundations briefly while Todd did his usual inspirational history speech (I truly love that man) and then we continued to the river, where the maps show the 7th crossing of the Sweetwater, for those intrepid few who ventured into the river bottom and cussed their way through mud and high water. While I was dutifully running around, looking for trail swales and such (actually, I was just looking at dirt) Lee found a very lovely arrowhead, followed shortly by Chrystal. I managed to restrain myself from crawling around on hands and knees in order to see better and resigned myself to identifying trail ruts, which was actually kind of fun. I think we found five swales, where the wagons all split up and then came back together after the ford. Lunch was quite long, a good opportunity to nap, as Todd and Jim started debating the actual position of the eighth crossing. There was much gesturing of arms and scratching of heads. I snuck in an extremely abstract watercolor. I think it must be easier on large pieces of paper, because the small ones are defeating me. After lunch and nap we headed up Alkali Creek (Crick, to the locals) to see if we could find two graves mentioned in a journal entry that was published by OCTA a little while ago. Actually, the basis of the articles was heart wrenching stories about dogs on the trail, and this particular one was the account of travelers who had found a dog laying on the grave of his master(s) a week after they had been buried right above Alkali Creek, on the Seminoe Cutoff. Poor puppy. Anyway, we headed up there and spent the rest of the afternoon flitting about on the hilltops above the creek in the howling wind. I’m not sure when I’ve ever felt so alive. Not true, but it demonstrates my point. There are some days that the wind just picks me up and I feel as if I could fly. We found several rock piles, some of which we think are graves, and others cairns. I shouldn’t mind being buried up there, the wind carrying my spirit for eternity, my grave overlooking the Sweetwater Valley. We called it quits with a few rock piles left to record, so we are planning on going back tomorrow. The road home was “a long and winding road,” mostly because our guides (Chuck and Todd) both missed what they swear of a shortcut, and we spent about an hour bumping around on the sage. It was quite lovely. Our truck (Chuck, Reva, and I) made a brief stop at his ranch house…hey, we made it back in time for supper! I am dying to meet Chuck’s grandmother. If her books are any indication she must be a pretty cool lady. Dinner was, of course, amazing, and we proceeded to have what might be my favorite night in camp, culminating with a couple of hours of singing around the campfire accompanied by Adrienne’s lovely guitar. I could listen to her sing for years. I am so sublimely happy out here it is ridiculous.

Thursday, June 3rd
Up again at six and ready to go, even after a late night last night. We headed up Alkali Creek again, this time without Chuck and Jim. They joined us later. The drive up revealed a Sandhill crane nesting right next to the road on the river. So cool. We recorded the few piles that Chuck and I found being outriders yesterday, and also what appears to be a vision quest circle. I’d never seen one before, it was pretty cool. So half way through recording these sites this massive van chugs up the two track and a rather adorable, middle aged, round bellied man hops out of the driver’s seat and exclaims, “People!” I guess he and his wife, who stayed in the van, had set out to find South Pass and ended up miles and miles out of their way and headed in the wrong direction! It’s rather a miracle that the giant two-wheel drive van made over 40 miles bopping around the backcountry. Todd pointed them up the Seminoe Cutoff towards the highway and wished them luck, after which I had collapse with laughter. Todd said that he keeps expecting to run across a van like that peopled with skeletons. I imagine it rather like the Far Side comic, with the two skeletons inches from water in the desert…Very amusing. We headed down to the creek crossing to survey that, once Jim and Chuck joined us. We must have spent about an hour or so down there but didn’t come up with anything before we gave up and returned to the ranch house to lunch on the lawn. From there we went to St. Mary’s Station, the military fort that Andy concentrated on last semester. It has been seriously looted over the years, thanks to the discovery of a intact chest with contents in the 40’s or 50’s, I think. Looted or not, while the rest of us were standing around looking silly, Lee walked up to a boulder and pulled an intact, hand-blown, glass bottle out from under it! I mean really, we were only there for five minutes! A few minutes of intense searching followed, yielding almost nothing, and then we got down to the business of trying to establish where the original trail had crossed the creek that runs through there. We seem to spend a lot of time doing that. We all ran around for a bit while Todd let us trace, well, phantom tracks, and then he pulled us all in and we started trying to logically ascertain where the trail would have been. It’s all confused because there was a homestead right above the creek that had some irrigation stuff going, and the washed out ditch looks quite a lot like a washed out trail. There were also tracks from the vehicles and whatnot, and after a while I headed out into the field to see if I could find the trail further out and trace it back. Or at least that was my stated purpose. Really I just wanted to get away from the increasingly grand arm waving and loud theorizing. I think that the weekend is sounding really good to a few of us. One spot of pure comedy during all of this was Spot, who cornered a rabbit in a culvert. She spent the afternoon barking frantically into the culvert, which amplified her barks and sent them ringing across the valley. I’m sure that poor rabbit is completely deaf now. She is the sweetest, silliest dog. I’m pretty sure she’s never caught anything and wouldn’t know what to do with it if she did. We trailed back to the fort site, having come up with a trail that I think everyone agreed on, and found Jim and Lee investigating what appeared to be scraps from a blacksmith’s shop, though no blacksmith’s shop was on the plans drawn up by our dear Caspar Collins. This was followed by an intense discussion about whether the scrap was found in situ or whether it was tossed to the side by looters. The fact that it was just under the grass, on the surface, makes me think that it was looter’s junk, but I don’t think that that makes it worthless, as the slag is obvious proof that they had a forge here. It was perhaps too late in the day to be going rounds about this, but I believe there was a bit of confusion. We broke up at four and headed back to camp. Todd, Andy, and I mapped the camp side of the 7th Crossing while the rest started dinner. I’m not sure there has been a single day I’ve spent with Andy when he hasn’t made me laugh about something. It’s quite a skill, particularly since he mostly makes us laugh at him, without being a total fool. What a great guy. We had grilled turkey (yes, turkey) for dinner, with mashed potatoes. I can’t believe how well we eat out here. After dinner we played cribbage in teams. Adrienne and I first took on Chuck and Andy, and beat them, but it was Chuck’s first game ever. He had quite a coach in Rachel! And then Chuck and I beat Andy and Adrienne. I have not yet lost at crib, perhaps a first in my little world.

Friday, June 4th
I got up early (again, six) and quietly packed my stuff up in the tent while Adrienne slept. I know the goal is to spend as little time packing as possible, but really, if it were my choice, I’d just stay. I probably would have, if we were returning here next week, but we’re off to Fort Laramie, so it’s goodbye to the Sweetwater for now. Todd was telling Gale and Bill about the strange dreams he’d had the night before, about Cheryl calling him, and then Cheryl came in and related her dreams, which were even stranger, in that she’d had ghosts visit her and had been calling Todd to tell him about these people. They sleep on opposite sides of camp. Rather awesome. We eat quickly and took off with our new metal detectors to locate a spur of the Trail revealed on an 1880’s survey map. After spending several hours in a couple of places it could have been we gave up. Not a trace of it exists, though it was mapped a long time ago. The hillsides there are also vicious. Perhaps only a very few foolhardy souls attempted it. It is to be a short day today. We left Chuck and Jim at the trail, where they both went to their respective homes, and we returned to camp to pack up and erase evidence of our presence. It was remarkably easy and quick; we were on the highway by eleven thirty. My first week of field school is complete.

---