The finely-tooled notch is what caught my eye on the frigid January day. My wife and son and I are hiking on a lonely trail in the substantial mountains of western North Carolina. Winter wind blows through the naked trees and remnants of the last snowfall cling in the shadows. I bend to inspect the rock with the notch and recognize the unmistakable evidence of it being worked by human hands. The black chert arrowhead -I guess that’s what it is – is protruding out of the frozen earth just enough for me to make out the precise notch and part of the fine cutting edge.
Marybeth and Taylor are also on their hands and knees now – our faces inches apart – marveling at the tool trapped in the frozen ground. And trapped it is. The ground is frozen like concrete, tenaciously clutching its treasure. Ah, but this tenacity is about to meet its match in my persistence as I start to chip away, millimeter by millimeter, the frozen earth entombing the arrowhead.
I deploy a twenty-first century tool, my Kershaw 1620 folding knife with a three-inch blade. The hardened 477 carbon steel edge is not made for this type of work, but I insist, and gingerly uncover more and more of what is looking like an exquisite projectile point.
It may sound a little over-dramatic to say that I’m holding my breath as I carry out the exacting work, but I’m really anxious to see if this thing is intact. After all, I have found a number of broken-in-half arrowheads over the years, so I realize that there’s a good chance that this one’s in a similar state.
Bits of frozen earth fall away as I continue to chip at it with my modern blade. I’m silent now, and Taylor and Marybeth stand reverently by. There, I have it. The ancient tool slips free of the soil, free from where it’s lain for hundreds of cold winters, hundreds of sultry summers.
I wipe the remaining debris from the tool, spit on it, wipe it again on the hem of my jacket and inspect it. I hold it in the palm of my hand, rotating it with cold fingers, and I offer it to my wife and son for their inspection.
We’re amazed; not only was the spearhead fashioned with great skill – obvious in its design and execution – but it is almost perfectly preserved.
Later, the piece would be dated to between five and seven thousand years old (!), but today, the way the deep black chert gleams in the waning sunlight, it’s almost as if it was made just last week.
Now it’s two years later in late summer and I’m hiking in the same area. A hint of Autumn is in the air, borne by the cool north wind. The leaves are drying out, the green of the foliage is fading. I’m thinking about the spearhead, but more than that I’m thinking of the ancient one who visited me from across the ages through the tool which he made and used.
I think about the way he lived his life; of the similarities and dissimilarities of his life and mine. I like to think that we all live in the time we’re meant to occupy, and that the maker and user of the spearhead – I’ll assume they are one and the same – also occupied his own special place in time. To know that through his elegant work he has influenced my life across a span of thousands of years, that he inspired my thinking through his patience, skill, and artistry, is striking and sublime.
May we ever strive to positively affect the future through the way we approach and live our own lives in the here and now.