Barstow, California, 90s or so. Dropped off about 30 miles outside of Barstow on this training range that was used for World War II and after armor and artillery training. The area is described here by a military occupant. Make no mistake, this place is grim and you don’t want to get lost. We heard stories from this small bar somewhere on some road in some alternate reality about a car of tourists which simply disappeared into the desert. A bunch of these unique desert inhabitants took off to find them. Months later they were accidentally found. All dead. One rather stupid person had taken off walking and was found walking exactly the wrong way. We had maps, compasses, two vehicles and a bunch of beer. Well prepared in the archeological sense. But it was hot. The heat mercilessly beat down and sand whirled in the afternoons and our little survey and excavation units disappeared completely sometimes in the whirling dervishes of sand, wind. Our supervisor would summon us back to the so-called “Land Shark” and we sit it out. Often we just ended up back at the hotel at the swimming pool with copious amounts of beer. What was learned? Well, we learned to respect the f**king desert boys and girls. The desert rules and its not a nice ruler. It will subject you to its will, it will drive you mad, it will make you all either God fearing or atheists depending on how you enter. On the other side, its wild and primitive and beautiful and full of the most complex life cycles and coalescing paths of beauty and grimness. I will remember its space and and sun and time forever. Its a philosophical idea with a 125 degree reality.

Edwards AFB, CA. The gunnery range. From here you can see the Rogers Dry Lakebed extending its 20 or so miles and you can remember all the aviation history of the place. I am walking out along a solitary jeep track with two others. One is a botanist and the other is a wildlife biologist. We all walk 30 meters apart with the road path sandwiched in the middle. We have a 4 wheel drive loaded with water, pizza, sandwiches. Its marked on the map as our start and we will end up back here in 4 hours for lunch and then drive to another spot for the afternoon. The desert here is wild and wonderful. It extends to wild looking buttes around the town of Rosamond. North a bit perhaps is another desert ville called Mojave. Both are unique little places. Rosamond is the gateway to Edwards AFB and we used to drive there every day on my commute to work. Here is a memory. Rob Fishman and I worked together there and were driving one morning. It was quiet with only Rob humming along with KLOS FM from Los Angeles. It was the Mark and Brian show I believe. I had this package of 6 donuts with the white frosting or sugar on them. I opened the package with my teeth but was squeezing the package and all this white dust flowed out and ended on my face. Rob looked over at me and did not say anything. For about a minute. Then he started laughing. I looked in the mirror. White donut powder all over my beard and face. He got to work and started telling everyone.

Anyways though, back to the story about the hiking in the desert… You reach a moment where heaven, hell, desert, sky, mountains, hills, buttes all come together into a wild menagerie of reality. Desert scapes beckon all the time to you and you see where they all meet up. Desert dwellers know the feeling. Life just begins and ends as you do the archeology there. Its wondrous and its a sun and sky moment where it all blends into a scene vividly and forever implanted.

So what can we all do to survive in our deserts? Reach to that desert, see it for what it is. I reached there and dwelt in a fantastic spot that I still miss. The stories still flow. Sometime in March or April I will return to the land of sun and sky and revisit some people I have waited too long to get back with. it will be a mix of joy and sadness I fear. Truly said, you can never go back again. But I need to. As Robert Frost commented so well,

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

From here

Thanks Mr. Frost. You always remind of the sun and sky moments and that we all have some miles to go.

So what we did was every 10cm we measured the units all around to ensure they were still “square”. WE dug 1m by 10cm units or so. So each 10cm we recorded all the stuff or lack thereof and closed that unit out. Roddy would walk by and yell at us those impeccable words “keep them godawful sidewalls straight”. We would wipe the sweat, red dirt, midden, blood, and strain from our eyes. We would eye the units so critically; ensure that those walls were straight.

