The Fifth Week - Day 26: My Good People

The Fifth Week – Day Twenty-Six: My Good People

7/5/11:
Today was my first day working on the Reed Project, an un-surveyed area a little over an hour north in the Tusayan District. Monsoon season, now off to a cracking start, saturated July fifth with humidity, an uncommon event in normally bone dry Arizona. Erin, Joel, Noah and I, trying to make the best of a suddenly sticky day, started surveying despite the rain-heavy sky.


Not long afted we'd started, Erin briefed me on brush shelters, which are pinyon nut collecting camps historically used by the Navajos. According to Neil (who’s done more than a little foraging himself), pinyon nuts are easiest to find “after the first hard frost when the cold air forces the pine cones to drop their delicious little treasures all over the forest floor.” Every four to seven years a plentiful crop develops and pinyon nut scavengers (Navajos and archies alike) do battle against a host of woodland creatures in a race to collect these treasures.

Brush shelters are prevalent in the Tusayan District and Neil has uncovered many a one. As an archy, Neil looks to protect sites fifty years or older (unless the site has been ruled ineligible for the National Register of Historic Places). Here once again, trash plays a central role in arch work: Neil determines the age of brush shelters by looking at the cans left behind. Brush shelters sporting cans that had to be opened with a churchkey or can-piercer are a-okay in terms of preservation-worthiness; shelters with pull tab cans (invented in 1962), however, have no such luck. (If you find that cans have piqued your interest...)

 It is particularly important to spot and record these sites as unlike rock structures and lithic and sherd scatters, brush shelters all too readily disappear in wildfires. However, if brush shelters are marked, then fire archs can dig scratch lines (preliminary fire lines that break up fuels) to protect them. In the event of an actual fire, firefighters will burn fuels around the brush shelter so that the fire won't carry to the shelter, and the the site can survive intact.

Sadly, brush shelters were not to be found today although, as anticipated, we did get monsoon’d on during our afternoon survey. Huddling under some inadequate branches, I admit to a slightly less than positive attitude. As it would turn out, the Reed Project was not a favorite of mine (especially when following a fairly spectacular Fourth). 

Luckily, we had a cookout at North House after work with the arch crew, Quentin, Joe, and Margaret, the chief Kaibab Archaeologist. Filling my belly with delicious food that (and this is the crucial part) I had done nothing to prepare went a pretty long way in repairing my mood. Getting to eat said meal with the whole crew (plus some) knocked the Reed Project right out of my mind.

No doubt about it, I worked with some really good people.

Photos: 1. Maps of various survey projects (Reed Project is lower left) 2. Joe investigating a brush shelter during the Parallel Fire (photo credit: Neil) 3. Part of the crew (Neil, Travis, Erin, Yelena, Noah)