Chapter 2

I definitely owe a lot to Dr. Parker. He hired me when I was eighteen and in my last month of high school. At that point in my life, I had two hobbies--surfing and art. Okay, that statement isn’t entirely correct, I had four hobbies. The third was trying to get laid as often as possible.

My fourth hobby was a more recent addition--scuba diving. Danny, one of my two high school surf buddies, was also an avid diver. Unfortunately for him, his family didn’t dive nearly as often as Danny wanted to and his parents insisted that he have a certified dive partner, severely limiting how often he could dive. I told him that I would have volunteered to learn and to be his diving partner, but my family couldn’t afford the lessons or the expensive equipment. Since Danny’s parents were diving enthusiasts and had all the necessary equipment, they agreed to loan me most of the equipment. All I had to buy was a mask, snorkel, dive vest, and fins. I already had the wetsuit I wore when surfing.

First, however, they required me to pass a diving safety certification class. Fortunately for both Danny and me, they paid for the class, eager to find a competent dive buddy for their son so he’d quit pestering them.

Anytime I wasn’t busy doing something else, I had my ubiquitous sketchpad out. Sometimes I used pencil, sometimes colored pencils, and sometimes chalk or pastels. I thought about learning to paint until I discovered how expensive everything I’d need would be. Fortunately, my high school art teacher provided what I needed to start painting, sure that I’d end up making a living as an artist. He was constantly pushing me to improve, and art was the only class I really cared about. I did the minimum necessary to pass my other classes just so I could graduate, but that was it.

Surfing and diving were mainly limited to weekends, holidays, and nearly every day during the summer. I cut classes to surf one day when I was fifteen. The news reported that the waves were twelve feet high and the wind was blowing offshore, holding the waves up. What surfer in their right mind could pass up that combination? I went with Danny and Walt, my two surf buddies. We had a bodacious time! Then I got home. My parents were decidedly unhappy about my decision to skip school. Dad took my board away for a month. To this day, I have no idea where he hid it, and he still just smirks when I ask about it. I know it wasn’t at our house because I looked everywhere! Twice!

Unbeknownst to me, in December of my senior year, Dr. Parker advertised for two sketch artists. His wives (yeah, I had to scratch my head about that) could no longer keep up with the workload. To apply, you had to send two recent sketches. Since I wasn’t aware that he was looking, I didn’t apply, and didn’t know that Mom sent him the last sketchbook I’d filled, one of over twenty. She still maintains that she just knew I’d be chosen.

Independently, my art teacher sent two pieces that I’d turned in for assignments. Imagine my surprise when I received the phone call in April letting me know that I’d been selected for a position I hadn’t applied for and didn’t even know existed!

To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of Dr. Parker or his work, not even the immensely popular books his family had published. While I was a proficient reader, I didn’t spend much time reading and my grades reflected the lack of time I spent reading and effort I put into my schoolwork. My grades were bad enough that I’m not even sure I would have been accepted at the local community college--if I’d bothered to apply.

When I spoke with Dr. Parker, I made sure that he knew I would barely graduate from high school. He assured me that he already knew and wasn’t worried, explaining that he was selecting an artist, not a student. He did tell me that he could probably arrange for me to take classes at the college if I ever decided that I wanted to attend, especially art classes.

I was one of two artists Dr. Parker selected; Steve was the other. Oh, yeah, I’m Johnny Campbell.

When Dr. Parker explained the process necessary for us to be able to create the sketches, I was sure he was tripping and became a little leery about working for him. He assured me that I’d be able to remember every detail of the villages I saw for several days after my visit and could revisit the places if necessary.

That night, I was sound asleep when I had the oddest dream. I dreamed that I was in what must have been a cave with some sort of elevated stone seating in front of me, like I was standing right in front of the seating in an old Roman coliseum. The dim light was provided by torches--not flashlight torches, but actual burning stuff on the end of a stick torches. I felt like I was in an ancient court and the cowled, shadowy figures in the raised seats facing me were judges. While nothing was said, I was terrified while standing there, feeling that my life to that point was being judged as if I’d just died. They didn’t ask me anything, but the way they all watched me silently for what seemed like an eternity was freaky.

Then Dr. Parker suddenly appeared next to me, just popping in like a magician. One member of what he had told me he called “the Tribunal” spoke to him. “Your choice has great potential. You have chosen well,” was all that was said, and then I was suddenly back in my bed, asleep.

I sought Dr. Parker first thing the next morning to ask about the dream and found that Steve had arrived first. Even though Dr. Parker had explained to us the day before about the process of meeting the Tribunal and how the Tribunal operated, he went over it again. While I still had a hard time believing it, having experienced it, it was just as difficult not to believe it.

