I know everyone has wondered what is the place to be. Someone once told me that any place is the place to be as long as its not the place you are at. An anthropologist friend once told me “archeology is the most fun you can have with your pants on”. I have a humorous story that somehow dovetails to this. A few dog years ago I was working down at the Air Force Flight Test Center in the Mojave Desert. Its a singularly spectacular place with all the desert ecologies lined up for inspection.
One of the jobs I had was managing the production of a rather large and sensitive NEPA Environmental Impact Statement. Those things try to catalog and define all the sensitive resources, issues with groundwater, soil, contamination. Then they’re produced in a descriptive and fact-based report that has to satisfy the EPA. One day, I was kinda managing it or drinking coffee or discussing the latest practical joke we were going to play on our admin assistant who seemed destined for that kind of joking. Imagine the cross of a Valley Girl and a Born Again Christian. Linda was delightedly both. I digress; but hey I own the space. One weekend someone stole all the comfort funds we collected for food and drinks and Linda ws heard to say that the “thief was going to Hell”. We took all the cash again and left a note for her in place of the money saying, “thanks for the money; the thief from Hell”. Of course we thought that was funnier than our manager. But Karla laughed behind her hand I have always thought.
Anyways, one day I got a call from the Air Police squadron that someone was running around on Air Force property naked. We had sub-contracted with a firm to do biological evaluations of Desert Tortoise habitat and sure enough these guys decided for some reason to just get closer to nature than walking on it. We all laughed a great deal but the APs were serious. We had to go out and discuss the “nakedidity” with the malefactors. Well, I just thought this was terribly funny and the cops thought it was serious and our Air Force Environmental Programs chief thought that the entire thing was crazed and that the biologists were touched by spring heat or something. Well, as you can tell; that was the place to be when it was the place to be. The biologist, botanist, and I laughed a great deal and we took pictures. A bunch of scampering biologists all naked counting desert tortoises. It was rather a sublime moment.
Perhaps as sublime as an archeologist rambling through the Sierra Nevada singing Police songs because the wildlife biologist told us to make a lot of noise or we would attract unwelcome big bear curiosity. I can still hear that voice singing “roxanne, ..”
So its the place to be and memories revive every so often other times. Its perhaps a sign of advancing age that I remember with such crystal clarity the events of the day and wonder what separates me from them. There is time and space and people. All three have moved on and there are different spirals and trajectories of all the lives. But I’m happy now with work, with play, and with life. I have a job where everything is not cut out in its shapes. I’m required to build things where there was nothing previous.
What better place to be than be a habilis and be a builder?
