Can you dig it?

When I was in sixth grade, I had a really cool teacher named Mr. D. It was the seventies and Mr. D was probably in his late twenties. He had curly dark hair and side burns. He wore flared jeans. He was laid back. Everybody hoped that they’d get Mr. D. for a teacher. I hit the jackpot.

Since it was the seventies and the fifth and sixth grades were housed in the “new addition,” we had classrooms without walls right off of the learning center and a lot of progressive teaching and learning methods were employed -- we engaged in lots of projects, cooperative learning groups, independent learning, free flowing circle discussions and so on. We spent a week in February at Atwood Park doing outdoorsy stuff and singing songs by a campfire to guitar music. I loved it. It was my favorite school year.

In the beginning of the year, after we did a genealogy project tracing our family trees, our first really cool group project was an archaeological dig. First, each group had to make up a culture with its own language. Then we had to make artifacts. Then we had to bury our artifacts in Mr. D’s back yard. Yep. He let us dig up his backyard. A week later we went back and each group dug up another group's artifacts, piecing together what the artifacts said about the made up culture. We followed all this up with a trip to the Field Museum in Chicago.

I fell in love with archaeology for awhile. That love was brushed off many years later in college when I had to choose electives to cover humanities and third world culture requirements. I took two classical civ classes and an anthropology class and seriously thought about changing my major – but archaeology was an “impractical” major and although I wasn’t a practical girl, my parents were practical parents. They didn’t go for philosophy, creative writing, or, sadly, archaeology. Alas, I graduated with a degree in marketing which I hope will finally pay off when I have to self-promote my books.

Lately, my three year old son is into dinosaurs in a big way, so archaeology has been on the brain once again which is why when Macy had a break through on her story last weekend, I wrote her the following email –

Here's something I think is really cool that I didn't know until I undertook this writing journey. Maybe you feel this way, too. You start out with an idea, and different variations on the idea come to you, and you play with the characters, and you like certain scenes you write, but you have this feeling that there's something deeper that you're supposed to do and it's all related to story structure-- so you keep playing with it, keep playing with it, digging, messing around, digging some more until you finally hit bone. You unearth the bones, brush off the dust,-- it feels exciting. You keep digging and find more bones. You start putting the bones together and you think, "Good lord, it was here all along right under my feet."

Before long you have the entire skeleton-- and you're sure that this is it, and you're pumped. Maybe you still need to find a metacarpal or two to complete it -- and, of course, you still have to glue it all together and make it shine. You still have a lot to do, but suddenly it all feels real, like you really are part of the ancient tradition of storytelling-- you are recycling the bones of human stories. And you can do it; you trust in the story. You sort of get infatuated with yourself and the process and you feel the light shining down on you and your story. It doesn't stay that way, but for that moment, however long it lasts, it feels awesome, and the excitement carries you through, and suddenly you're getting up at 5 am despite being a night owl.

Anyway, I felt that way when I found a couple chunks of bone on mine-- and that's how I felt for you when I read the additional back story on yours.

Macy wrote back—

Yes, Al, I see the bones. The excavation is finally happening. Of course, I'm sure I still need to reveal some more -- I've found the rib cage where the heart of it all is, but I'm still unearthing phalanges and other small bones.

BTW -- before I forget -- I think you've got a good blog going here for later in the week.

So here it is-- the blog in question. I love when you can just scavenge through email for your blog. However, I feel I must give a shout out to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the author of Women Who Run With the Wolves (WWRWW). In the book, she tells the story of La Loba, an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows but few have seen.

The sole work of La Loba (Wolf Woman) is the collecting of bones. Her specialty is wolves (hence, her name). She crawls, creeps, sifts and digs through mountains, caves, dry riverbeds, soil, looking for wolf bones until she can assemble an entire skeleton. Once she has assembled the bones, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song to sing. (I've found the treadmill works for me if you don't have a fireplace-- and Macy's fire seems to actually be the shower). When she is sure, she stands over the skeleton, raises her arms over it and sings out, until it fleshes out and becomes furred, until it starts to breathe; its eyes open; its tail wags and it leaps up and runs away. As it runs, faster and faster, splashing its way into the river, the wolf transforms into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon. (pp.27-28)

Now, clearly a woman with a happily ever after in a great romance novel is a laughing woman, don't you think? Can you totally dig it? (groan, if you must.)

Cheers and happy writing,

Alyson