Daisy was having a fit to get outside. I gave in and took her for a three hour walk at the end of the day. Hunting arrowheads is a good rationalization for braving the Alabama July heat. I grabbed a bottle of water and drove to the top of the mountain to get to my favorite trail. It is my favorite trail, but it is a 45 minute walk before I can get to a good arrowhead hunting site. Normally July is not a great time to arrowhead hunt - usually very little rain and always the summer undergrowth that covers up all but trails. We have been fortunate this year to get some good, hard rains so I was hoping to find something.
I hit all of the good spots that I could before I had to turn back. It was already late enough that I would be walking the last part of the trip home in pitch dark. Just as I was ready to turn back, I spotted this in the middle of the road:
It's a rough arrowhead, but they are all beautiful to me -- and I was glad to see it.
Kathy and I took off one afternoon with Daisy - along with four bottles of water. The heat was oppressive, but we knew we wouldn't die if we took some water. I have no idea why we have to take water with us. I know it's smart, but I didn't think about carrying water with me when I took off into the woods when I was a kid. I don't remember any kids back thn worrying about dying of thirst. The thirstier we were the better the Coke tasted when we got back home - especially if we had salty peanuts to float on top of it.
Anyway, we took water. And four bottle wasn't enough.
But the trip was worth it because Kathy found a nice artifact.:
Kathy never waits for me to take a picture before she picks one up. Usually she hasn't quite figured out what she's found until she's picked it up and studied it for a minute or two - and unless it's a near perfect arrowhead, she'll run down a list of "maybes." This one went from arrowhead to some kind of scraper to broken arrowhead "maybe." She was right about all of that - it was once an arrowhead that broke from use and was re-worked into a knife/scraper. She might spend some time "figuring," but she is very good at separating the "good rocks" from the rest. I had walked over this one at least two times, and it was barely showing above ground and under weeds when she spotted it.
But then again I have picked up arrowheads in the middle of dirt roads when she's come close to stepping on them without seeing them. Different eyes see different things.
On the way back home we saw this turtle in the middle of the trail. This is the third box turtle we have seen this summer. Sometimes we don't see any in a year. The summer rains have made them more active. During droughts like we have had the last few summers, they tend to just stay put. If they haven't made it across the trail yet, we help them - just in case any four-wheelers come rolling by.
The next time we got out on the trails, within a minute after leaving the main road we spotted this:
Look at the ears, just to the right of center. I got my camera out and took that picture quickly, just in case it bolted. I zoomed in for the next one and snapped - "Memory Full."!!!
Deers are very common where we walk. We see them all the time, sometimes four, five or six. But they almost never hang around long enough to get a a picture - not in this part of Alabama. When we travel out West, that's not true - they'll often let you take pictures until you're tired - that's what I have hundreds of pictures of deer, elk, and antelope.
... We backed up, out of it's sight and I began deleting photos. Then we moved back up to where we were but it was gone. I looked to my right and there it was.
Guess it was just as curious about us as we were of it. It looked us over for about a half a minute and then walked off. Why Daisy wasn't going into fits, I guess only she knows. We hadn't taken the leash off of her yet, but she didn't bark or lunge. She was probably afraid she might catch this one.
After the deer sighting I mentioned that it wasn't "as hot as last time." It was overcast and thundering. Then it began raining and we were happy to get wet. There was about 10 minutes of light rain and then we paid for it. The humidity was almost unbearable, but we trudged on. We hit our first good arrowhead spot. This used to be a spot where we found nothing but chips and flakes and the occasional piece of pottery. But lately we had found some nice arrowheads - most of them tiny, which, along with the pottery, is an indication that this site was occupied fairly recently in prehistory (meaning hundreds, not thousands of years ago).
The last rain had brought up a lot of flakes and chips and as we were picking them up I mentioned to Kathy that somebody had probably been picking up the arrowheads and leaving everything else before we found the site. Not long after we found the site, they probably got discouraged and quit. Nowadays most arrowhead zoom in on four wheelers, and when they cease finding things they mark it off their list. We are tenacious. We walk the sites and hunt them "forever."
A little later Kathy picked up this. She went through her usual routine .. it's this .. no its this before she finally settled on "chisel." Looks like a scraper to me, and its a nice one.
Only about two or three minutes had passed before Kathy found this.
She pretty much decided that was an arrowhead right off. A nice one, even if it is missing an ear.
The humidity and blazing sun was getting to us. We were stopping to rest every few minutes and had almost used up all of our water. We looked at another nearby spot, and left for home earlier than we had planned.
Daisy, instead of walking ahead of is as usual, was walking slowly behind us and Kathy asked if I thought we were "killing our dog." We all made it back home without dying. Daisy ran straight to an air vent and shut her eyes.
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2 comments:
Nice article, Bill. Looks like all of the things living in and around my pond.
Nice article Bill
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