When I was a child, my
class took a field trip to St. Augustine’s famed Fountain of Youth. Immersed in the humid heat of
Florida’s Atlantic coast, we drifted beneath ancient oaks, their limbs draped
in Spanish moss, as our guide, sweating heavily beneath the bulk of his
conquistador costume, wove the tales of that historic site. That trip would set a course for my life for it marked
the beginning of my obsession with the human skeleton. But it also impacted me
in another way: it was the first time I truly contemplated death.
Not that I wasn’t already
mesmerized by bones or naive to the concept of death. My first experience with
both occurred following the death of our obnoxious parrot, Polly, who finally expired after years of screeching and bad behavior. We buried him with
great ceremony beneath a dark umbrella of palm and for days, I contemplated the changes taking
place within the shoebox housing his remains, wondering where his annoying little
soul was residing, whose hand he was painfully pecking.
But it was in St. Augustine
where I first contemplated my own death. After an exhausting day of trudging
through history, our sweaty little group was shuffled into the final exhibit,
which back then was an exposed burial ground where Native Americans had been
interred some two thousand years before. I stared out over that cemetery, which held
several adults and a few small children, and was shocked to realize that at one
time, those pale dry bones had been animated in life; that the skeletons that
lay before me once belonged to living, breathing individuals just like me and
that, like them, one day I too would die.
That experience launched my
obsession. Suddenly, I viewed my body not merely as a collection of tissues
that enabled me to go about my daily business, but as a magical vehicle through
which I experienced the world. My body, with all its inner workings, was life
itself. And like all of life, it would one day come to an end. I was hooked.
Since then, my careers - as a
former firefighter/paramedic and now as a bioarchaeologist - have revolved
around the human body. As a medic, I dealt with devastating injuries and
chronic illness, mitigating both as I frantically worked on patients, piecing
together the fragmented remains of high-speed collisions, sending volts of
electricity through hearts ambushed by sudden cardiac arrest, and plugging the
holes of those peppered by gunfire amidst the violent streets of Orlando.
As a bioarchaeologist, I
examine the bones of the long-dead in an attempt to interpret their life
experiences: fractures resulting in angulated limbs, infection that settled blanket-like over the skeleton, dental disease that must have sent its host
howling, and the creeping grip of arthritis resulting in gnarled and debilitated joints.
This blog will be an extension
of my obsession and a means of indulging two of my favorite preoccupations – the inner workings of the human body and how each of us are impacted by the culture in which we live.
