Sundance

by Terri McFadden

The vast theater seemed large enough to accommodate all of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which was handy since that is where it was. But I was the only occupant. I sat quietly, shivering in the blasting AC, wondering if anyone else would show for the mid-week show. No one did. It was a lonely moment. The credits rolled.

How I landed in the far west on that summer evening was unexpected. For several years I had been working at Harvard’s zoology museum. That July word had gone out that a graduate student in paleontology needed an assistant – the one she’d planned on had broken a leg and it was too dangerous to do field work alone. Someone asked me if I was interested. I was.

At the time I was 43, married since I was 20 with 4 kids. A happy life, but not really a recipe for lots of excitement. A field trip to dinosaur country, assisting a paleontologist sounded too good to be true. All my life I had loved reading about dinosaurs. As a child, I hunted fossils. A friend loaned me his rock hammer, my husband bought me a broad-brimmed hat. I was ready to go.

The Paleontologist was a slim, fair-haired young women, earnest about her work with almost no conversation. For two weeks we ate together, traveled Wyoming together, shared a motel room and got along just fine – I read the maps and she drove. Several things were disappointing. We weren’t going to camp – the Paleontologist didn’t like roughing it. Worse we were looking for marine animals, not dinosaurs. Worst of all, for a week we didn’t find a single fossil.

A hundred million years ago that part of the continent was covered by a vast inland sea bordered by an earlier version of North America. My paleontologist was only interested in the remains of sea creatures called ammonites. During our days in the field I could only look with longing at the “red beds” in the distance – formations where hundreds of fossil dinosaurs had been found. Our goal was the grey-white limestone laid down in the Sundance Sea millions of years ago. For the first week, everywhere we went had already been mined for ammonites. Holes littered the ground at these known fossil beds. Finally, we were lucky and found a whole steep hillside – pay dirt. We spent two days with our rock hammers carefully digging out the huge mollusks, wrapping and hauling them to the SUV.

Now the Paleontologist had to also work at night recording her findings. That she was very easily distracted is what led me to the theater that night. The first scene of the movie opened: A paleontologist, a rock hammer, a fossilized claw. Watching Jurassic Park in that gigantic, empty theater was a surreal experience. The surround sound shook the room when T. rex ran and roared after the jeep. I jumped out of my skin when the raptors leaped over the counter toward the terrified children. Walking back to the motel through the dark, empty streets of Cheyenne was the bravest thing I’ve ever done. The next day those red-beds looked different to me. Dinosaurs once again danced in the sun.