Chapter Three #2
He smiled. “Yeah. It is. So, people will be able to do some real roughing-it type camping. We have a covered wagon, though we don’t have oxen pulling it—we’ve got a horse team, because we didn’t really want to deal with oxen, and Rowdy is mostly running all that.
We’ll do a little bit of traveling during the day and bring people to the spot at night.
There’s going to be a circle of tents, though.
We’re not going to have people sleeping in wagons. ”
“Oh,” she said. “Disappointing. I would want the wagons.”
“You would?”
“Yes. Though, on the Oregon Trail often people didn’t actually sleep in the wagons. They were too full of things. They very often slept underneath them.”
“I know,” he said.
“They also very rarely rode in them.”
“Yeah, I… I did a bit of research on the Oregon Trail before we did this.”
“Well, that’s good. At least you’re making a choice to be anachronistic.”
“I like indoor plumbing too much to not be anachronistic.”
“That’s fair. And the truth is, I find that the majority of the population would never be as concerned with accuracy as they would be with comfort.”
“Agreed.”
“You mind if I look around?”
“There’s really nothing to see here.”
“Oh, that’s not true. I’m intrigued by the choices that you’ve made.”
He couldn’t decide if that was a compliment or not. “Are you?”
“I think it’s an interesting idea. Taking this property out here and turning it into the kind of place that caters to many different groups.”
“Yeah. So we got the glass cabins, we’ll also have some yurts and then we’ll have these tents. We also may rent the farmhouse out someday.”
“Oh, I think you would do well with that. People would probably enjoy a farmhouse stay. Well, I would. Though then I would want to get involved with the day-to-day running of the ranch.”
“You would want to work on your vacation?”
“Well,” she said, “I would. Though I acknowledge that I may not be representative of the general population.”
“Why is that?”
“Most people don’t really like working, do they?”
He laughed. “I don’t know about that. But I guess they like working on different kinds of things. And when they’re on vacation, I guess it’s pretty normal that they want to be on vacation.”
“I just always want to learn new things. I find it somewhat delightful that I’m here on the ranch, even if it’s unexpected. And even if I am mad at Dr. Boesch for stealing my research.”
“She stole your research?” He had no idea how any of this worked.
But he found himself interested in it. This was a whole cutthroat world he didn’t know anything about.
He was always interested in how other people lived.
Because his own life had been so unconventional, he found conventional people interesting, and he found people who weren’t so conventional interesting.
Everyone had a story. And it turned them into who they were.
It could be fascinating, honestly. And uncovering the cutthroat world of paleontology was amusing to him.
“Oh yes. She did. And basically got her grant off the back of it. Then took the exact location that I had pinpointed. But there were certain things that I never wrote down. And I didn’t write them down for this very reason.”
“Do you have a mole?”
“I suspect we do,” she said. “Because Dr. Boesch works for a different museum. So her seeing my maps… Well, there has to be a mole.”
“I didn’t know there was museum espionage.”
“There’s every kind of espionage. Because no matter where you are, people are greedy.
Capitalism is an extremely corrupting force.
It’s also a very motivating one. That’s something that I find to be a contradiction of human nature that’s difficult to get around.
All systems are corruptible because people are corruptible. And very greedy.”
“That is true.”
He didn’t expect to be outside in the heat discussing capitalism with a small woman who had large glasses, but here he was.
“And how has your digging gone today?”
“It’s actually very promising. I am doing some scanning on the rock, and I think there are footprints. I just have to get down to the layer.”
“What kind of footprints?”
“I… I really need to be careful. I think that there are actually several perfectly preserved walking paths beneath the different layers of rock. And one of them I think… I think I might have found something we’ve never found here before.”
“You do some kind of ultrasonic scan on the rock? Like in Jurassic Park?”
“You keep bringing up Jurassic Park.”
“It’s my reference point for this kind of thing.”
“Then you might find my work disappointing. Because at no point is a velociraptor going to chase you.”
“I don’t want to be chased by a velociraptor.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be chased by one either. They were quite brutal.”
“Do you think they had feathers?” That was one of the few things he knew about dinosaurs and the debate surrounding them. Basically, he also knew that from the movie Jurassic Park.
“Oh, I don’t think they did for a variety of reasons.
First of all, a lot of that is predicated on the idea that we have a lot less information about these animals than we do.
It’s a fair theory, and I can understand where people are coming from, but I disagree with it entirely.
Based on looking at modern equivalents, like crocodiles. ”
“Do you think they were reptilian?”
She schooled her face into a neutral expression. “I know they were.”
“Isn’t all this stuff just a theory?”
She looked exceedingly irritated by that. “I suppose if you don’t know how to synthesize information.”
He found himself smiling at her. She was a fascinating creature.
“Are you done digging for the day?”
“Yes. I was trying to get everything finished before it got too hot. And I was thinking I might head to town for some groceries.”
“I have to go to the store for groceries. Do you want to carpool?”
“Yes. Yes, Jax Noble, I think I would like that.”