The only thing I remember from this morning is that there was a horse in the road (because when a horse is in the road at four in the morning, you don’t forget that) and that at some point I had scrambled eggs. I know this because there was egg stuck in my braces, and I’m telling you this because I’m tired. It’s been… two days? since I got actual sleep. I didn’t sleep last night because I just didn’t have time to do it. I spent most most of today’s downtime dozing. I don’t remember the flight to Las Vegas; really, the only thing I remember about McCarran was that I recognized so much of it from Fallout: New Vegas and that I won ten dollars when I put a quarter in a slot machine. Somehow, I made it to Reno, got my bags, and got in a Suburban that was packed to the brim with luggage, camping gear, and disarticulated skeletal materials. Mercifully, we didn’t do much in the way of small talk on the trip up. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in getting to know my carmates; it was just that I desperately wanted sleep. But now that I’ve rested a bit, I’m good enough to write.
I know that I didn’t write last summer. I’m sorry about that. I meant to, but I just… I never got around to it. I want to get back into the swing of regular writing, so I am going to try and write once a day, even if it’s just a little bit.
I’m at zooarchaeology field school right now. We’ve had an orientation session and put our lab collections together and I can already tell that this is going to be an incredibly valuable experience. For being as remote as this place is, its facilities are incredible. The lab isn’t white and shiny by any means, but it’s got a wealth of equipment and skeletal collections. Today I got to handle a bald eagle and my two favorite American birds of prey- the great horned owl and the turkey vulture. Expect more pictures of them eventually.
The landscape here hardly seems real. It feels more like I’ve stepped into a painting or my favorite video game. Eagle Lake is largely undeveloped, which is incredible for a lake this large in California. This is helped by the fact that it’s on a mountaintop and because the trees grow in such a way that every day around ten or eleven, the wind is able to whip the lake into a whitecapped froth, making it impossible to ski or use a small boat. The station’s caretakers are quite happy to let people who attempt to use the lake and get drenched come up to the cabins and dry off. They’re very good people, the caretakers. They are friendly and joke a lot, and they’ve got these two fantastic black labs. Also, they’re great cooks. They live out here full time, which is probably why the running water is so good. I can hardly imagine living this far from society. You have to drive forty-five minutes down a mountain just to get to the mailbox- and it’s not at all an easy drive. The road up here was less of a road and more of a dirt track that rattled and shook us all over the Suburban. We’re staying in what’s basically an old ranger station. We have a cabin that’s got a wall in the middle. Girls on one side, boys on the other. It’s very comfortable; the beds are quite squishy and there’s a wood stove for heat. Two of the other girls were debating lighting it earlier. It gets very cold here at night, and at sunset, the world turns impossibly beautiful.
I didn't think it was possible to find a place more beautiful than our lake in Minnesota. I think I might have been wrong.
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