The Island Chronicles Part 6: Great Excitement

Day 15

I arrived this morning to find two squad cars parked in front of Mr. Savage’s encampment. To my surprise and relief, they are not there to arrest him. It turns out there was some excitement during the night.

Yesterday almost 300 sixth graders (two schools, 6 school buses) visited the Island, and Mr Savage spent considerable time with all of them. There was also heavy walk-on visitation as well. By day’s end he was understandably exhausted. Mr Savage is the sole actual resident of the Island. He has a canvas marquis tent erected near the job trailer that contains his cot and sleeping bag, a folding table and chairs, and his trunk and travelling bag.  It’s rough but comfortable.  Last evening just after sunset he found himself sitting in one of the folding chairs exhausted, sipping a beer and trying to muster up the energy to change out of his costume and warpaint and into jeans and a sweater. The tent flaps were closed, and he had just lit a small kerosene lamp. That’s when he heard the voices. There were apparently several people out skulking around the now empty parking lot.

Since he was entirely alone, he was of course concerned about the intentions of these clandestine visitors. He heard them enter the weatherport and look at the excavation. He heard them check the locked doors of the job trailer. Then he heard whispering voices right in front of his tent flaps! By this point Mr. Savage had devised a plan.

To fully appreciate what happened next, you must recall his appearance in reenactment regalia; last night that included the usual belt axe and large knife prominently displayed, as well as the breechcloth, fringed leggings, red hunting shirt, beaded sash, brass gorget, hair roach, feathers, scalp lock, etc. So it was that when Mr. Savage heard a voice say “I wonder what’s in here?” as a hand grasped the tent flap and jerked it aside, he leapt to his feet, extended his hands in the air above his head and shrieked

 “AIEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!”

at the very top of his lungs!

Now, whatever the nocturnal visitors may have imagined might lay behind the closed tent flaps (even if they possessed very healthy imaginations) THAT was not on the list of possibilities.  Mr Savage never got a good look at them, but he did hear running feet in the parking lot. He made out several shadowy figures sprinting toward the Market Street Bridge, and he found a shoe that one young fellow had apparently run right out of.   

The cops and staff members were thoroughly amused by this picaresque tale, and one cop opined that they were probably looking for someone with one shoe. Another suggested they might also be looking for someone who had suffered an explosive and substantial bout of incontinence. At any rate, it would not require Dick Tracy to identify the perpetrators.

 All agreed that a return visit seemed unlikely.

One of our school visits today was from a large urban high school. It was a very sad visit. There’s nearly a hundred kids on two school buses, and there were a total of three adults (the two bus drivers and one teacher) accompanying them. Consequently most of the kids simply wandered away from the project and hung out near the baseball stadium concessions, or wandered over the bridge and into downtown. A small contingent, maybe 20 kids, took the tour.  Most of these were the “smart kids”, and one really stuck out. He was good looking, articulate, and a serious smart ass.  Lots of brains and lots of attitude were in evidence. He wore a football letter jacket, and a couple young ladies hung around him, showing great interest in him but none in archaeology. 

I was down in the tiger trap, interpreting a visible horizon that contained fire cracked rock, flakes of chert and rhyolite, and a projectile point, when this kid blurted out “But how do you know the river didn’t just wash those things in? You just said the whole island is a product of flooding. Why wouldn’t the flood also bring in those rocks and stuff?” There followed a prolonged and detailed discussion of kinetic energy, particle size, erosion and particle shape, and other aspects of hydrology and fluvial geomorphology. The kid considers and challenges every concept and statement. His girlfriends get bored and wander away. He comes down into the tiger trap and I show him the change in particle size (fining upward) that can help define individual flood events. He keeps questioning, postulating, probing. The conversation turns to radiometric dating, to artifact typology and ceramic seriation, to feature identification and interpretation, to the mechanics of culture change. The exchange is challenging, enervating, gratifying. It is why I do this.

I later discuss this kid with Mr. Savage, FD, and several other staffers, all of whom had similar encounters.  This young man in some way moved all of us, but our encounters were tinged with pathos. He could be the next truly brilliant archaeologist, or the next Einstein, or the President of the United States, or whatever. He is extremely bright, intellectually curious, and suspicious of convention. He is full of energy and promise. But his school is badly underfunded, does not challenge or nurture him or his classmates, and is sometimes dangerous. His neighborhood is poor, and drug traffic and violence are not uncommon.  A shocking percentage of young men from his world wind up in prison or in an early grave. Despite his obvious and formidable intellect, the odds are stacked against him and all of his classmates.

Like all archaeologists, I view the world through an historical and evolutionary lens. I know that cultural change and adaptation to evolving conditions are driven by need and circumstance, and shaped by tradition and social organization.  Critical adaptations have always been ignited by talented and forward thinking young folks who build on the experience and traditions of their elders and use their energy and smarts to innovate and lead.  Societies that don’t innovate and adapt collapse and die, sometimes abruptly. The archaeological record is full of them.

We live in a world that is changing at frightening speed and is fraught with ample opportunities for catastrophe. We need the energy and potential of youth to ensure our survival. When we allow our young folks to languish in poverty, ignore their education, limit their potential for growth, and subject them to violence, we do so at all of our peril.

I still think about that kid all the time and I frequently wonder what happened to him.

To be continued....