Mule Creek

We're back! What a wonderful field season this has been. We've been excavating the 3-up site in the gorgeous Mule Creek, NM since June. Rob and I, along with Katherine Dungan, Brett Hill and four students from Hendrix College in Arkansas. The site is a 2-3 story pueblo that was occupied from about AD750 to AD1450. It hasn't been excavated before so most of our efforts this summer were in mapping all the features we could find (trying to establish the boundaries of each part of the pueblo) and finding pottery and other artifacts that could be used to date the site.
I was the cook for the fieldschool which means that I didn't go to the site everyday. I'm reading for my exams, so this gave me a chance to read all day, and then cook dinner in the evenings. It was great not having to be apart from Rob. Also, it gave me a chance to meet the wonderful neighbors in tiny Mule Creek. We made some great friends there and have more stories to tell than I can possibly fit in a blog post.
This is the view from "Cell phone point". If we communicated with you this summer, it was from this spot. It's basically a pull-off on the side of the road through the National Forest almost at the state line where locals found they could get a tiny cell signal. If you pulled off the road here and stood on one foot and said the alphabet backwards, you could get one, sometimes two bars of service!

Most mornings in Mule Creek I went for long walks with Becky, Nina or both. This was one of our destinations, "The Spring". It was about 1.5 miles from the ranch house and is where our drinking water came from. It's a beautiful little spot that was filled with the biggest bullfrogs you ever saw. Sometimes I would bring my reading out here for the day. If you think office noise can be distracting, try bullfrogs!
I couldn't get enough of the view. Everywhere you looked at every time of day, some part of the fields were spectacular. This was from an evening walk I took with Kelsey. As we walked, the whole world suddenly turned pink and our path turned silver. We must have taken 6 billion pictures.
The sunsets (and sunrises!) were jaw-dropping. This is our version of a 70's album cover. If you look closely, you can see everyone from the fieldschool except poor Katherine. She was taking advantage of a break in the monsoon to take a solar shower. Isn't the sky cool? Mule Creek is the only place I've found in the west that really feels like it could be a home. I like Tucson, but I think we've always known we couldn't live here forever. I could live in Mule Creek forever...
...except for these little jerks! These are called vinegaroons. They are Jurassic little bastards that are in the scorpion family and smell just like vinegar. Nina caught two (!) in her garage and brought them over in a jar to show me. Like a dummy, I stuck my face right in the jar when she mentioned their scent. I nearly fainted. I didn't expect their horrible smell to be so strong!
After threatening everyone in camp with a Vinegaroon in their tent, we set them free far far far from the house. I never ever want to see these in the wild again. It's like spiders, scorpions, and the predator all rolled into one.

So, that's Mule Creek story, volume one. There are so many stories to tell, I will have to do it in installments. It is great to be back, and I'm so glad to be talking to you on a regular basis now.