Stumped

It has been quiet at this newspaper for a while.  One of things I've been working on is the dating of a stump from a (possibly) culturally modified tree (ponderosa pine) from Joes Valley.  Twenty-years ago, one of the local archaeologists cut a piece of wood from a dead tree that they identified as a CMT.  They placed it in a cardboard box and noted that it could provide evidence of the dates of Native American peeling.  I found it last week.  So far as I could tell, it had not been touched for two decades, and certainly no one had tried to date it.  I sanded it and went to work (above).  But, as archaeologists like to complain:  It was out of context.  What part of the tree was it?  To work that out, I joined our current archaeologist in locating the stump last week (below).  The red line shows where the wood had been removed.  For anyone interested in dating a piece of dead wood, that wasn't the best way to do it.  But, just knowing how it was cut has helped me a lot.  I now have a tentative pith date of 1585.

White Pine Lake

Last time we tried to go to White Pine Lake, VSO was just five weeks removed from major surgery at St. Mark's Hospital.  I was worried about her and turned her around early . . . so she didn't quite see the lake.  Today, she made the seven and a half mile out and back in three and a half hours.  And, I have proof:  She is one of the two supermodels below.

First Time; First Snow

Yesterday, EDO took me to the Wellsvilles.  I've never been there before, so it was good to visit.  Because the weather was cold and wet and because the parking lot was closed, there were only two other people out there, and we didn't see anything but their tracks.  It was nice.  Nice and quiet, which is probably not the usual case anywhere in the Cache Valley.

EDO said that she heard somewhere that the Wellsvilles are the steepest range in the state.  We know about the Pahvant, but I don't doubt that this is similar.  We walked for 75 minutes and it was straight uphill the whole way.  The idea was that we would make it to the ridge, but the trail was slippery and the clouds were low:  It was going to be dark before we could top out.  We went down instead.

Paria River

Today we walked down to the Paria via Rock Springs Creek.  At the confluence, we immediately found a prehistoric site.  That kept VSO busy for a while, so I went up a narrow side canyon that was full of single leaf ash.  On the way back to the Chev, the track seemed so powdery that it was like one step back for every two forward.  We were both footsore by the end.

The Whole Damned Thing

It is like what Valerie said to me as we drove out of Escalante:  "When this day started I would never have expected this."  I agreed.  "This," was a win in the Escalante Canyons Marathon.  Not a win in the women's division, not a win in the age group, but a win overall.  The first finisher in any category.  EDO won the whole damned thing.

It is like what one of the race organizers said when EDO crossed the finished line:  "When I saw her crying, I almost started crying myself."  I agreed.  The tears were tears of joy (and probably of relief).  It was a brutal course, running on the highway from Boulder to Escalante, Utah.  The road coming out of the river canyon has a warning sign—14% grades—and they are sustained.  It was a grind.  EDO displayed remarkable mental toughness.

The race offered a pot of prize money.  As the overall winner, EDO took home a good portion of it.  We joked about her quitting her real job, but even better would be a sponsorship.  HOKA are you listening?