After five days of solid digging and picking to rid the acropolis south trenches of enormous roots, rockfall, and organic soil, I can say that without a doubt, the dirt and I have become one. I never thought my face could sweat this much, or even my legs, but hauling boulders and throwing them off the side of a cliff from 6 am to 1 pm daily will do that to you I guess. My trench team and I, or as we like to call ourselves, Team Shady Acropolis (that’s a story in itself, getting to lug a huge metal canopy shade up to the top of the mountain for shade), have worked relentlessly at distinguishing and exposing the north wall across trenches 4 A & B so that we can determine our boundaries and open up our trenches for excavation. It’s a slow process that requires diligence and patience, using trowels and brushes to find which rocks make up the wall under all that mound of dirt versus which rocks have come loose from the mortar and need to be moved aside. It can get frustrating squatting in the same spot for hours, working on brushing dirt off of more dirt and shoveling it into a bucket which then gets carried off to the cliff side and dumped. Unless you leave and take a ten minute water break, the eye might not catch each step of progress. For example, my trench T. A. Claire encouraged me today by saying “Good job, that actually looks like a wall corner now!” when I couldn’t see a difference myself. But even if the eyes don’t pick up on headway, the pick and the hand know by feel. It was exciting when I struck hard stone after at least half an hour of scraping in just one spot without finding anything fixated enough to be part of the wall, because I knew by the touch of the pick that what was under it was solid. These little joys may seem small, but looking back at the end of the day reveals that my trench team and I have accomplished a lot in such a short amount of time, and we have a whole summer of opportunity in front of us to discover something really cool.
