A near-death episode

This weekend all the crews went camping at the Fremont Indian State Park in Central Utah. This is what we decided to do for fun, even though camping and hiking is part of our job. I know, while I am the first to admit camping and hiking are fun, after doing it 40 hours a week, my ideal off-time would including sleeping in a bed watching Arrested Development. The Fremont Indian State Park was a six-hour drive from our house in Manila (driving from place to place is also another thing we spend much of our time doing during the work week). While I was skeptical of the fun potential of the weekend, it actually turned out great.

The Fremont Indian State Park was the site of the largest full-scale excavation of a Fremont

 Indian village site. Then, someone decided to build a highway through it. So, the State Park was set up (around the highway) so that they could protect the land in a way, and educate the public on the information found, despite it’s being destroyed. There were a few models of pit houses and granaries (storage shelters) and lots and lots of petroglyphs.  

We spent most of the time hiking through the trails looking at all the petroglyphs (lets hope my pictures came out). They were cool; though the problem with petroglyphs in the archaeological record are that you are unable to associate them with a radiocarbon date, due to the fact that they are not in the ground. Therefore, while they are cool to look at, they do not

 quite reach their potential in information value.

I had the most fun on the trip when we were all just sitting around the fire, bonding. We haven’t interacted with the other crew, and it was cool to get to know everyone. I really enjoy the people I’m working with this summer (though, I just met them, ask me again in three months). We played this awesome game called the drawing game, ask me how to play, it’s awesome!

There was also an episode that was somewhat embarrassing and traumatic for me. The stars were beautiful; it seemed as though we could see every one of them. Therefore, at night, we decided to hike up to one of the cliffs to see the stars. Most everyone had hiked up there during the day (not me), and knew that it was perfectly safe (yadda yadda yadda). I hiked up there with everyone, only to find out that we would be on a small plateau of land that was surrounded by cliff on three sides. Because it was dark, I could not see how far down the cliff went; I can only assume it plummeted infinitely. I sat up there with everyone else for about 15 minutes, trying to preoccupy myself with the stars and the idea that I sat in a flat meadow. I did not move; I sat there like a statue. But inevitably, someone behind me would move, a bug would land on my foot and tickle me, 

and I would accidental flick a small pebble off the cliff and watch it forever fall into nothingness. I thought after being up there for a while, I would relax, but I did not. These little things that were happening around freaked me out, not to mention the fact that the cliff edges were closing in on me and the slope I was sitting on grew steeper, until the only reasonable outcome of the situation was that I would fall into oblivion. In short, I nearly had a panic attack. When everyone realized the extent of my freak out, they carefully assisted me down and were very understanding. I was very embarrassed. While a couple people later went back up there to spend the night (since it was perfectly safe), I insist that I nearly died. I don’t think my fear of heights has ever been worse.

Overall, it was a fun weekend. We’re thinking about doing similar trips, though perhaps a bit closer.

P.S. Here's me in my forest uniform. I'm doing something goofy because I don't like my picture taken. But I did it for you.