I drive slowly along the coast; the Bering Sea is silvery and only tiny waves lap at the sand.  I pass a great stretch of inland water over a narrow bridge, and three locomotives from another age are left to rust in the swaying coastal grasses.

It’s these grasses I’ve come for.  Well, I came to see these grasses because of a poo from Oregon.  Not just any poo, a very, very old poo.

This spring, scientists announced they had discovered extraordinary human feces in the Paisley caves, near Summer Lake in Southeastern Oregon.  The poo was carbon-dated to 14,300 years, and DNA analysis provides a link to East Asia and Siberia.  The discovery is stunning – it is the oldest confirmed human genetic evidence in the New World.
The find means a lot to my own quest, largely because my search has kept leading me back to the barrage of recent paradigm-shifting science about how Indians came to the new world, and the breadth and scope of their civilizations.

In the evening, I park the Jeep on the side of the road and take to the fields by foot.

The find in Oregon may not be linked to the later flow of people into the new world. The evidence may not tell much.  The evidence may lead me nowhere.  But finding things on your own means collecting scraps; finding things on your own is the slow process of travel.