Dr. Parker explained that, from then on, whenever one of us needed to draw an ancient community, we would need to speak with the Tribunal, either while we slept or meditated. If the ancient people of the community we wanted to visit approved, we’d be able to visit and then remember what we saw well enough to draw or paint it.

“Can anyone communicate with the Tribunal?” I asked, even though I was still questioning in my mind if it was real.

“I have to recommend them to the Tribunal first. Then the Tribunal meets them and decides if they are worthy,” he explained.

“How do they decide that?” Steve asked.

“No idea,” Dr. Parker replied while shrugging.

Given my lifestyle during high school, I had to wonder just what the Tribunal’s criteria were if they had found me acceptable.

I ended up making dozens of sketches of each of the towns and cities I was assigned in the twenty-three ancient cultures I was to help with, many of which I’d never heard of before. I recognized the names of a few of the cultures from my high school history class, but few or no details about said cultures. After my first sketch, I decided to read about each ancient civilization before visiting it so that I knew what I was looking at when I visited them and what details were unique to each civilization so I could include them in the sketches.

By Halloween, I realized that I’d become a history junkie! My new passion for history came close to rivalling that of surfing. Unfortunately, the closest surf was a two-hour drive--each way, and the surf wasn’t very inspiring. East Coast surfing didn’t compare favorably to Southern California surfing.

When Dr. Parker learned about my newfound fascination with history, he offered to help enroll me into the college. I laughed and reminded him about my 2.17 GPA. Undeterred, he arranged for me to take a battery of tests. Let’s just say that I was dumbfounded when a smiling Dr. Parker told me that my IQ was 167!

True to his word, I was accepted as a student, and even received two substantial scholarships. What little the scholarships didn’t cover was easy for me to pay for from my earnings. I called home and told Dad. When Dad told Mom that I’d been accepted to attend the college and had scholarships, I’m pretty sure I heard her excited squeal all the way from San Diego on the opposite coast! The college let me work towards a degree in archaeology with a minor in art. Now that I was interested in learning, I found the schoolwork to be easy, which left me plenty of time to continue my work.

Even before starting my first semester--the spring semester--Dr. Parker asked me to work with the people producing an animated movie combining their first two books, “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream in Mayapan,” and “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream in Chichen Itza.”

Since their contract with Dr. Parker required the producers to keep the movie as historically accurate as possible, the Hollywood types needed accurate drawings to work from. Well, they said they wanted accurate drawings. Three times, they complained about my drawings, saying that they didn’t depict what they wanted to show in the movie. Dr. Parker intervened each time, insisting that my work did accurately portray what life was like for the Maya back then.

“Thank you, Dr. Parker,” I told him when we were far enough away from the others.

“No need to thank me, you’re doing exactly what I want you to do. I was pretty sure that, if left to their own devices, the movie would be nothing like what life was like back then. Hell, I’m surprised they haven’t tried to include UFOs,” he replied.

I was grateful to learn that my contribution to the movie would be limited to providing the initial sketches. While I enjoy drawing, I’m pretty sure I don’t have the patience necessary to be an animator, redrawing the same scene dozens or even hundreds of times with only a slight variation between them to show movement, even if computers do much of the work for you. I sketched the main city and nearby towns. Then I sketched specific places in the city, like the marketplace, as well as several homes belonging to “ordinary people.”

I also provided portrait sketches of nearly a hundred people so the animators could choose one for each character in the movie. We almost had another row about the clothing they wanted to use. What they tried to use was what the Aztecs wore, not the Maya. When I explained that, the animation director sighed and threw his hands in the air before stomping off. The error was corrected, however.

I was asked for more sketches as work on the movie progressed. Sometimes they wanted a view from a different angle. Sometimes they wanted a sketch of how something worked. Sometimes they wanted a sketch of a different venue, like a city gate. With what they were paying me, I was happy to oblige.

Despite the occasional disagreements about historical accuracy, they specifically asked for me a year later when they started work on the animated movie about the lives of an Aztec boy and girl, and then the following year for the movie about an Incan boy and girl. I’d been surprised at how quickly the movies were completed. I assumed it would take a couple of years to complete the first movie. What I didn’t know at the time was how many animators they had working on the film, or how much of the work was done using computers.

There was also the fact that they wanted to piggyback on the continuing popularity of the “Perchance to Dream” books.

Between the work I did on the three movies and my continuing work at school doing art for books, my bank account grew quickly. When I earned my BS in archaeology after only seven semesters, my bank account was quite robust.

Since I was earning so much and had few expenses, I continued my SCUBA training each summer, gradually taking every class available, even some I thought I’d never need--like the Nitrox class. I also bought my own top-of-the-line scuba gear.