I have these memories in all of my 15 years of doing professional archeology of digging under those requirements. RWR would enjoin us to manage those holes wiht integrity inbetween flipping small pebbles at the back of our heads. Snooking was a favorite pastime in the units with RWR. People would feel him getting his aim on the back of a head or neck all day long. We would be sweating under the hot and unforgiving Mojave Desert summer sun. The wind would pick up in the afternoons and blow the sand and dust down our shirts. We’d pull up bandanas and cover-up. No use; no damned use. The dirt would insinuate itself into each possible place where we would prefer it not to be. Then the pebbles would start flying by 3pm each day. By 4, we were done with serious work. We’d all load up into RWR’s Chevy powered Landcruiser Jeep and head to a swimming hole with so much cold budweiser. Soon, we’d be swimming, drinking, and repeating. Man. Getting all that dirt out of all those places was luxurious.

Sometimes we’d leave the place and drive to a Pizza place in Lancaster or Palmdale or this beer place we frequented that had the best burgers in town. We’d toast each person. After leaving one place, one of our crew was stung by brown scorpion. She had to have the poison squeezed out but by evening she was there with us drinking, eating.

What is it about those days which seemed to magical I always wonder. I’ve partied with technologists, open source guys, Microsofties. There were great parties; but nothing like those days sitting in a bar with Roger, getting god awful drunk, and talking with a variety of people that wandered into the biker bar.

So life is fun everyone. Keep them godammed sidewalls straight in your digs.

Okay, ready?

I was riding the train back yesterday from wondrous Mysore and saw this really interesting country inbetween Mysore and Bangalore. There were hills dotted with scarpments of granitey looking formations. Magnificent bluffs and weathered and blasted rock formations etched with the loving care of erosion and deposition. Those are the twin god figures of this earth. Additive and subtractive processes that rule most life forms out there. The material of planet earth responds to these twin forces in different ways. Out in the Mojave desert, the sand dunes pitch and yaw this way and that and travel kilometers of distance. There are different types of sand dune did you know that dear reader? There are parabolic dunes and a few others depending on their shape. I always found it interesting that we have many words for a collection of sand crystals which can blast away a windshield in minutes and leave it a porous wreck.

I remember once doing desert archeology the wind picked up its force and the sand was blasting its way around us with such velocity that it hurt through clothing. We were digging these excavation units and finally had to just stop and hide in a cave we had seen on the side of smaller canyon. RWR and I sat there for awhile and we chewed beef jerky and ate apples or something. The sand propelled itself down this washed out watery streambed and we waited. I think I’ve mentioned before that RWR never talked much. So we sat quietly and he chewed on a straw. We looked around and there painted on a wall of a cave was this unusual figure painted in the style of the figures painted hundreds perhaps thousands of years ago. One figure only and nothing else.

After some time, the sand ebbed and we left. We continued working on this conservation archeology site digging, measuring, clearing out the sand that had deposited. The day ended and we packed it in. Built a fire, threw down a tarp. We never slept in tents then. We opened warm beer and I remembered what a New Mexican cowboy told me once that they never drank beer because it “warmed up”. Whiskey was their drink of choice and for wild times that juice of the devil Tequila.

But RWR sat there and drank some warm Budweiser. Finally after awhile he laughed.  I asked him so what was so funny? He said he knew why that stick guy was in that cave. Why? It was the sand storms here. He had to wait them out too.

I remember all these fragmented moments of working with RWR and his joyful love of the whole science. I see these wondrous scenes crossing part of India and I’m taken back to a place and time way gone. Rock and stone, desert and sand. People then, people now. We all experience the force of life. Main question is:

Do we take the lemons or make lemonade?

Work has changed me out a few ways and that’s good.

I went with my son, wife, and daughter to the wondrous Hearst Museum at Cal Berkeley. I enjoyed it but came away with some different feelings. I’ve truly left many of those things behind and while my heart still beats with the echo of a field archeologist; those folks were academics. I don’t mind them and the world needs them; but its not what I ever did. We need both, but I was an am far afield (excuse pun) from their worlds. I loved the Hearst but my reality back then was deserts, mountains, valleys. Not the hallowed halls of the museum with its never-ending exhibit halls. I was a dusty field archeologist and treasured it.

