When the web started really taking shape, we imagined it as a place that would democratize the flow of information, making journalism and knowledge and information-gathering that much easier, that much more accessible and accurate.

But something about the brave new information age – hoax emails, news designed for specific subcultures of our society, incendiary blog journalism - has, in some ways, made information less informative.  For me, the idea of traveling and recording what I actually see is the anti-thesis of consuming a cornucopia of other people’s information.  Instead of reading about it, I can see it for myself, I can ask my own questions, and observe it for myself.
Is such a process fruitless?  When I first started searching for the origins of this stone tool three years ago, I realized it was important to do so through the tools of travel, not through books, libraries and computers.   

I realize that the answer to this stone tool’s origins could be delivered to me in a book.  But Carl Sagan said it best. “When you make the finding yourself - even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light - you’ll never forget it.” And to see the light, we step out the door, and go our own way.

Early morning speaks with hail and snow, and I haul north up I-5 into Washington State.  I am to meet Troy, a Washington native, at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge.  He had called me a couple days ago, and wanted to make sure I would meet him at the Cathlapotle Plankhouse, a reconstruction of a Columbia basin longhouse.