Move Over Tom Sawyer

A year can seem like a whole lifetime to a child. A lifetime of adventures can be had in 365 days. I was 13 the year my family lived in Prineville, Oregon. Prineville is a small town nestled in a valley between flat topped high desert mountains. The town is in the very heart of the state. The big event of the year is the annual Rock Hound Festival, where people from all over gather to show off their prize rocks and trade or buy rocks from each other. What I loved about the town was the weather. It was exciting weather, it invited adventure.

We arrived in the summer. It would get so hot that you could see the air blur in waves over our new backyard. On these days we would pack our inflatable raft into our Ford Pinto and head for the reservoir. The water there was thick with tiny floating algae and I loved to jump into it punching holes through the bright green surface exposing the dark water below. I would watch as the algae rearranged itself like clouds metamorphosing to cover up the dark water. In the evening, when the air cooled quickly, thunderstorms rolled over the valley crackling and streaking the steep cliffs with light. Then the rain would start. Giant, bloated raindrops crashed into the ground, each one creating a small crater and a puff of dust until the ground was thick with water.

In the fall, school started. It was the only year I remember with any detail as an adult. I had career planning, sex education and indoor/outdoor sports. I learned about aptitude and interviews, syphilis and c-sections, archery and candle making. I couldn't have created a more interesting curriculum myself. We took field trips to a ski resort where the bunny slope became our classroom. We spent the day sliding and skidding through the snow, mostly on our behinds. We did science projects where the whole point of the experiment was to see how badly it could go wrong. The only thing better than going to school was snow days.

Snow was a novelty to me, I had only experienced it a few times before. In the high desert it snows a lot in winter. My mother hated the snow. She had to put chains on the car just to get to the hospital where she worked a few blocks away. To me it was endless amusement. There was an irrigation ditch behind our house that froze over and made a treacherous skating rink. I nearly caught pneumonia there after falling through the ice on two occasions. The hills nearby were a bonanza of whoopdy-doos for riding inter tubes down. The snow was so deep at one point that we made giant snowballs the size of our car. We rolled them all around the field until they were to big to push any further. Our plan was to build the biggest snowman ever. When we couldn't figure out how to lift the gargantuan things into place we foraged for some plywood and laid it between the giant balls to make a room. We expanded our ice house over the next two days while it continued to snow. We spent a winter full of frigid days inventing new ways to play with ice and snow.

When spring came, I started to venture further from our home. The flat-topped mountains were an irresistible destination. The closest one to our house had a large pale green patch near the top the size of a football field. My brother and I had been discussing the green patch for weeks trying to figure out what it was. A UFO landing pad, an Indian burial ground, Kryptonite? We couldn't wait to get up there. One sunny morning we woke to a familiar note left on the table. "Hi kids, have some cereal for breakfast and don't forget to brush your teeth. I'll be home soon." My Mom left these notes whenever she got called into the hospital. She was a surgical technician and she had to drop everything whenever someone needed an emergency appendectomy or to have their spleen put back together. This was our chance to go to the green patch. We packed some peanut butter sandwiches and headed for the hills. We crossed the mint fields hitching a ride on the automatic sprinklers that crawled around the field in massive circles. We balanced on the giant pipes and let the water rain down, cooling our upturned faces. There was no path up to the green patch, so we disregarded all fences as we worked our way up the mountain. A full skeleton of a cow lying bleached in the sun distracted our progress for several hours. We studied each part and then used the favorable ones as weapons against the imaginary forces of evil. It was late afternoon by the time we reached our goal. We were unimpressed with the pale green scree that spilled down the side of the mountain. We returned home with bits of the rock in our pockets as proof of our accomplishment.

When summer began to heat the valley again, we were packing our things into a U-Haul truck. I was not happy about leaving this place that was so full of things yet to explore. My mother told me that it was too difficult to keep track of us if she was on call at the hospital all the time. We were moving back to our boring old hometown. The seeds of independence had already sprouted though and even moving back home didn't stifle my desire to explore. The sense of adventure I found that year never left me.

Breaking Ground

Island of Crete, Greece

In the middle of the Agean Sea there is an island that's held hidden treasures for thousands of years. Just out of reach of the sapphire waves that lick its shores, secrets are buried. A time long forgotten lies waiting to be discovered. Along the rugged hills and fertile valleys of this island a dusty path curves through olive trees. A mule plods along the path in the heat of the morning sun. The burden it carries is not olive oil or wine, but a lady. Her face is shaded by the wide brim of her hat. Her petticoats sway with each step of the mule. She has come here to uncover the secrets of this island. She notices every feature of the passing landscape. A lifetime of preparation and a bit of luck would lead Harriet Boyd Hawes to the discovery of a lifetime.

Harriet spent her formative years preparing for a career in a field that was not yet open to women. Her mother died when she was an infant. She grew up in a house with three brothers and shadowed her father as he went about his work as an archaeologist. She was accustomed to holding her own in a man's world. She graduated with a degree in classics and began teaching. When her father died in 1895, she decided to follow her inquisitive mind to Europe.

