AN UNDERSTANDING

Reading over this account of my life, I can see that, from the beginning, my fate has been guided by fossils. They have been the center of my existence since the first time I went fossil hunting with Papa and Joseph, and even before. At first it might have been because Joseph was doing it that I wanted to hunt fossils, but soon enough it was the fossils themselves and the thrill of the hunt that held me. But even more than the fossils themselves, it was my fascination with their mystery that made me continue. And it has been this fascination that has sustained me through losses and hardships. It has even led to triumphs, small though they be. If ever Papa gave me anything it was this.

Mama maintained from the beginning that allowing me to go down to the beach to hunt fossils would make people talk, but that did not keep me from wanting to go. The name-calling and taunting at school did not cool my passion for the beach and the cliffs; nor did the hardships of earning our bread in this way. It was too late for me to turn back, even then when I was only a seven-year-old starting school. I was already captive to the strange stones, clues to unimaginable worlds that preceded our own. And in being so captivated I was made different from others; I could not fit in, would not fit in. I did work that my neighbors and friends thought strange for a girl; work that many did not approve of. And this work led me to wonder about things that they do not wonder about and to think thoughts that they do not think.

My work has brought me in contact with people from other classes who are as captivated as I am by fossils and the story they tell of a world prior to our own, but I have found that I do not belong among them either. The fossils are my livelihood, not just something to collect and study.

It is somewhere in between the two—the Lyme of my neighbors and the world of the geological gentry—that I must find a place for myself. It is not a place where others have stood before. But I will find it, and standing there, I will make room for others to stand, too.