The Bog Read Free

his mark upon the intellectual world. After living a year in Illinois, moving from town to town and surviving any way that he could, he discovered one of the most remarkably appointed Indian burial chambers of the Hopewell culture ever found. When news of his discovery, and of his tender age and lack of formal training, became known, it set the archaeological world on its ear.
    In time, scholarships poured in. He quickly finished high school by going to night classes, and by dint of good grades, luck, and his reputation as a boy wonder, he was admitted to Harvard. There, he excelled; he published a series of articles on the “new” archaeology, and under the auspices of various well-known archaeologists assisted in making a number of further important discoveries. It was on one of these field trips, at a dig at Haraldskjaer Bog in Denmark, that he saw his first bog body. From that first moment he was entranced. What intrigued him the most was that he had previously only known the people of the past through their bones. But in the bog bodies even the flesh was preserved. When one looked at one of them one was actually looking at the features of a person who had lived history.
    What was strange about David’s life was that although he had assisted in a dozen such excavations since then, and had himself become one of the world’s foremost authorities on bog bodies, he had always worked on the finds of others and had never actually manned a research site that he himself had discovered. Part of the reason for this was that he had somehow allowed his earlier adventurous spirit to become sidetracked. When he was outside of the institutional structure, when he was young and had no guidance other than his fervid interest in archaeology, he had no recourse but to go out and scour the countryside on his own. But in becoming a part of the archaeological establishment he also became enmeshed in it. It was easy for him to accept positions working on the digs of other, more established archaeologists. And seduced by the comfortable embrace of academic life, he had allowed just a few more years to go by than he would have liked to. Now, however, he hoped all that was going to change. For the first time in as long as he could remember, it looked as if his dream were about to come true.
    He looked at the refaced facades of the colleges just beginning to glow palely golden in the advancing sun. He would miss Oxford. It had been good to them for the two and a half years they had been there. And he would miss it, the distinguished features and vague eyes of the various dons whom he had developed rapport with, even the smooth, dull gleam of the academic poplin. Most of all he would miss old Burton-Russell, the silver-haired antiquities scholar whose thoughts were forever riveted on some aspect of ancient Mesopotamian culture. Like David, Burton-Russell shared an almost passionate enchantment with the past, and the two had spent many long hours discussing the intricacies of some ancient Celtic verb tense, or the psychological implications of some long-forgotten Babylonian ritual. He would miss Burton-Russell’s encyclopedic knowledge of history most of all.
    Once again he became aware of Ben’s head pushing up against his hand, and he patted the dog lovingly on the neck. Ben gave a doggish smile in return.
    “Come on, boy,” David said as he turned and walked back into the house.
    On his way back to the bedroom he decided to look in on the children. He quietly opened the door to thirteen-year-old Katy’s room. The first thing he saw were the posters of Michael Jackson and Duran Duran illuminated in the morning light, and then Katy herself, asleep under her frilly French comforter. He smiled when he saw how angelic she looked. Fortunately, she had inherited her mother’s looks, and long, strawberry-blond hair framed a face that was still a little girl’s, but had a cast about it that was clearly on its way to becoming a woman’s. She was