seriously, son, we haven’t got any dinosaur eggs out yet. It takes a long time to prepare the site. We’ve taken off the overburden, marked the locations, and actually started on two of the nests. What are you up to now, Jamie? Find anything interesting?”
Jamie was taking bits and pieces from her canvas bag — they looked like a collection of rough little rocks that could be picked up on any roadside. “Not sure what this is.” She held one of the bits close to her face and squinted at it. “But I found another tooth.”
“You did? You’re a real bird dog when it comes to teeth.” Mr. Jamieson glanced at Adam. “Jamie’s on the trail of T. rex, so to speak. She’s found a few teeth, yet there’s no evidence the big guys actually lived here. We haven’t found any trace of skeletons, so ...” He shrugged. “Maybe they were just passing through and stopped for lunch.” He made his voice deep and gruff. “I’ll have a Euoplocephalus steak and a side order of deep-fried Ornithomimus wings, please.”
Adam stretched his head back to gaze at the ceiling, then pretended to write on the palm of his hand. “And how would you like that steak, sir?”
They all laughed, and Mr. Jamieson slapped Adam’s back.
“So when do you think you’ll actually get eggs out of the nests?” Adam asked, trying to make his voice sound natural, though his heart was beating faster than usual.
“What do you think, Jamie?”
“Probably tomorrow, Dad. With any luck.”
“Yeah. I’d guess tomorrow. But mum’s the word.” Mr. Jamieson regarded Adam sternly. “We’d like to keep the media people away until we’re ready for them.”
“Do you think Adam could stay in Norm’s place?” Jamie asked. “He was going to sleep outside.”
“Sure thing,” her father said.
“Thanks,” Adam said as Jamie led him through the camp. “I can’t believe this is actually happening. The only thing is ...”
“Yeah?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not a professional anything.”
“Your paintings look professional to me.”
“Maybe, but that’s not the generally accepted meaning of the word. And what about this ‘old friend’ business? How do I handle that?”
“Don’t worry. You can fake it.”
“Fake it? I know nothing about you. Zilch. Zero. I’ll make a fool of myself.”
“Listen.” She stopped and turned toward him. “I thought it was worth going to bat for you because it was something you seemed to want so badly. The odds were a thousand to one against you, so I stuck my neck out. Would you rather take a chance of making a fool of yourself or leave right now?”
Adam was contrite. She had stuck her neck out for him. “Sorry. You vouched for me and that’s the only reason I’m here and I do appreciate it. What can I say?” He put his hand on her arm.
“It’s okay. Actually, I do have an ulterior motive. I thought it would be fun to have somebody my own age around. The people are great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re older and a bit, um, stodgy. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, stodgy,” Adam said. So he better be the opposite of stodgy, he thought. What would that be? Interesting, exciting, stimulating? Good luck!
Jamie changed the subject. “I’m on my way for a shower. Guess you’d like one, too?”
“A shower? Yeah. A shower would be great.”
“Norm’s Place” looked like heaven. It was a rusty old camper meant to be sitting on the back of a pickup truck, but here it sat on the ground at the edge of the camp. Its licence plate said: ALBERTA. WILD ROSE COUNTRY. 1988.
“Thanks, Norm, wherever you are,” Adam said as Jamie opened the door.
“It’s not Norm’s really. It’s my dad’s, but now he uses the Prowler and lets the graduate students use this.”
“Thanks, then, to your dad. It looks great to me after two days on that bike.” Adam dumped his pack onto the fold-down table.
“Come on,” Jamie said, “I’ll show you where the shower is and then I’ll go see if the cook has any leftovers.”
The “shower” was in a little grove of trees about a hundred metres along a winding path past Norm’s place. It consisted of a truck inner tube filled with water set on a wooden framework. There were pieces of an old tarpaulin on three sides for semi-privacy and several chunks of flat shale for a floor.
At the end of the path four outdoor toilet stalls under one roof were separated by two-metre-high partitions.
“You can use half of what’s left,” Jamie said, pointing at the shower. “They’ll fill it up again in the morning.”
Half of what was left was about one-twentieth of the water Adam used at home at least once a day, but it was warm and it was wet.
He sat outside his new home in the only movable piece of furniture he could find — a slightly twisted aluminum folding chair. Adam was more or less clean. His glasses were off, his contact lenses were in, his stomach was full — Jamie had handed him a plateful of roast beef sandwiches before she’d gone for her own shower — and he had his sketchbook on his knee and a pencil behind his ear. And as an added bonus, the wind had subsided.
He stretched and laced his fingers behind his neck. The prairie scene at twilight was truly something. Mountains purpled the horizon, with the fainter outline of Devil’s Coulee close by. That was where the nests were, and tomorrow he would actually see a dinosaur egg!
Yeah, dinosaur egg. And he was the professional artist. They would be expecting big things of him. He was setting himself up for a major embarrassment.
Exactly what did a Hypacrosaurus look like? Sure, he could draw his impression of one, but would it satisfy the experts around here? They knew. He would probably get some detail horribly wrong, and they’d all laugh at him.
Adam decided he had to forget about dinosaurs and draw what he saw, so he began to sketch. The colours were so soft and spellbinding that he was glad he hadn’t brought his pastels — he would never be able to capture those subtle hues on paper. A pink-and-golden haze transformed everything with a delicate glow. Tents, water barrels, bicycles, a dusty Jeep, makeshift clotheslines — all seemed ethereal, impossible to capture. He turned the page and started to draw the landscape the way it had appeared when the dinosaurs were here.
Intermittently, over vast periods of time, mountains heave and grow, spewing enormous quantities of dust and rubble into the air. The debris settles, and streams and rivers overflow as they carry it toward the sea, depositing sand and mud on the flat flood plains. The sea grows and shrinks over the millennia. Streams widen, join other streams, form meandering rivers bordered by swamps.
The land becomes dotted with ponds and green with vegetation. Dense forests of giant conifers — swamp cypress, redwood, sequoia, and china fir — block out the sun. Lush mosses and ferns are everywhere.
