The Third Week - Day Thirteen: Seven Firsts and the Masochist’s Delight
6/20/11:
June twentieth marked a lot of firsts for me, chief among them, the rather startling discovery that detasseling corn was actually good for something other than an increased tolerance for corn rash and overall suffering.
The First First: Detasseling, more than just paid torture
For ye non-Iowans, detasseling is the process of pulling the tassel (i.e., the male sex organ) off of hybrid corn; in this way, the detasseled corn will be pollinated by the specifically un-maimed “male” rows and not by each other. Every summer, scores of Midwest kids are bused out to cornfields to work for ten hour days, come rain or shine.
Truth: the aforementioned tassel is not the soft fluffy white thing you’re imagining; nope, it’s green and looks pretty much like every other corn leaf with the singular distinction of being slightly pointier.
But back to relevant issues: detasseling taught me how to handle the tedium of perpetual observation and not freak out if the tassels weren’t immediately apparent to me. If at first you don’t succeed, continue doing the same job for a month and around day three you’ll have the keenest eye for tassels of anyone around.
It was this previous knowledge that kept me from entering full-fledged panic mode when the arch crew began our first day of survey on the Cureton Ranch.
The Second First: Surveys, not for the directionally- or spatially-challenged
To survey land systematically for sites, archies walk what are called transects. Paced at a distance of twenty meters (in my case, twenty-four strides) away from other crew members and aligned with a cardinal direction, the crew walks a straight line while studying the ground for sherds or flakes of certain lithics (generally chert and obsidian, those most beloved of rocks). The crew calls out to each other if something is discovered, stopping to explore areas that seem promising and marking new sites with the Junos. The archy in the middle of the group is also saddled with a compass and the responsibility of keeping the transect on target with the chosen direction. The rest of the crew have to watch this individual and reorient themselves and their spacing accordingly. Sound pretty easy?
After a few days of intense surveying, it is. But on day one of running a transect? Not so much. I was frantically checking and re-checking my distances, scrambling to stay on pace with Joel and Neil (who are both transect gods), and scanning the ground for artifacts, most of which I wasn’t sure I could even identify. And that was before we left the flat, fairly open area for the rocky, pinyon and juniper infested hills. Walking a straight line (already difficult enough) got about ten times harder with the added stress of deciding which way to go around a mass of trees.
With all of this, it took every ounce of my detasseling-honed skills to stay calm; now, instead of staring at stalk after stalk of corn (some with tassels, some without), I had my eyes glued to the ground, teased by the hope of spotting that silky fleck of obsidian or square corner of Deadmans Gray (the most common kind of sherd).
And then BAM, it happened: I found my first bonafide free-range sherd.
The Third First: A bonafide free-range sherd, now even the clueless can find them
However, rather than letting me glory in my most magnificent of triumphs, Neil upped the ante by bumping me into the middle position of the transect, replete with compass and directional duties. I was, to say the least, thrilled.
The Fourth First: Manning (womaning?) the compass, “what’s that arrow mean again?”
Now my boss would not only see that it’d taken me half a day to find one lowly sherd, but that one of his prized interns was barely compass-literate.
After losing sight of Joel for a prolonged period of time (a dire sin in the transect world) and after some occasional veering, I managed to more or less get the hang of the compass and subsequent steering. We finished out our current quarter/quarter (a sixteenth of a mile) transect and retired to the government rig, where Joel greatly boosted moral (and the caliber of my rather pathetic lunch) with some piki bread.
The Fifth First: Piki bread, expanding food horizons by way of Hopi deliciousness
Made by Hopi girls, piki bread is a combination of corn mash and ashes. Equivalent to paper in thickness, piki bread can be rolled as well as crumbled and spiced. With a distinctly smoky flavor, this Hopi specialty is incredibly addictive (to which Neil will heartily attest).
Following some happy munching (only briefly disturbed by the opportunistic and hungry Cureton horses), Neil prodded us into a jaunt through the KNF for a look at Pittsberg Village, a Cohonina settlement (click for a panoramic view; this is really too cool). This large site is marked by structures dug out of the ground and lined with stones; with a view of both the Grand Canyon and the San Francisco Peaks (the twin mountains overshadowing Flagstaff), this is exactly the kind of settlement Travis wanted to investigate for his thesis. As Travis reasoned, it cannot possibly be coincidence that Pittsberg Village was built on a hilltop with such extraordinary views of the area’s defining features.
The first day of survey ended, and I tried for one more first: a leisurely run to the two-mile marker on the Bill Williams Mountain Trail.
The Sixth First: Bill Williams Mountain Trail, the masochist’s delight
I’d been doing a lot of running because really, what could be better after a ten-hour day of outdoor (often labor-intensive) work? Today, I was in to maximize my pain by hauling myself as far up Bill Williams as my poor little legs would take me. Spurred onward by the rather perverse desire to see just how much my body was up for, I let out an unashamed whoop of joy at the two-mile mark, danced in a controlled-spasms kind of way, and turned myself around. Then the real fun started: Marina and the Diamonds wailing in my ears, I ran down the mountain fast.
What made that run down such a rush was the Bill Williams Mountain Trail itself, which isn’t a gentle rising path, or, for those two miles, even rounded into altitude-diffusing switchbacks. Nope, that sucker was all about boulder steps and hairpin turns. Everything I had wanted out of running the steeple chase I had found right there: wide strides, twisting leaps, heavy rock dodging and a certain trust that during this uncontrolled charge I wasn't about to face plant and bust out my two front teeth.
Which is why I considered my singular fall a total success. In short: the trail veered, I did not.
The Seventh First: Commingling, got to get that blend just right
And there it was: for the first time that summer (though certainly not the last), I saw good old Iowa blood in some Arizona dirt.
Photos: 1. Noah at 20 meters 2. Bonafide free-range sherds 3. The crew (chewing on some piki bread) 4. Bill Williams Mountain Trail
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