Thursday 15 July 2010
We all awoke around 5:30 to a beautiful grey morning that turned into a stunning pink sunrise. We just lay there and talked and looked up at the skies, then dragged ourselves to our last breakfast, took our time, took down the tents, and finally had teary goodbyes.
I suppose thus ends this spectacular experience…
Wednesday 14 July 2010
This is the end. Our very last day, although it still feels like tomorrow is an eternity away.
Today we cleaned all morning long – every last bit of equipment and the van. I have a new appreciation for the many wonders of WD40.
After lunch we took down half the tents, which was really quite sad, and then a monsoon hit. The pine offered spectacular protection – not a drop of the downpour reached us, poor stranded archaeologists.
A few of us went into town (after showers!) to have dinner and reminisce about our times here.
It was a truly gorgeous night and we all grabbed our sleeping bags and lay down on a platform beneath the glorious stars. We spent an eternity just starring up at them and taking and pointing out constellations or just making them up.
I can think of no more fitting or lovely was to spend our last night here. The night was perfect – stars for a blanket, perfect temperature, perhaps comfortable is not an entirely apt description of the platform and sleeping bag, but it was immensely pleasant none the less.
Tuesday 13 July 2010
I was one of the last Archaeologists troweling today, so to speak. Only a few of us were left on the site, closing out the two final units. As we drove out to the site we, the few survivors, played “We Are the Champions” as we passed the archaeology lab.
This is my last night in the tent.
Sunday 11 July 2010
I was awake by 5:30 this morning (I’ve only just remembered, which would perhaps explain my current overwhelming fatigue at 8:30 pm). The kitchen staff did made-to-order breakfast burritos, which was very kind.
We gathered our pots, which had been fired in a kiln the night before and were a dark bronze-brown color, and piled into the van, drove to World Cup (Mocha Mexicana), and stopped by the Gorge Bridge for a peak over into the abyss, then off to Felipe’s.
At Felipe’s we piled newspaper, then wood over his fire pit/platform, and then put metal grates over that and set our pots on top with bated breath. Felipe grabbed the matched and lit it and the flames were soon leaping up around our pot children, who we’ve invested so very much time and creative energy in.
After twenty minutes or so we removed them from the fire with tongs and set out the traditional ones, and put the ones people wanted black into trashcans with newspaper, quickly lidded so the oxygen would burn up.
The trashcan things were removed 5-10 minutes later and we all sat while they cooled and talked amongst ourselves until our turkey feast lunch time, which was delicious.
The pots turned out beautiful and the day was a truly lovely way to begin the end of our time here.
Saturday 10 July 2010
In the morning we had Mercyhurst and then the Vigil family tour our site.
Monday 5 July 2010
Today I was put in the Acequia– a long, very narrow trench over the acequia, in full sun. I got dirtier than I ever have been here – positively covered head to toe and under my clothes in a tick layer of dirt.
After we went to the Arch lab at twilight and everyone sat in a circle cross-legged with their pots and Sunday showed us how to sand them, and we sat there for a long time chatting and working.
Saturday 3 July 2010
We spent today in the lab cleaning and cataloging artifacts and watching Indiana Jones.
Last night the weather lived up to the drama “Monsoon season” evokes. It poured, positively beat itself over the tent, cold and loud as could be, with lightening illuminating the canvas walls and casting an eerie green light through them.
It gave way to a beautiful morning – glass-like rain droplets on the tips of the pinion pine needles, the air fresh and cool and thick and humid, smelling of earth and pinion and rain – the most wonderful smell, the perfect temperature, overcast yet bright, feeling as though the whole earth had been renewed. It was peaceful and beautiful.
Sunday 27 June 2010
Sunday is not a day of rest for Archaeologists, and although today was immensely enjoyable, it was not restful. We had our usual six am wake up hour, breakfast, and in the car, off some long rout to Felipe Ortega, a world-renowned potter’s home.
The house in question, I very quickly realized, was itself a rambling home-made (literally) jumbled beauty of a place, rough around the outside and some edges, constructed by who and with what they had available, it appears, but the main rooms built by Filipe’s grandmother, have lovely vigas and golden walls.
This was the first room we went into and all sat in, with its golden adobe walls and black iron wood-burning stove in the corner, and it was in this room that we all were shocked and awed by the outrageous character that is Felipe Ortega.
Lorenzo
He is expressive in the extreme, forever exaggerating his movements, demonstrations, reactions and emotions, whether it be placing a hand to his forehead in a melodramatic mock feint, pretending to fall asleep, smiling brightly, or vigorously smacking a pot into shape. He issues and endless streams of instructions, orders, jokes, and anecdotes.
First Felipe had us each take a pinch of blue cornmeal and face the mountains surrounding his house and say a prayer, and we all sat on the ground around him and he gave us a full pottery demonstration. As he did so he told us the Apache story of Grandmother Spider who first created pottery, and of the mica.
He took a handful of mica dust and there he threw it into the air and it seemed to hang there, a suspended cloud of gold, for a moment before being carried away by the breeze, “to become stars”. Felipe said – “scientists say stars are made a different way, but we know better”.
We then got to work on our own pots, using our pukies (bowls), making a tortilla base, then coiling and smoothing it all to make “bean pots”.
For lunch we made our own pizzas in little pans, which we then cooked in the horno ovens outside. To identify the pizzas we were all given randomly “Indian names” such as “up all night”, “Sweet buns”, etc. The names were called out loudly by this lovely woman who put just the right inflection on all of them and we all laughed and laughed, until we tried the pizzas and then everyone only ate because they were positively divine – hot, fresh, delicious as can be.
The horno oven
We got right back to work after lunch and finished up not long after because the dark sky was threatening rain, although it soon cleared.
We had watermelon and further demonstrations and sadly departed around four.
There was a concert in the evening and luminarias lined the pathway to the auditorium, while violinists in suits and gowns warmed up outside in the dusky twilight amongst the daisies.
Thursday 24 June 2010
Today was the feast day at San Juan Pueblo. We saw the Comanche Dance – a huge, fast, loud affair with pounding drums and stomping feet and everyone from small children to old men dancing, the women with circles painted on their cheeks, gently shaking arrows in their hands, the men, wearing huge feather headdresses with painted faces and bodies, dancing around them, the whole crowd moving and winding and turning together. The overwhelming impression was that of vibrant feathers and pounding drums and loud calls.
Ah, what a colorful day!
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