Hey, look who has arrived. Its our rich boy scientists.
Yah. They look tired… And thirsty…
Hey rich boy scientists. Want some hot milk to help you sleep?

We’d all laugh and we would buy a round of drinks. Those guys would have “boilermakers” and we’d do a few rounds of draft beers.

If you have read this puny attempt at a weblog, you probably remember me discussing how archeologists do like to drink. And not warm milk either. We would sit after the jokesters left for dinner and have a few more beers. Sometimes it would be Thursday and we would not be working Friday; so we’d stay longer for dinner. Other days we would leave for home. We worked a variable schedule. On the days I left for home, I remember driving home caked in the red dust.

I’d get home and my wife would draw a bath and have a cold budweiser for me. I think I mentioned that archeologists do like to drink beer . We would start talking about the “archeology” and the doing of it. Its an active thing you see. Its doing archeologiy in the active sense. Being an archeologist is more than just reading 10 books and getting a degree. Its a way of thinking and doing and living. I felt the most connected those days with friends, family. It just seemed I had it all engaged.

Anyways, Theo and I still take time to talk and its always good. We remember those moments and others. I remember desert moments that Theo never lived through. I seem to dwell more on archeology sometimes. I think I secretly miss it more than what I admit to.

Such it is. It was lesser than and more than and equal to. It was a time of being, a solitary endeavor filled with notables and less than. Some folks I met, I would not choose to be around again. Others though seemed more than. The space they occupied was like one of those burgers. Super-sized.

I started thinking again about it flying back from North Carolina for some reason.Then I remembered that my wife is taking me to the volunteer day at Cal. I get to wander a museum collection. I get to see old friends named Boaz and Kroeber. I get to remember and feel trapped but free.

I often think we don’t give enough to these universals and their importance. Whether we believe in them or not, the idea that they may evolve to become more important based on how our culture evolves is rather provocative. Lets face it, that there is nothing so constant as change.

So who shapes your world and who cracks the walls down so you can reach some other horizon? I like Eddie Vedder and the songs for Into the Wild myself. They bother me, irritate me, make me question. I like U2’s Joshua Tree album. It takes me back to a desert scape. I like Born to Run by Springsteen and finally I like Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon.

But just because you like a thing does not mean you can easily listen to it. Some of the music I like bothers me at a basic level. The music of Joan Baez still does. Harry Chapin makes me feel sad sometimes. His was a life snuffed out too early.

But what does all this have to do with the price of tea in San Mateo? Or pizza in Berkeley? Well, today my son who most likely will not follow in his dad’s footsteps received an internship there. My wife and son were invited to tour the collections, see Kroeber Hall, walk the floor of one of the collection sites. Of course to my son, this is just another entry in the growth and maturation process. To me, its this larger than life thing which makes me remember the stories and books and papers. Most of all it makes me remember the good days of doing the archeology. Archeology was a “doing” thing. You could not passively practice it. You had to get out there in the 125 degree heat in Barstow or the below freezing in the mountains and do it. Then you could say at the end of the day, “yes I did archeology”.

Now my son gets to see a set of prehistoric and historic relics that I have never seen but could get lost for years in. I could wander the collections halls, be lost to all reality, and gaze in wonder at the anthropology there.

I’m jealous and I’m proud of my son. He will see things far beyond my grasp.

Truth be told, I like finding things which perhaps other scoff at, admit seems less than interesting; but when you see things in a different perspective, it becomes interesting. Light years ago, I studied prehistoric spatial relationships amongst western desert hunter-gatherers. I had noticed with the years spent recording prehistoric cultural resources, that the number and size of prehistoric cooking pits and hearths grew. The hearths simply got bigger in size. I wondered whether there was some kind of cultural continuity going. Was it merely because the rocks degenerated and were replaced? Were there different uses for the different sized hearths?

Suddenly, I remembered this class I took at graduate school. It was on non-verbal communication. We studied the idea of proxemics or spatial relations between people. It was as if a light bulb started appearing. What if people expect so much distance between themselves sitting around a fire? What if the firepits grew because populations using the sites were growing? I started compiling the location of the larger firepits with other indicators of population size.

