(Day 8) Into the Breach (with a shiny metal pole)

Our work days don’t have many surprises, anymore. You’re either theodoliting, helping in the Canal, or doing lithics analysis. Each day is a carbon-copy: wake at seven, work at eight, lunch at noon, work at one, finish by five. Granted, however, we find ways to enliven our days. For my small part, I went bungee-jumping.


That may be exaggerating it a bit; let’s say, rather, that I suspended myself by a rope over big empty spaces. Basically, in our fervor to map all of Building A, we realized no map is complete without the hazy spaces – and that tierra incognita was mostly slope and cliff. What we needed was a well-trained monkey to balance a pole vertically on a slope until cued by his trainer. Barring that, we could use a daring Stanford student.


To facilitate the leap, Ignacio brought along a rope. With an end tied to a post on the mound, I slipped a bowline loop around my waist and wrapped the slack along my arm and back. With the pole in hand, I was free to venture near the edges and slip without fear. As time wore on, it became clear that more extreme measures needed to be taken. Almost out of sight of the theodolite’s lens, I hung taut against the loop, both hands focused on keeping the pole’s bubble level. It was remarkably freeing to just trust and go – to have faith in the rope and damn the rest. It wasn’t until later that I realized I never checked Ignacio’s knot around the post. It could have been a rather harsh realization; something to the tune of a four-story drop.


The skies around the monument began to do something strange after lunch. White cumulus bunched and rolled like cotton – strange in these usually bare skies. As the sun headed west, they grew a mean streak – ominous steely bellies that spelled rain. Ignacio looked nervously at the skies. “Va a llorar?” I asked, between bungee jumps. “Ya no se” he replied, signaling he didn’t know if it would rain or not.


It began to spit hard little drops, icy and hard in the northern wind. The ground, bone-dry these last months, made no sound as the water slipped in. We kept shooting, the sage case of the theodolite speckled at it turned, swiveled, shot… turned, swiveled, shot… Thinking enviously of those in the lab, I drew up my hood and leaned out over another cliff.

Bonecrusher, the aloof llama of the site, posed for an excellent silhouette shot as we left, his form stenciled against the clearing sky. Spent, the dark grey tide marched on in the sky, and it was a dim twilight that lit our dusty plod home.