Picnic in the Ruins
Page 7
Sophia let her eyes drift through the bus. She watched a father in a nearby seat tracing the path of the Fairyland Loop on a map for his daughter. She asked questions in Cantonese and sucked on the rubber straw of her water bottle as he answered. Sophia could only guess what a trip like this might cost. Surely less than Disneyland. What experience did he hope for her? For himself? What memories did he want her to have of this place when she was old and he was gone? This was the question that fueled all of her studies, the work she felt driven to do. Would that girl treasure the water bottle and its memories when she left for college? Would she find the map in her father’s things when he passed away? Which stories seep into the everyday things we leave behind? Which ones evaporate?
She looked up and down the aisle of the bus as it stopped, some people stepping off, new people climbing on. She wondered if any of these people would be coming to her presentation, or if they were just interested in snapshots of the scenery. So many people think an archeologist wears a fedora and a leather jacket, cracks a bullwhip, and jumps from trains onto the backs of galloping horses. But so much of the work is slow and meticulous, the gathering of information, the sifting of it. Mountains and mountains of paperwork, so much of it digital these days.
One of her professors would read Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” to her students, tell them that living memory dies and our knowledge of the past survives only through the trace of physical things, which eventually crumble and blow away, leaving us with two stone legs, a partially buried face, and a single half-crazed witness. This professor was fond of saying that the only thing left behind to speak of us will be the Statue of Liberty buried to the waist with the surf crashing all around it. Even this reference, Sophia thought, was almost lost, gone like Charlton Heston, French science fiction, Romantic poetry, and every other good and noble thing.
The shuttle stopped at the lodge, and Sophia waited while everyone in front of her stood and filed off. She stepped down the bus steps and back into the fresh air, surrounded by towering ponderosas. The buildings, shingled in brown and green, came from another age, like buildings imagined for a film.
Across the parking lot was a white tour bus with a massive red swoosh across the side. In the front window was a cling banner that said RANCHES, RELICS, AND RUINS in a gaudy Egyptian font. Tourists spilled from the doors of that bus as well and filed into the lodge under the direction of staff people with clipboards and palm-sized walkie-talkies. She couldn’t imagine having your first encounter with a place like this be something like that, but maybe it’s better this way than not at all. Maybe it’s better than turning them loose on the place like shoppers on Black Friday. She didn’t know anymore. The lodge was packed, and if she didn’t have to be there, she would have gone right past it and out to Bryce Canyon itself, the majestic red-rock amphitheater that sells this park to the world. The sculpted expanse makes the lodge a mere curiosity by comparison.
When she finally made it to the auditorium, she found the room empty except for a young ranger in a uniform and the broad-brimmed campaign hat. He switched on a computer projector and motioned for Sophia to come on in. The room was large and open and entirely built from wood, glass, and stone. The wood was glazed with varnish that made it glow. The glass doors along the back caused a rippling reflection. The stonework made the room look like it had been there forever. She examined the vaulted ceiling with its open crisscrossing timbers that gave it the appearance of a country church.
The ranger glanced up and hailed Sophia. “I’m Thad. Dalinda sent me your slides. I have them loaded on the laptop,” he said.
“Thanks, but I’ve made some changes, so I have it here on a USB drive.” She dug it out of her backpack and crossed the room to hand it to him. “It’s on a file called Mission Impossible.”
“Oh, no,” Thad said with real alarm. “We called it Preserving the Past. It’s on all the posters.”
“It’s okay,” Sophia said. “It’s a joke. Preserving the Past is correct.” Thad kept staring at her like she was going to say something else, but she didn’t.
Eventually Thad said, “Phew. That’s good because we put up posters everywhere.” He laughed a bit nervously. “But I get it. Preservation can be a hard sell sometimes.” Thad looked like he might have more to say about that if he were off duty.
Sophia watched him nod and swap the files on the computer and start the slideshow. An image of a glowing orange sandstone cliff appeared with streaks of dark brown desert varnish running top to bottom. On that wall was a line of anthropomorphic petroglyphs: tall figures with radiating headdresses or wide horns. Beneath those figures was a cluster of gorgeous white spirals and below them, scrawled in black, were the words LLOYD ♡ AUBRI 4EVER. Superimposed over everything in white Times New Roman was the title “Preserving the Past: The Impact of National Parks and Tourists on Cultural Heritage Sites.” Sophia caught Thad’s eye, smiled, and pointed to the screen. Thad gave her the thumbs-up.
Sophia moved to the back of the room to get a look at the slide. She felt the words and images could be easily seen. Her heart was starting to pound, and she felt restless thinking about what she was going to say today about museums and parks and the impact of millions of people on cultural sites. She wanted to leave these visitors with a sense of what it takes to preserve and protect these treasures. She wanted them to know it doesn’t happen on its own.
