TCAP Artifact

Pot Creek and Ponderosa Pines

Friday 4 June 2010

 

            “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” Henry David Thoreau

 
 

            Our first night in the tents was cool and restless. 

            The mornings here are beautiful – cold and silver, then golden sunlight falls over the hills and pours down the streams and into the valleys and the grasses and over the dandelions.           

            We toured the remains (hills) of Pot Creek Pueblo and then had lunch in the pine tree shade back at Tent City.

 

            In the afternoon we learned about Ponderosa Pines.  The biology teacher said this area used to be a forest full of Ponderosa Pines.  He described it as a “Cathedral” which summoned up all sorts of glorious images.   

 

            I washed my hair for the first time and ran out of water in the solar shower before the soap was all off, which was an experience to learn from…

Tent City at Sunset

 

Arriving at the Fort

Thursday 3 June 2010

My first impression of Fort Burgwin was more than favorable – flowing mountain streams, lush greenery, high pines, fresh mountain air, dappled sunlight.

 

Tent City consists of about thirty tents beside a huge old pine tree, and Pot Creek flows behind it.

When I arrived the campus was glowing in that idyllic summer sunlight with lush patches of dandelions and daisies nestled in the green grass.

Running water already seems a luxury.  I had my first solar-pack shower, which was an experience, but splendidly warm and pleasant.  Everything here is just a little more dusty, takes a little more time, thought and planning.

As we walked to brush our teeth the sky was painted in great glorious swaths of vivid pink and orange and blue.

I can hear the stream and crickets. . .

the TCAP Artifact

Going to SMU-in-Taos to take part in the Archaeology field school was a rather impulsive decision on my part, never having had much affinity with either nature or archaeology, and I arrived with very few pre-conceived notions of what it would be like.  

 

 In fact the extent of what anyone told me about it was “tents, digging in the dirt”.  Never one to turn down an experience, I found myself and nine other students in the mountains of New Mexico, living in tents, troweling through dirt all day six days a week, bathing only on very rare occasions, and thoroughly enjoying one of the most unique, boundary-pushing adventures in my life. 

I hope this blog gives a somewhat more elaborate idea of the field school than the words “tents, dirt” (even if it does get down to that) and perhaps it may even inspire some to partake in the program and experience their own journey in the Land of Enchantment, or wherever the field school may take you, (our ultimate goal was to dig to China, although sadly we never quite got there)…

-Gretchen

Field School

  

More to come on the dig sites.