Blog tags are always interesting. I have a number of so called categories or tags or whatever that I can choose. Sometimes I pick one when the post I am writing seems appropos to some special area or place. Other times, I feel like playing a bit and not even selecting one. But the special one for has always been Anthropology. It takes me be back, makes me smile, even brings a tear and a wish to my somewhat aged mind and heart. We all know that things come and things go. Jobs arrive and they depart. I just did the same with my job at Levanta. Officially, my days are up on 15 December; but for all intent purposes, I’m done. I’m unemployed (again) in this silly place. Back in the day, the prehistoric hunter-gatherers would travel some distance to find rocks and food, sex, perhaps climate change, perhaps small scale environmental differences. I know this because I rode in the desert on a horse with no name.
Seriously, I traversed the western rim of the Mojave Desert in this rather wondrous place called the Antelope Valley. I don’t remember seeing Antelope there ever; but I believe there were some. What I think is known best about the Valley is the rather unusual ecology, the dry lake beds, the pinch of environment between foothills, mesas, and mountains. Up the foothills, we enter a zone where the vegetation is changing. Suddenly greener trees come at you. There are big granite boulders scattered all around mighty Oak trees that were once acorns only. In some dim past, the acorn landed, grew, became the mighty Oak. Perhap sone of the granite boulders has a acorn processing station on it used by those temporary inhabitants. I found a lot of them; but my main interest was not this kind of food processing. Oh no. I wanted to find back then flaked stone technological sites. Places where the cunning hunters sharpened, found, made flaked-stone tools. Along the way, I found beautiful and isolated rock art caves, places in the desert where I would swear no living human foot had ever touched, and an indelible mark on the side of my brain that forever is an archeologist. There is the right side and left side and then there is the side which wants to travel the road less traveled. For me, that was this path where the prehistoric peoples traveled from place to place, hunting and gathering, socializing, perhaps story telling. And blogging. Oh yes, dear reader. These guys blogged. Their wordpress or movabletype was different though and the medium was darker and perhaps in a cave or rock outcrop. But they told a story, made a rhyme, recorded an event. I saw many rock art sites out there in the Mojave and they all struck me as mysterious and incomplete. Kinda like the blog entries I write 
So anthropology came along and was a haughty mistress, well sexed, and wonderful. She was demanding and required me to pay a penalty of dedication to the cause. But I willingly paid it because I could travel that road less traveled and see those sites (archeological and otherwise??).
Now I look back and see myself stepping on those small stones, changing the pattern of the stones in my stream. Enter current day. I am unemployed basically and its Christmas time. I have a wonderful family and friends. A few friends. I’m gonna go looking for work and I plan on finding work. Will it be another startup? Who da f**k knows. My friend DaveR and I both agreed that doing the startup thing was much like spinning a wheel of chance. Each time you could believe that the one you were going to was the best. Perhaps it was.
But the small stones urge me forth. Perhaps I’ll just stand here for awhile and remember that anthropology that brought me here. Of all the so-called sciences, anthropology understands it the best. It gets it. It grabs me still.
Alright… Who picked up all the small stones I already stepped on?