Its sad to say at this point, the whole thing fell apart for a variety of reasons. My tenure at the place ended under cloudy conditions. I was accused of filing erroneous expense vouchers by someone simply wanting my job there. It was ugly and I wanted out. I left this thing behind which still jabs at me every so often. I was so close to I think finding something that tied material culture to people and their lives. And I had to leave it behind.

Others have told me since it was not a big deal. Everything just changes and I should adapt. But to me it was not hearths. It was the people around the hearths and how they arranged themselves proxemically. It was a shattering revelation. Then it ended.

So… Its not the dogs either and the people walking them. Its something else. Its the ability to see a thing and process it with that remaining pair of “anthropological synapses”. I hope I never lose those. I’d hate to only ramble through life and never see the ties that bind.

I remember digging out on Edwards AFB in SOCAL and the wind was howling at 45mph and the dust swirled around the unit we were digging. Mark and I would stand up and periodically survey the unit and the wind and dust swirling never amounted to as much as us doing science. As one archeologist remarked at some time; “archeology is the mind wielding a trowel”.

In those other hills, I traveled over terrain I sometimes wondered if another had ever seen. The country was wild and open and I was never sure that another human being had walked the same trail. The other archeologist, sometimes my wife, was 30 meters to my right or left. There on the far side was RWR. He seemed introverted and focused inward. We never talked that much. Until…

Until we went to the Pizza joint or the hotel. One of the more humorous stories took place down in Mojave. We had been out all day long and were dirty and dingy. Tired and filthy. Dirt clinged to every place you wished it would not. We tramped into a hotel and the front desk clerk almost sniffed at us. He gave us the look that we were transients, homeless waifs and we could never spend the night at his place. RWR produced a Corporate AMEX card (no preset spending limit) and put rooms, food, massive orders of beer on the rooms. The clerk just watched us walk away. We were laughing and pointing at him. But we all went to separate rooms.

What was it about that career and life? What was so special that makes me wander the history of my own life gathering its artifacts? It was more than it was. It always was more and the archeologist were more. Simply put, archeologists are bigger than life. Bright minds, dirty trowels, clothes clinging with dirt. But the talk, friends.

The talk was like blogging all the time. Science came out as though we were constipated and we had to remove it using some philosophical diueretic. it was painful because it was so hard; but it felt so good. We gathered and talked. Once a year we produced scholarly papers.

All of this compressed in one drive after a summer’s over BBQ party for my son. I have so much compressed in archives, readers. This blog serves the same need I guess.

Perhaps the quality of this thing has gone down. I don’t blog so much about Linux; yet these days at work Linux is very much in my sights. I’ll blog more about that later. Things are still evolving there too.

Now I’m sitting at the bathroom door; laptop in lap. Beer iced and drinkable and thinking. I watched the sun do its retirement tonite and I remembered so many days in the field as an archeologist watching it. Days in the Mojave; afternoons in the Sequioa. Evenings in the Sierra. Wonderment in the Great Basin. What became of those years? Simply memories that I cull up when the mood strikes. I miss them though. I miss the best part of anthropology which was the cowboy science and the looking at incomplete things and forming pictures. Truly archeology is a record of trash and dumps and converting it all to behavior. I’ve always felt that those prehistoric cave painters were the ancestors of the blogger today. They reached to a pinnacle of expression and found a cave wall. It became their canvas and paradigm and speech network. They marked their world in uncertain hues.

I traveled that world, saw the record, and ate home-cooked rattlesnake chili many times. Drank way too much beer and considered the wonder of a sunset with a bunch of people that fell silent at the same time. Was there some bond or boundary that no one crossed those days? Yes. There was. I have never seen the same boundary and bond today. Computer technologists don’t possess the same joy, frustration, and love. Because archeology reaches to a depth of the spirit and rewards.

I’ll hoist my beer to all those I knew, that I dug with, that broke bread with me. I’m still here guys. I’m sitting in a bathroom blogging.