As the first visitors entered, Sophia made her way through to the front of the auditorium. By the time she got there, she saw that people were lined up and flowing in quickly from their tour buses. Thad handed her the clicker. “Dalinda gave me some notes for an introduction.” He looked at his watch. “When you’re ready, I’ll get things started, then get a head count, then I’ve got to run over to the Fairyland Loop Trail.”
“That would be great,” Sophia said, looking out at the people gathering in the room, who were all sitting and turning in her direction. So, nobody from the park would be there. She knew it was because they were all stretched thin, but part of her wondered why. Maybe they wanted to separate themselves from her presentation, or maybe they thought they had already heard it a thousand times before. Maybe they trusted her. She didn’t know for sure.
Soon, the seats were filled. Thad stepped between the aisles and without fanfare took out a small sheet of folded paper and read, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for coming to Bryce Canyon National Park and for making this interpretive presentation part of your experience today. We have a special treat for you. One of our seasonal employees, Sophia Shepard, will present some of her research on the preservation of cultural history sites that exist on federal land in the area. This work is part of ongoing efforts by the NPS to preserve important resources for your present and future enjoyment. Ms. Shepard comes to us from Princeton, New Jersey, where she is a doctoral student, doing work to help us document the ruins of the Indigenous peoples who disappeared from the Southwest around seven hundred years ago. As I said, the data she collects will go into the archeological record to help guide policy and decision-making as it relates to the use of our public lands and resources.”
From the middle of the crowd a hand went up.
Thad looked at Sophia, who shrugged. “Yes?” Thad asked.
A man with a French accent said, “You have said that the Native peoples used to live here. Will she speak of those who remain? They seem to be hidden, you know?”
“Good question, aaand . . .” Thad said, turning to check with Sophia, who nodded. “That is a yes, this will definitely be part of today’s presentation. But we should save all other questions until the end.”
Thad stepped to the side of the room, and the audience’s attention landed on Sophia. “Before I begin,” she said, “I’d like to recognize the fact that Bryce Canyon National Park is located on the seasonal hunting and gathering ground of the Paiute Indian people, who first occupied this area around 1200 C.E. Before them, this region was the home of the Fremont and Ancestral Puebl
oans. We also recognize the continuing presence of the Paiute people, the Utes, the Diné, and all Indigenous peoples who are represented by the National Park Service.”
The man who raised his hand before raised it again.
“Could we wait for comments?” she asked.
“But you said continuing presence, which I do not see here in the park,” he gestured around the room. “We have not seen any—”
“We will get to that very important point,” Sophia said, scanning the varied rows of faces before directing everyone’s attention to the image on the screen. “As you can see from this first slide, the past and the present are always colliding. We often think of the past as a single thing, maybe because it has already happened, but history is a complex mosaic of people and their intersections through time. Often one group of people would arrive in a place new to them only to find the previous residents gone. Sometimes, as we see in this image, we’re able to see how different groups of people left their marks on a single cliff.” She used the laser on the clicker to guide their attention to the row of figures, then to the carved spirals, and finally to the names of the two lovers who left their recent mark with some charcoal.
“More often we see cultural intersection—and some may call it vandalism—from another perspective.” She advanced to an image of three pots lit harshly behind the glare of plate glass. “These Pueblo and Zuni artifacts were found a little over a hundred years ago in places that are less than three hundred miles from here, as the crow flies. They are now located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is about two thousand miles from here, as the crow flies. You will find artifacts like these scattered across the globe, some in museums and some in private collections. Some we know about, most we don’t.”
Sophia felt her pulse accelerate. The auditorium was close to full, and with the reflections of the people in the window glass, the room seemed twice the size, which made her neck and shoulders tense a little. She tried to calm herself and muster some courage by thinking about how important it was to share some of her fundamental ideas about museums and parks and ethics. Her talk had to be the right balance of sermon and seduction and she wondered if she would achieve it. She advanced the slide again to a photo of a large brick building with tall windows, pilasters, and cornices. It looked like a blue-collar version of a Greek temple.
“This is the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, which is part of Harvard University. The Peabody was founded in 1866, and it is one of the oldest and largest museums focused on ethnography and archeology. In the last one hundred and fifty years, the Peabody’s collection of artifacts has grown so much that there is little space to contain them. The work of cataloging and organizing everything—even with the help of computers, bar codes, scanners, and a massive endowment—is absolutely overwhelming. The Peabody’s website has this to say about its collection: ‘The Peabody is well known for its significant collections of archeological and ethnographic materials from around the world, many of which were acquired during the era of European and American expansion, exploration, and colonization.’ This is good self-awareness on the Peabody’s part, but it doesn’t change the fact that they brought these things from the four corners of the world, and now they can’t manage it. Most of this massive collection of millions of artifacts is—as the man who spoke earlier said—hidden.”
