It's not anywhere near the end of summer--we're bound to have many 100+ degree temperatures in the Sandhills of Nebraska yet--but the prairie archaeologist completed his survey circa noon today, and is gone.
He didn't really "complete" it; as with the soil scientist, he has to come back various times during the autumn, winter, and spring, to check on things he never thought about until he left. But the main part is done; just odds and ends remain.
It's going to get lonely here, after a busy-as-a-beehive summer, a lot of people running around, picking things up.
The town inebriate yesterday (Friday) filled up the hole caused when he retrieved the windmill for scrap; earlier, the prairie archaeologist had examined the hole, hoping to find something from the original windmill (put up in 1884, blown down in 1934), but as the original windmill had been wood, he didn't find anything worthwhile.
The town inebriate had also dug where the prairie archaeologist thought there had been a cellar; the prairie archaeologist examined things, and yes, apparently there had once been a cellar there, circa 110 years ago, but it had been filled in before being covered up (sometimes such cellars, abandoned, had only their entrance covered up).
Both the soil scientist, penetrating the William Rivers Pitt, and the prairie archaeologist, had taken a lot of photographs. If any come my way, I'll post them.
The neighbor dropped by, asking, "Well, what next?"
I have no idea, I told him.
Since the William Rivers Pitt so much resembles the Jungfrau of Switzerland in miniature, I'm thinking about setting up some sort of Christmas display on it--an HO gauge electric train, HO-gauge sized buildings and chalets and people, HO-gauge lights, the whole bit, making it like Switzerland. I wish I could do that, but with Decembers in the Sandhills being what they are, it's not feasible.
But I have no doubt this is going to be an interesting, a people-filled, autumn.
We'll see.
