By Grant Clark
Dr. Ulrike Krotscheck was anticipating 50 or so artifacts, but the archaeological dig, which hasn’t even been completed, has surprisingly produced more than 200. The pieces, all from the Bush Homestead in Tumwater, have been delicately cleaned and now rest in neat rows on metal sheet racks in the back of a lab at The Evergreen State College.
The dig is like one giant jigsaw puzzle. Krotscheck and her team of 15 Evergreen students and four volunteers have spent their summer gathering all the pieces. Now it’s time to start putting things together with the hope that when it’s completed, some new light will shine on the history of Washington and Thurston County.
Krotscheck plucks one of the items off the sheet. It is a smooth piece of porcelain not even half an inch in size, featuring a portion of a maker’s mark on the back. It’s all she needs to place a timeframe and a value around the piece.
“You can tell from these pieces, they were a family of means,” Krotscheck says.
Dissecting the artifact’s history has begun.
Each piece present, every broken chunk of china, every weathered wedge of glassware, has a story. But it’s the individual charged with uncovering each item’s tale who actually has the most interesting story there.
Krotscheck, who received her master’s degree in Classical and Prehistoric Archaeology from the University of Heidelberg in Germany and her Ph.D. in Classics and Archaeology from Stanford, usually spends her summers digging around Europe. This year, however, she has traded in France and Spain for Tumwater where she and her troop are studying the George Washington Bush Farm – the original pioneer family in this area who first settled locally in 1845.
Archaeological digs are a delicate process. It takes time and patience to unearth the smallest of finds. It’s quite the meticulous process with all its details, but Krotscheck has uncovered the perfect way for her to recharge her batteries – running.
It wasn’t until she arrived in Palo Alto to begin pursuit of her Ph.D. that Krotscheck truly discovered the sport, and while she had never previously ascended beyond a casual jogger up to that point, the activity was the perfect remedy to tackle the high-pressure environment.
“I actually started running in grad school as a way to really gather my thoughts,” said Krotscheck, who has taught at Evergreen for seven years. “There’s an element of meditativeness to it because it’s a regular movement. It serves as both a way for me to personally de-stress and a way for me to think about my work all by myself, and come up with new ideas for research questions. And now it helps with my teaching.”
While it started off as a simple way to recharge her batteries, it turned out Krotscheck was actually extremely gifted at long-distance running.
“I’ve lost count,” Krotscheck declared when asked for the tally of completed marathons. “My friends figured it out for me and we believe it’s 17.”
That’s more than 445 miles. Or the equivalent to running from Olympia down across Oregon’s southern border and into California where you wouldn’t stop until you ran 10 miles south of Yreka. It’s a very long way even if you’re driving the distance, much less running it.
But, she was a natural right out of the gate. Her first marathon was the 2004 Nike Women’s Marathon, a difficult course even for veteran runners as it takes place in San Francisco and features numerous hills.
Krotscheck not only completed her inaugural 26.2 mile race, but her final running time qualified her for the Boston Marathon.
Her resume includes a second Nike Women’s Marathon, two California Internationals, a pair of Vancouver and British Columbia Marathons, three Victoria Marathons, a marathon in Missoula, Pike’s Peak in Colorado, a top 10 finish in the Portland Marathon, two Capitol City Marathons (where she finished second in 2009) and a victory in the Haulin Aspen Marathon in Bend, Oregon.
“It’s a long-drawn out preparation period,” Krotscheck says about the process for both running and conducting a dig. “You commit to race, or in the other case, submit an application to the Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. Once you do those things you’re committed to do it. And then you train. You start building all this information or running over an extended period of time. [At the Bush Homestead dig] I feel like now I’m in the middle of the race where I’m working very hard. I can see the finish line, but I’m sort of in the middle of what it was I was striving for.”
While the focus in Tumwater is on the past, Krotscheck has her sights equally set on the future. She has moved away from marathon running and into the world of ultrarunning.
“I used to be pretty fast but have changed gears and gone towards ultrarunning which is any kind of run that is longer than a marathon and usually on trails,” she said. “This is a new challenge for me. You go from trying to beat everyone else to essentially enjoying yourself in nature.”
She plans to run the Bunker to Bonneville 50K – a 31-mile trail run along the Columbia River Gorge – during Labor Day weekend, before tackling the Grand Canyon where she will do a 44-mile rim-to-rim-to run in October.
“I’m just doing it for my 40th birthday,” Krotscheck said about the Grand Canyon trail run which will feature a 14,000-foot evaluation gain and loss over its course.
She tuned up for her latest venture by winning the women’s division at the Beast of Big Creek Half-Marathon Trail Run on August 8.
“One of the things I love most about being in Olympia and a member of the Evergreen community is I get to volunteer for a lot of different events,” Krotscheck said. “I volunteer for a lot of children’s races because they are so excited. One of my favorite things about this dig site are the kids who come and they see something and say, ‘There’s a piece of glass. I’ve found something. Is this old?’ That kind of enthusiasm is really refreshing.”
The Bush Homestead dig will be finalized on August 27. Public tours are available in the afternoons on August 19 and 20. More insight can be found on the Evergreen blog related to the Bush Homestead project.