Sophia walked them through a series of images. Human bones loose in a cardboard box. Human bones laid out on a table in the shape of a person. An Egyptian mummy in a gold-and-lapis sarcophagus. Two semicircle groupings of stone spearpoints and arrowheads fanned out on felt. Some were made of flint, some jasper, and others were knapped from obsidian. There was a magnificent robe made of blue and gold feathers, a grouping of six human jawbones, then a cedar burial box carved with bird and beaver faces.
She watched the audience carefully, the light changing on the multitude of their faces with each advancing image. Some leaned forward. Others nudged a neighbor. From time to time a phone rose, obscuring a face for a moment, replacing it with a blue glow while they posted pictures they’d taken. She tried to imagine what this photography might look like as it ascended into the cloud in real time. Then an idea came.
Sophia checked the room and saw that Thad was gone. She pointed to the image of the burial box and said, “There’s only one of these boxes. Two hundred years ago, you’d have to travel to the box to see it, and you’d have to know where to find it. In all likelihood, the Coast Salish people wouldn’t take you to see it. Travel to British Columbia at that time was difficult. You can imagine the way people must have thought that it would be so much more efficient to bring these things to the places where there were people instead of the other way around. Of course, that would be for people with money to pay the price of admission and the leisure time to attend.”
She advanced the slide to an image of the Moon House ruins, with its beautiful overhang and delicate rooms, which was threatened by over-visitation. But this image didn’t fit the new script, so she backed up to the burial box.
“This is where we get the Peabody and events like the Chicago World’s Fair and all the marvels of the Gilded Age. Suddenly thousands of people had trolley access to the world. If you think about it, museums were the internet of the nineteenth century. They gave some people—a certain kind of person—access to ethnographic treasures, but to accomplish this, they had to remove them from where they belonged and ship them off.”
Sophia could hear the people creaking in their chairs. The audience had stopped taking pictures and she could see the small white pinpoints of the projector light repeated in their eyes. She was no longer certain where she was in her presentation, but she meant to move them from the problems of museums to the half solution of national parks, and from there to the new problems parks have created.
“Let me back up,” she said. “The real first internet was probably a sixteenth-century German compendium, maybe the Library of Alexandria, but museums made a real splash. They unlocked the wonders of the world. Today, it seems hard to understand the impact because, with a cell phone, people can look at the Rosetta Stone from close up. You can hear a Sioux war song, see Indonesian dancers. You can fly virtually through the Grand Canyon, over and over and over again. Before all this, the experience had to be physical, and that took a lot of money. It was an amazing feat of the age to organize and fund explorations to send wealthy white Europeans across the globe in search of your antiquities. There’s a reason the movie was called Raiders . . .” she paused for effect, “. . . of the Lost Ark.”
Sophia wished she were recording this talk. It felt like ideas that had been rolling around loose in a box were finally coming together. She paused for a second to try to keep track, then she dove in again.
“Museums are amazing places, but they are . . .” Sophia hesitated while she tried to find the right word. This was the danger of improvisation. The right word for a graduate seminar would have been that museums were “racist” or “ethnocentric.” One of her professors would always say “Gordian,” which was only the right word for him. The correct word for this when meeting with Dalinda or other Parks or BLM people would be “multi-jurisdictional.” The term “tricky” came to mind. “Convoluted.” Maybe something folksy like “messed up.” But in the end, she settled on “complicated.” She picked up again: “Museums can be complicated. One person’s artifact is another person’s ancestor. The presence of something in a museum only points to its absence from the place it left. And this is the thing museums don’t want to say out loud. All of their holdings came from somewhere else. So, the most important questions anyone can ask are Who did this amazing thing belong to? And who had it before it was here? Who took it away from them? How did it even get here? Who had it first? And like the man in front asked before, Where are these people now? We have a word for the answers to these questions, and it is ‘provenance.’”
Sophia drank some water and scanned the room to see if anyone from the park had slipped in. She f
elt these visitors deserved to know what lurked behind their vacations. As she looked around the room, she met people’s eyes, and some motioned to the screen behind her.
“I’ve heard people talk about museums like they are some kind of pirate ship, but in reality, they are privateers, since their theft is so often sanctioned by the state. My father is from Alabama, but my mother comes from Iran. I grew up hearing her talk about the way her own country—and Syria, Egypt, Lebanon—was systematically plundered by the British and French. This is true of Central America, China, and Ireland—pretty much every place on the planet has had its heritage stolen and relocated somewhere else, usually accompanied by people talking about how the civilized world can help let light into the dark areas of the globe. Sometimes those places were called backward sectors. The U.S. president has other names for those parts of the world.”
A woman near the back stood and excused herself. Her husband followed a few seconds later. He stood in the doorway looking back at the screen for a lingering moment before she called for him to come.
“Some people argue that artifacts should remain in place. They can be documented best right where they are. Some say artifacts should be documented, then removed to repositories so they aren’t destroyed. Some say it’s finders keepers. Some say the people making these decisions don’t have the right to make them.”