The summer after my first semester of college, I flew home and visited my family for a week before driving south to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where I took their one-hundred-hour course for scientific divers. The course was primarily to certify divers who would use scuba while working for or doing research for Scripps Institute of Oceanography or for UC San Diego, but the techniques and information applied to all scientific divers.

I helped with a fourth movie, too, although it never had the same worldwide audience as the first three. Dr. Parker asked me to work with Kai, a Hawaiian student who was making a short, animated, film about the early Hawaiian culture. I did the work in my spare time and during the summer after my second year of college. Knowing that Kai and his family were funding the movie, rather than have him pay me, I requested a small percentage of any profit the film made after production costs had been recovered. While I hadn’t really expected to receive anything, I now make about ten dollars a year from it. It doesn’t sell much outside of Hawaii.

Initially, there were numerous complaints from native Hawaiians when they learned that a Haole (non-native--pronounced Howlee) was doing the sketches. They were suspicious of my work and my motivation, worried that I would try to depict native Hawaiians in a bad light. Kai quickly put an end to their complaints. He did an interview with a writer from the Honolulu newspaper. During the interview, he showed the reporter the first sketch he had asked me to do. Unbeknownst to me, his family already had a two-hundred-year-old drawing of the same small village. When they were published side-by-side, mine showed greater detail, but everything was accurate. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I learned that his grandmother was the heir to the Hawaiian throne--should there ever be a Hawaiian Monarch again. Once she approved of my work, the protests ended.

I spent that summer in Hawaii working with Kai, living as a guest of his family. You’d better believe that I did a lot of my work at night. I spent as much time as possible during daylight hours surfing or scuba diving with Kai since he was also a big fan of surfing and diving. His two sisters and several of his cousins usually accompanied us. One of his uncles ran a dive charter and let us tag along since we were both certified. We did a cave dive, dove on two shipwrecks, and a wrecked WWII Corsair plane. We even made one dive in a shark cage! One time in a shark cage was definitely enough for me after that damn hammerhead shark tried to break through the bars to eat me! It bashed into the cage hard enough that I was worried for a second that he’d break it.

Kai’s cute fourteen-year-old sister Kiana had been one of my earliest detractors, complaining loudly about her brother hiring a Haole for the project. She’d stand off to the side while I worked and glare at me. Once my work was accepted, though, she quit giving me dirty looks.

I made a smart-ass comment to her when she finally stopped complaining. “I’m glad that my Princess finally approves of my work,” I said as I took her hand and kissed the back of her wrist. She stared at me, open-mouthed while everyone else laughed.

Kai told me a week later that I’d managed to do the impossible. His sister Kiana had never cared that she was technically part of the Hawaiian Royal Family, although she was waaaaayyyyy down the line of succession. Their grandmother had been worried because so many members of the younger generation didn’t seem to care--including Kai. My comment had hit home, and Kiana had suddenly insisted on learning everything she could about the Royal Family and the old customs and traditions.

Aside from her innocent flirting with me after that, I almost had trouble once. We’d been surfing and were waiting for Kai to finish his last ride when six big native Hawaiian guys approached. They thought I was trying to pick up one of the girls. Native Hawaiians take a dim view of non-natives dating a native girl, but I’ve learned that’s common in a lot of different cultures. Fortunately, Kiana explained that we were simply waiting for Kai, and he confirmed it when he reached shore.

The rest of my summers were spent in summer school, working for the Parkers, or with the Hollywood film company. I’d fly home at the beginning of the summer for a week to see my family. Even my older sister was impressed with both my grades and the work I was doing.

Several of the classes Dr. Parker suggested that I take covered photography and videography. He explained that I’d have to go on at least one dig, and a trained photographer was always a welcome addition. He also knew that I’d completed my scuba certifications, and a trained photographer and videographer would be especially valuable during underwater expeditions. My cave diving certification and experience might come in handy, too. He reminded me that, any time I was on a research expedition, in or out of the water, I’d need to document what I, and others, saw and found, hence photography, especially underwater photography.

The summer right after earning my BS in Archaeology, I went on my first dig--in Ecuador. It was hot. It was muggy. And I had a blast--mostly. I finally had a chance to help physically unearth the secrets of an ancient civilization, possibly even one that I’d watched for hours as I sketched scenes from everyday life in three small Inca villages. One of the ancient Inca villages I’d sketched was less than eighty km from our dig. This location, however, was suspected to be pre-Inca.

