Ever since I was a kid, I've been fascinated by history. Of course, I was also a bookworm, fascinated by fiction, and in my childish mind, history and fiction were much the same. They were both a world I could only access via my imagination, and both had an author's slant on whatever you were supposed to learn from the tales they told.
I knew that history really happened and all, blah, blah, blah, and that somehow this distinction was important, but it's hard to see it as any different from a novel when you can only research it in books that looked like novels, or see it through a museum case with glass as thick as my tv screen.
I became disillusioned with history in much the way kids often become disillusioned with Santa Claus.
I didn't like the cheesy tours, the ridiculous gift shops, and the tour guide who could be seen smoking in the cab of his pickup truck on break while still in costume.
Like Santa, history was a nice idea that got pushed into absurdity by adults insistance that it was all so real.
San Diego is a strange place, in it's attitude toward history. The lesson always begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers/missionaries. Natives are vaugely mentioned, and then instantly fade out of the picture and are only minimally mentioned with perhaps a field trip to a reservation which is now dominated by a casino. "One of the many hardships the early settlers faced was the possibility of the natives uprising...." and "yeah, once upon a time there were Indians here. Let's make cheesy crafts in the style of their art" was pretty much the extent of what we learned. In all fairness, we didn't learn much more about the later history either.
I was actually an adult before I learned the name of the main tribe of Indians in our area.
Again, in all fairness, I was an adult before I learned pretty much any of the local history I happen to know.
Then came a day, straight out of a cheesy Disney movie, that change forever the way I felt about history.
I was about 11, and I happened to be tagging along on a camping trip my dad was taking with a friend, out to a friend's cabin in the desert. It was nice there, no one ever bothered me and I could drink root beer and read to my hearts content in a shady hammock, or go for a walk and count rabbits and snakes.
On one such walk, I went along a wash, which is a seasonal stream. There was no water then, and it made a pretty good trail. The softer sand meant I could find more animal tracks, and with nothing but sameness all around, it was simply a direction to go.
I paused by a grouping of large rocks, and saw something that made me pause. On a long flat rock, that looked rather like the front porch on this house-sized pile of boulders, was a bowl shaped indentation. I'd seen something like it in a museum, behind glass, in a obviously fake rock, and a mannequin posed over it awkwardly, supposedly grinding something.
I pulled myself up on the rock and sat down in front of the indentation. From this perch I could feel a bit of a breeze on my sweaty skin, and there was a pleasant view of the desert.
I had the eeriest feeling that by sitting there, I'd settled into some past indian woman's skin, thinking, "This is a good spot to grind my corn."
And then I saw in the indentation, a small piece of pottery. Just a broken shard, I'd certainly seen more interesting examples in museums, but they were behind glass and this was very quickly in my hands, my fingers tracing it's broken edges. I didn't need a tour guide or a sign to point out to me that the inconsistant nature of the painted line meant it was real. This was valuable because it DIDN'T have a price tag on it.
I looked down to the ground and saw another piece of a different color. I bounced down and picked it up, then began gingerly stepping around looking for more. I found more, including one piece who's broken edge matched the first piece.
When I got back to the cabin, I showed my treasure to my father's friend. "Oh, yeah. You find those from time to time. There were Indians around here back then. Not anymore. They didn't leave much besides the sort of thing you found."
I didn't care how many other's had been found, nobody have found THIS one, and velvet roped it off. This time, it had been ME, not somebody in a book, who had heard Santa's sleigh, or walked into a wardrobe.
And ever since I've wanted that feeling again, to put my hands on something that's been around for hundreds of years, and FEEL and HEAR the people that have touched it before me.
I've never felt a high like that before or after.
I knew that history really happened and all, blah, blah, blah, and that somehow this distinction was important, but it's hard to see it as any different from a novel when you can only research it in books that looked like novels, or see it through a museum case with glass as thick as my tv screen.
I became disillusioned with history in much the way kids often become disillusioned with Santa Claus.
I didn't like the cheesy tours, the ridiculous gift shops, and the tour guide who could be seen smoking in the cab of his pickup truck on break while still in costume.
Like Santa, history was a nice idea that got pushed into absurdity by adults insistance that it was all so real.
San Diego is a strange place, in it's attitude toward history. The lesson always begins with the arrival of Spanish explorers/missionaries. Natives are vaugely mentioned, and then instantly fade out of the picture and are only minimally mentioned with perhaps a field trip to a reservation which is now dominated by a casino. "One of the many hardships the early settlers faced was the possibility of the natives uprising...." and "yeah, once upon a time there were Indians here. Let's make cheesy crafts in the style of their art" was pretty much the extent of what we learned. In all fairness, we didn't learn much more about the later history either.
I was actually an adult before I learned the name of the main tribe of Indians in our area.
Again, in all fairness, I was an adult before I learned pretty much any of the local history I happen to know.
Then came a day, straight out of a cheesy Disney movie, that change forever the way I felt about history.
I was about 11, and I happened to be tagging along on a camping trip my dad was taking with a friend, out to a friend's cabin in the desert. It was nice there, no one ever bothered me and I could drink root beer and read to my hearts content in a shady hammock, or go for a walk and count rabbits and snakes.
On one such walk, I went along a wash, which is a seasonal stream. There was no water then, and it made a pretty good trail. The softer sand meant I could find more animal tracks, and with nothing but sameness all around, it was simply a direction to go.
I paused by a grouping of large rocks, and saw something that made me pause. On a long flat rock, that looked rather like the front porch on this house-sized pile of boulders, was a bowl shaped indentation. I'd seen something like it in a museum, behind glass, in a obviously fake rock, and a mannequin posed over it awkwardly, supposedly grinding something.
I pulled myself up on the rock and sat down in front of the indentation. From this perch I could feel a bit of a breeze on my sweaty skin, and there was a pleasant view of the desert.
I had the eeriest feeling that by sitting there, I'd settled into some past indian woman's skin, thinking, "This is a good spot to grind my corn."
And then I saw in the indentation, a small piece of pottery. Just a broken shard, I'd certainly seen more interesting examples in museums, but they were behind glass and this was very quickly in my hands, my fingers tracing it's broken edges. I didn't need a tour guide or a sign to point out to me that the inconsistant nature of the painted line meant it was real. This was valuable because it DIDN'T have a price tag on it.
I looked down to the ground and saw another piece of a different color. I bounced down and picked it up, then began gingerly stepping around looking for more. I found more, including one piece who's broken edge matched the first piece.
When I got back to the cabin, I showed my treasure to my father's friend. "Oh, yeah. You find those from time to time. There were Indians around here back then. Not anymore. They didn't leave much besides the sort of thing you found."
I didn't care how many other's had been found, nobody have found THIS one, and velvet roped it off. This time, it had been ME, not somebody in a book, who had heard Santa's sleigh, or walked into a wardrobe.
And ever since I've wanted that feeling again, to put my hands on something that's been around for hundreds of years, and FEEL and HEAR the people that have touched it before me.
I've never felt a high like that before or after.
1 Comments:
I really really really love this post, VJ.
After having gone places on tours and the like, I found that simply absorbing history without a guide yacking at you is much better. But I've never been so fortunate as to have a moment like this. Consider yourself lucky!
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