Mckenzie Strath : Notes from the Field : Letter from a Dirty Trowel

 

 

 

More often than I would like to admit, I find myself headfirst in a dirt hole, toothbrush in hand, wondering what exactly I am doing with my life. But as an archaeologist and a poet, I have found that you should always expect the unexpected, and sometimes the most wonderful things emerge from the mess.

People often imagine the life of an archaeologist as glamorous. In reality, I spend ten-hour days standing in the pouring rain on the side of a highway, giving an excavator driver a thumbs-up to remove another thirty centimetres of gravel. And when I am not roadside, I am in a lab, agonizing over whether the Italian soil in front of me is 7.5Y 4/2 or 7.5YR 4/3, only to discover that the Munsell chart has classified both, simply and mercilessly, as just brown.

Yet when I sit down to write poetry, it is these mundane moments of asking myself, what am I doing? that create the work I love the most. Just brown dirt, after all, is never just brown dirt. Under a microscope, it becomes a thousand different things: evidence of past living floors, traces of human activity or, occasionally, a reminder of the day a foreman decided it would be funny to bury one of my shoes in it. Just brown dirt holds many different possibilities, from social interaction to the scientific breakdown of what it is or once was. Of course, that perspective might also be influenced by sleep deprivation; graduate students after all, are not widely known for sleeping.

When Rob asked if I would write a note in the field, I thought it would be great, given my experience writing notes in literal fields and various other environments on a regular basis. It made me think about the process of writing outside traditional settings. Sometimes, the best pieces of writing come from a tiny note on a Rite in the Rain journal covered in mud that has a scribbled-out drawing of a rusted penny with the word “too modern” found underneath it. Sometimes it's about the secret conversations you overhear with people who don’t realize you are 3 feet below them in an excavation unit. And other pieces are about the haunting silence that settles in when you realize your compass stopped working more than a kilometre back.

Poetry for me is shaped by my experiences and emotions, drawn from snapshots of my life. In fact, I see poetry and archaeology as similar, both involving experimentation, trial and error and revision until a final hypothesis emerges. One that sits comfortably on the palette while still inviting others to question, interpret and keep thinking. In Archaeology, we do something called experimental archaeology, in which one tries to recreate what modern humans and early hominins may have done to survive in the past. In other words, one must go sit in a dark cave to truly understand what happened thousands of years ago — or at least, that is what my professors seem to believe. In poetry, we do the same. We copy forms and themes from century-old texts and invent entirely new lines of thought. I believe that sitting at my laptop with all the lights off, staring at a blank Word document, is eerily similar to sitting in a cave.

On top of that, humans are adaptable creatures, and so are the poets who borrow words from outside their disciplines. Poetry can force us to adapt to discomforts we never expected to encounter. Viewing science and academic research through a creative lens transforms meaning, reshapes our thinking, and reveals the biases within our interpretations.

I can sit for hours pondering whether a thin section holds a sparkling piece of pyrite under the microscope or whether it is simply a void filled with resin. In much the same way, I wonder whether those who read my poems will recognize the voids within my writing as spaces they may never be able to fill. But I suppose that is what makes both disciplines so compelling: analyzing the unknown and accepting that we may never fully understand the true meaning behind the past, or behind someone else’s words.

 

 

Mckenzie Strath is an archaeologist who occasionally doubles as a poet. She is a Master’s student at Simon Fraser University studying Neanderthal fire use in southern Italy. Her chapbook Inconsistent Cemeteries was published by above/ground press. When she’s not excavating sediments or writing, she can usually be found hiking a mountain or working from whichever coffee shop has the most delicious hot chocolate.

Mckenzie Strath : on Inconsistent Cemeteries

 

 

 

I vividly remember scraping away at the dirt, covered in sweat from the beating sun, when someone popped up beside me and asked, “Have you gotten the chance to excavate the vampire grave yet?”

It was such a strange question, especially considering we didn't have any vampires (supposedly) to excavate, but all I could think about was what an intriguing poem that would be.

In the summer of 2023, I had the opportunity to do a field excavation through the University of New Brunswick in Sydney, Nova Scotia, at the Fortress of Louisbourg. There, I spent a month helping a wonderful team excavate burials off Rochefort Point due to coastal erosion. When I came home from that trip, I had a field book of notes and new experiences and a ton of poetry material.

Inconsistent Cemeteries started as a Direct Reading I did with my professor, Stephen Collis, to explore how poetry and science can meld together. I often like poems with multiple meanings depending on how the reader interprets them. Therefore, while writing about Louisbourg, I took a more analytical approach to how I wanted to interpret my experience digging in a cemetery with the understanding that I am mixing the past and the present together.

Archaeology is the study of past human experiences, yet often, it is where people go to understand their cultural heritage and experiences. I will never forget the feeling of having people come and tell me stories of their ancestors who fought in the Louisbourg Sieges and were buried within the very cemetery I was excavating. Knowing that what I was doing had a significant impact on the public was essential to me, and it was important that both the dead and the living were respected through these poems. Of course, some poems strictly represent my experience only. For example, “Bring Back the Wolves of Cape Breton” has nothing to do with the fortress but reflects my day trip through the Cabot Trail and the moose-prohibited areas along the hiking trails. Overall, I would say that this chapbook is about experiences, whether from the past or present. It holds the frustration and wonder of what I was feeling excavating burials, as well as the observation and thoughts of the people around me, who showed me what it truly means to be an archaeologist.

 

 

 

Mckenzie Strath is an (almost graduated) undergraduate at Simon Fraser University studying Archaeology, English and Creative Writing.