Monday

The team from our school consisted of fourteen students--five girls and nine guys. Seven of the students had been on a previous dig. Dr. Parker put Tina Shaw, who had been on two previous digs, in charge of our student interns. Doctor Watts from Florida was in overall charge of the expedition. He had asked Dr. Parker if he had or knew anyone certified for cave diving. That’s how I ended up being assigned to this team instead one of the two other available digs. My scuba gear was carefully crated, along with my underwater still and video cameras, and underwater lights. I also had all the necessary extras like spare batteries, solar panels to recharge everything, an air compressor to fill my tanks, and even an underwater ground penetrating radar (GPR) unit. They promised to have a generator I could use to power the compressor. The money I’d made working for the Hollywood film studio had allowed me to buy decent, although not Hollywood quality, cameras.

Dr. Parker supplied a checklist of the clothing and personal items we should take. He even generously paid for any necessities the interns couldn’t afford. Eventually, the crates with my gear and the rest of our group’s gear, as well as our luggage, were loaded in the cargo bay of our chartered jet and we were airborne, headed for Miami. There, we picked up Doctor Watts and the three Florida interns accompanying him. Once their gear was loaded and the plane refueled, we were wheels up and headed for Quito.

Even though Dr. Watts was in charge of the expedition, he only had three interns from his school with him because the others had chosen different digs.

I must admit that the final approach to the Quito airport had me on the edge of my seat. It was afternoon and a cloud cover hid everything at first. Then, we descended into the clouds. When we finally cleared the clouds, the ground a thousand feet below us was an uneven patchwork of green fields.

We passed through several small clouds hanging below the overcast we had just passed through, and then banked into a narrow valley which we followed for several more minutes. We flew over two small villages while seeming to remain at the same altitude.

Then, right in front of us, was a narrow, deep, canyon carved by a river. When the canyon veered left, we continued straight, headed for a manmade plateau with the airport’s runway.

After exiting the plane, we gathered our luggage once it had passed customs inspection. The rest of our gear would be collected and delivered when it had cleared customs. By the time we made it outside to where we were to meet our ride, it was obvious that we were at an elevation nearly three km high. Each of us was breathing harder than usual.

We finally reached our hotel aboard the hired bus more than four hours after landing. Even though it was dark by then, I was surprised at the lack of traffic on the streets when we finally reached Ecuador’s capital. I’m not saying that there weren’t many vehicles, but the number of vehicles was nowhere near commensurate with what I expected for a city of two million people. The most common vehicles were taxis and buses. The other thing I noted was that pedestrian traffic outnumbered vehicular traffic by nearly ten-to-one.

We arrived late enough that, once we secured our luggage in our rooms and ate a late dinner, we crashed for the night.

Tuesday

Dr. Watts spent the day finalizing arrangements for our transportation to the dig. He also confirmed that our gear had been cleared by customs and loaded into the pickup trucks for the trip to the dig. Then, he met the three police officers who would provide security for us at the dig site.

While he did that, several of us played tourist, visiting the old part of the city where I bought native items for my parents and older sister and paid to have them boxed and shipped to their homes.

Those who didn’t go with us visited La Mitad del Mundo, a small village twenty-two miles north of Quito. The name means “the middle of the world” in Spanish. They don’t call it the equator since the Spanish word for equator is Ecuador, and it could be confusing.

That night I dreamed that I was sitting on a hillside and watching an ancient village, even though I didn’t have an assignment to sketch it.

Wednesday

We were up well before sunrise and ate a quick breakfast. We boarded the bus again and our short convoy lurched forward just before four o’clock, still two hours before sunrise. We stopped in some of the smaller villages along our route, allowing us to stretch our legs and buy something to eat or drink. It also gave us a chance to visit a bathroom while the vehicles were refueling. I bought a few items in the first village we stopped in. Hoping it wasn’t too small already, I bought a traditional outfit for a baby girl for my sister’s newborn daughter from a woman in the marketplace. Another purchase was an atlatl, although the ancient Incas used an estolica, which was a slightly different weapon than what I bought.

Since I had gotten interested in ancient civilizations, I’d become intrigued by how they did things. Copying their techniques as much as possible, I’d made five self-bows, finally producing one that worked. I bought cheap practice arrows at a sporting goods store when I completed my first bow. I scrapped that bow a few days later but kept the arrows. With my second attempt, the bow broke the first time I drew it fully, resulting in one broken end smacking me in the face and leaving a good scratch.

Three attempts later, I finally had a working bow. Technically, all but the broken one worked, but I’d have to be within ten or fifteen feet of my prey with the first bow. With the final bow, I could hit something sixty feet away with enough force to bring it down--not that I ever hunted with it. The only thing I hunted was the bullseye of a target attached to the college’s straw-bale archery backstops.