Being Cavemen

Today was a rustic day. (“rustic” to be read with much gusto)

Since we were just about finished with topography, I went off with the archeology team to try to find archeological things along the beach, but, being me and having no experience with archeology whatsoever, I wasn’t a whole lot of help besides pointing out every single pile of rocks I saw and proudly declaring it significant. The best part about it was all of the climbing involved in searching for piles of rocks in strange places, like up densely vegetated hills, or in trees (except I actually just climbed that for fun, not archeology, because there tend not to be piles of rocks in trees). Getting back onto the ranch property only added to the intrigue after we took a wrong turn and stumbled upon a sort of redneck menagerie with goats, geese, a pony, several peacocks, some horses, and three very yippy Chihuahuas that took it upon themselves to escort us onto, around and off of the property. The right turn still brought us past a gate clearly marked “no trespassing, beware of dog” to a random patch of chainlink fence bordered by a strip of barbed wire. Luckily, there was a gap already formed in the bottom of the fence. Unluckily, the owner walked out to see us wiggling (struggling) through. But he didn’t care, so it was okay. After that, we found the old tunnel dug into the hill to get water, and upon hearing voices, quickly realized that we weren’t the only ones from our program, who had found it. After several minutes of adventuring in there, we left to try to find the laser-scanning demonstration, which unfortunately involved crossing through a fleet (not a herd, they deserve something more military) of cows who dropped everything to stare at us as we passed. Shelby assured me that they were not, in fact, going to eat me for dinner, but I didn’t believe her. I think my experience in the pasture the other day has scarred me for life.

Anyway, it was a half field day so by the time we got back to home base, the laser-scanning was over and it was time to go home. We spent an hour or so in the ocean to cool off and soothe our mosquito bites, and then the work began. Being the topography/georeferencing group, we actually don’t have all that much work to do as far as analysis goes, but even with that little bit we still ran into trouble. After trying over and over again without success to differentially correct our data, only to receive a notice that half of our points were missing positions, we realized that we had not, in fact, deleted all of our GPS points, but instead had failed to notice that the computer was not connected to the internet. So we used the WiFi hotspot through my phone to finish the process (for now) and moved on to the next steps.

The last rustic part of the day came in the form of a small archeological science experiment. It turns out that a particular type of nut found throughout Ka’a’awa Valley, the Kukui nut, has a particularly waxy, fatty, oily inside that burns well like a candle, and was used as such for centuries. Given its history, we had to try it out. So we crushed it between two stones, feeling spectacularly like cavemen, and proceeded to light the first one on fire. But it didn’t work. So we tried a different one, that was a different color inside, and it did work. Science! The brown ones burn and the white ones taste good (we tasted them against our better judgements. They taste like walnuts). So we decided that we’ll probably collect more at some point while we’re here so we have an endless supply of (strictly outdoor) candles.

Besides that, it’s been a pretty normal day, except that the mismatch in difficulty of projects has left a lot of very frustrated people with a lot of work while others have very little and no real way to help, so tensions are running high. When the internet is barely working and ArcMap is just being its usual self, people tend to get extremely irritated by any and all additional stressors. So I think for my own safety I’m going to hunker down in a corner for a while, offering help when I can and avoiding getting my head eaten off by an angry geographer. That being said, wish me luck!

The view from inside the water tunnel.

The Kukui nut, on fire!