Traveling has always been an activity which has run through the veins for many of us. The absolute thrill of adventure and the sensations the undiscovered delivers second by second is a fascinating reward. In particular a recent experience occurred in Wyoming while surveying a Paleo-Indian archaeological site (which with the help from Proust) has radicalized my perceptions of not only myself, but also my heritage and above all, time.
Like Proust, the romance which the past infiltrates is very present in our profession as handlers of material culture. I keep finding myself going back to the Madeleine and also to the early passages of the Journey to Balbec and can’t help but transport myself with those very same emotions to places I’ve been where the expectations exceed the reality of the destination. What was idiosyncratic about this particular experience among the others was the adjacency of our early-entry point site next to the path of the Oregon trail and the wagon ruts they left as well as their names which enculturated my senses as my maternal ancestors were early trail blazers.
I wonder if I walked in the same steps as they, and now as a result I cannot help but think I was as close to living multiple lives through three different periods in time at once. In retrospect (a re-occurring ponder within the last few weeks) something has me perplexed in a multitude of emotions that can only be explained as anomie. An issue with being occupied with the accretion of history is the confusion the present brings to us. This alienation ( and the fear that the future can seem to bring) helps me emphasize with Marcel while also raising some serious questions and concerns.
The romance of time and history is quickly dissipated by the fulfillment that cynism brings by the appropriation the present has on it.

Almost like a reverse Madeleine affect, and just as quickly as I had entered this state of historical equilibrium walking among the spirits of my mothers ancestors, I was transported back out to the familiar artifacts of the worthless we will leave to following excavators. I felt a landslide of sadness that had no home until now. This sadness wasn’t for the litter, or for the assimilation of history (that is the nature of our being after all), but rather for the destruction of what time has brought, and the cruel reality many of us face of living too early, or perhaps too late in its continuum.Proust believes we must separate beauty and happiness apart in order to truly appreciate its meaning as its given to us. I believe romance and adventure applies to the same principle. The combination of the two manifests a depressing recollection of conjured, imaginary memories which are homeless to any part in our mind when they’re evicted by the notions of reality.