Harriet Boyd Hawes  Photo by:  http://www.proarchaeologia.org/OnlinePaper/EHAegypt/HaBoHawe.gif

She must have felt right at home as the first and only woman at the American School of Classic Studies in Athens, Greece. The school was not prepared for a woman with an inquiring mind and an explorer's spirit. These traits would normally be dampened in a young girl growing up in Boston in the late 1800's. The school did not permit her to take part in any excavations and instead encouraged her to become the school's librarian. These duties were deemed more suitable for a woman. This inspired Harriet to take her fellowship money and lead her own excavation.
Harriet had her sights set on the newly opened lands of the island of Crete. This island was filled with antiquities that had been untouched for thousands of years. When she arrived in the spring of 1900, archaeologists had just begun unearthing artifacts. Harriet was ready to discover some of her own. Her first order of business was to gather information from the archaeologists who had already started working. She visited Knossos where a palace was being uncovered. She visited the head archaeologist, Arthur Evans, to discuss possible sites to explore. While they talked, a throne room was discovered within the palace. Eager to give his full attention to the excavation at hand, Evans suggested that Harriet look for a site in an inaccessible mountain area of eastern Crete called Kavousi. Somewhere far away from his dig, and out of his way.
"I had visited most of the important excavations in Greece, but it is one thing to go after the deed is done, Baedecker or archaeological journal in hand, studying and verifying plans and statements made by others it is quite another thing to start out to find for oneself a place to dig," Harriet wrote in her journal as she left Knossos. She had gathered a team, including an American botanist, Miss Patten; a Greek guide, Aristides; along with his mother and a multeer. They carried a few meager supplies such as linens, notebooks, small digging tools and baskets and a lot of luck. The kind of luck that the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote about, "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
As they travelled, the group passed homes left in burned ruins. Deserted two years earlier during the revolution that won Crete its independence from Turkey. Realizing the need to be sensitive and careful in their travels, Aristides devised a plan to pave the way for Harriet's arrival in each village. He began by wearing the national Greek costume. This patriotic garment was worn by the heroes of the revolution of 1821. It had only been seen on Crete in historic plays depicting important men. It was a symbol of Greek pride. Aristides then went ahead of the group to each village and shared coffee and stories with the men. He spoke admiringly of the great archaeologist from America who would be arriving. Harriet confessed that "by the time we arrived, an altogether exaggerated opinion of our importance had spread throughout the village."
The villagers welcomed Harriet and her team with open arms. Harriet conversed with the village women in their own language and earned their respect. The group was invited to stay in the villager's homes and were offered the warmest hospitality. After 200 years of Turkish occupation, these newly independent Cretan citizens were eager for the world to discover that before the rise and fall of Rome, before classical Greece, there existed in Crete an advanced civilization of philosophers, artists, musicians and craftsmen. The people hoped that the arrival of such an important archaeologist would bring new wealth and prosperity to their villages. They also realized with her arrival, that Crete was now a safe and orderly place, where a lady could travel the countryside without fear. They went out into their fields and gathered small artifacts for Harriet to use as clues to find where the treasures of their island might be hidden.

The excavations in Kavousi were not what Harriet had hoped. The site was in the mountains and the wind was fierce. Harriet excavated for three weeks without finding any evidence of the artifacts Evans had told her about. She found pottery shards that held the promise of an ancient wealthy village somewhere nearby, but she was out of time. She took her finds back to America with her where she was awarded funding to return to Crete and continue her exploration.

Gournia  Photo by:  http://www.travel-to-crete.com/page.php?page_id=215

In 1901, Harriet was back in Crete with her clever guide Aristides and a new team. She planned to excavate Kavousi further when torrential rains ruined her plans. She was forced inside where she talked and listened to the stories of the villagers. Word spread that she was looking for a wealthy settlement she believed was along the coastline nearby. A neighboring villager heard the news and led her to a place he knew of that fit the description. The place was named Gournia. Harriet could see some of the walls of the settlement exposed and hoped this was the place she had been searching for. She had three days to excavate. With the help of a team of villagers, she found enough artifacts to send a cablegram back to the American Exploration Society who funded her expedition that read, "Discovered Gournia, Mycenean site, street, houses, pottery, bronzes, stone jars."
She returned the next two summers with Mr. Seager, a pottery expert and Miss Moffat, an artist who would record their findings. Harriet scoured the hillsides and cliffs to search for artifacts that would set the chronology of the city. Even though she detested the dirty, difficult work of crawling into the dark cramped spaces, she insisted on doing the work herself. In the excavations of the city, she uncovered 36 houses, paved streets, and a small palace complete with baths, courtyards and an alter room. Harriet had discovered the first Minoan village ever to be excavated.
In 1904, her classmate Edith Hall, joined Harriet in Gournia. Edith admired Harriet's spirit and revelled in the freedom of their mission. "It was great sport galloping off at 6:00 am with a measuring stick, a bag full of finds and a notebook and to have the responsibility of telling the men where to dig," Edith wrote in her journal that year. The excavation of the site was extensive, requiring 100 men. Harriet would be the first woman ever to direct an excavation of this scale in Greece. The diminutive Miss Boyd oversaw this small army while sharing the work and long travels by mule to the nearest village for food and shelter.
Harriet's discovery was breathtaking. The Bronze Age city of Gournia, overlooking the Bay of Mirabello. Paved streets and foundations with stone stairways indicating two-story dwellings surrounding a central courtyard and a palace at the heart of the city. A city that was the gateway between Egypt and Europe's trade routes. A peaceful place of commerce and artistry. Two of her most exciting finds were a ceremonial bulls head and an octopus stirrup vase. Artifacts similar to these are now common markers of the Minoan civilization in excavations throughout the island. Her discovery contributed a wealth of knowledge which revealed to the world the treasures of this golden age of Crete.

Minoan Octopus vase.  Photo by: 

(All photos by author unless noted)