The Accidental Archaeologist

Stranded…again

Another day of stranding goes by. More students have had flights cancelled Sunday and Monday, and were rebooked for a week later. Every morning we get more and more dire reports on the news. I hear the Royal Navy is now sending ships to rescue stranded British folks in France. We’re now thinking a flight to Portugal or Spain is looking pretty good. I actually sent out a tweet this morning to see if any contacts in the Merchant Marine could find me a transatlantic freighter that could accommodate an extra ten folks. It’s been hard to stay upbeat in the face of all of this, and I’ll admit I’ve been down for the last couple of days. I’m still clinging to the thread of hope that flights will resume by the time I have to fly out on Friday, but I’m not too optimistic about that. Everyone’s had to admit that there are much worse places to get stuck than Cape Hatteras in April, but most are also anxious about the work that’s piling up back home.

To try to make the best of it, Mark has resumed a programme of test pitting in various prospective sites around the island. They dug one fairly unproductive one yesterday, and there are plans for two more today. I’m somewhat removed from all of this, as I now have a stack of small finds waiting to be illustrated, so I’m spending my days hunched over a table meticulously drawing each little detail. It’s slow going and quite tedious, but must be done since we’re leaving all the artifacts on the island. Mark has also tried to lighten things up by fabricating a press release yesterday along the lines of us being the second “lost colony” to be stranded in this part of the world. He even got us to go to the beach with our shovels and take a picture looking across the Atlantic toward England. Don’t know if that’ll make world press, but you never know.

And so we wait. Mark & Andy had their flights rescheduled for tomorrow, but that’s looking pretty doubtful now. It looks like Tuesday night, we’ll all be sleeping on the floor of one hotel room, or possibly on the floor of one of the many kind locals who have gone out of their way to help us out while we’ve been here. I’m just hoping we can keep feeding everybody. And then there’s the rental car that’s supposed to go back on Friday. What a mess. If any of y’all know someone on a transatlantic freighter out of the east coast, send help. We’ll pitch tents on deck if we have to. We’ll even bring our own food. I’m serious. Well…sort of.