Ten-year-old Liam gives fossil-hunting a try.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I’d like squatting in the dirt all day long under the hot Montana sun, chipping away at dirt or at a rock wall with my dino-hammer. PaleoWorld warned me when I signed up: “This is not a tour.” They weren’t kidding. If one doesn’t like heat, bugs, dirt, thundershowers, squatting, sitting on rocks, or hammering until your arm falls off, then maybe a visit to an air-conditioned dinosaur museum would be a better choice.

Some people didn’t tolerate it too well; after five minutes of chip-chip-chipping with the ol’ sweat drip-drip-dripping, they’d sit and yak with their neighbor, or check their watch to see if it was lunchtime yet. Not me, man. Turns out, fossil-hunter blood flows through my veins. I was content to dig for eight hours a day, heat or not, fueled by the anticipation of discovery.

Violators have been warned!

At first, the discoveries were modest: croc teeth and croc skin (called scute), dino dung (coprolite), small therapod teeth, mini-vertebrae, fish scales, weathered fossil bone, hadrosaur teeth, tortoise shell, and pieces of triceritops frill. But then came the day when we went to one of Jessica’s must-watch microsites.

Now Jessica Martin is PaleoWorld’s intrepid, ever-patient paleontologist and field leader. For the past three years, she had been dutifully keeping an eye on this area as it was sloughing off large pieces of rib bone. Three times a year she scouted the area, looking for the source — the dinosaur embedded in a sedimentary layer, eroding off bits of bone as it gradually became exposed and weathered. . . .

So on this day, while prospecting, I spotted a bone sticking out of a hillside and sounded the dinosaur-call. Jessica hurried over to the spot and, while clinging to the side of the hill, announced that it was, indeed, fossil bone. She called for her tools. The excitement was palpable. Would the bone continue into the hillside, or was it just a little piece temporarily embedded in the surface on its gravitational journey to the bottom? Jessica chipped away at the hillside while I stood alongside. At 10 inches the bone was still going strong. At 14 inches, still going. Finally, at a whopping 20 inches, the bone came to its natural end. Ecstatic and anticipating a soon-to-be-completely-exposed dinosaur, we named our discovery, Judy.  We even held a little Judy-celebration party which consisted of big smiles, plenty of woo-hoos, and the dancing of jigs. (Although identification is not yet absolute, we believe the bone to belong to a carnivore. A BIG carnivore!)

The next day, which was to be my final day, we precariously dove back into the hillside with our rock hammers and excitement, officially creating site #4 for PaleoWorld. Seven of us chipped and hammered away until the opening was so large we could stand in it. In the course of the day we uncovered a perfectly preserved tooth belonging, again, to a BIG carnivore! Possibly and hopefully, the same one! It was a thrilling end to what, I hope, is only the beginning. . . . I’ll keep tabs on the team and on “Judy” through their daily logs at www.paleoworld.org (click “2010 Field Investigation” in the upper left corner).

Not all treasures are millions of years old!

Dino-hunters come in all sizes and ages

Hannah preps a fossil for removal from the field

This happened most recently while researching my book, The Case of the Terrible T. rex, book six in my Doyle and Fossey, Science Detectives mysteries series. I was neck-deep researching paleontology, including compiling a list of museums of natural history, and places where kids could go on summer dinosaur digs. As I investigated the dino-digs, I thought, I want to do that . . .

So here I am on the Levrick Homestead, thirty miles north of Jordan, Montana. Which is to say, in the middle of nowhere. This morning I packed sunglasses, sunblock, water bottle, TP, rain gear, camera and video equipment and headed off with a team of paleontologists, students, and amateur bone diggers like myself. In good spirits, we bumped our way along rutted tracks into the far north of Hell Creek basin, where some of the finest dinosaur fossils have been discovered, including the first Tyrannosaurus rex ever found in the world. (Prior to that, we never knew T. rexes existed!)

With picks in hand, we went to work on one of the excavation sites. For a while it was nothing but the soft thuds of our picks. As our intrepid leader, Jessica says, “There’s something about the sound of picks hammering in the early morning.” It’s a musical melody that rings of adventure. You never know what you will find . . .

Every now and then someone would stop and say, “I think I found something.” Sometimes it was nothing more than a rock. Sometimes a rather nondescript fossilized bone. But throughout the day, covered with dust as the Montana sun bore down on us, we unearthed mini-treasures millions of years old: fish scales, a rib bone, a toe bone, turtle shell, dinosaur teeth and dinosaur dung. . . .

I’ll be here for the next seven days. I’ll try to blog, but I’ll admit, I’m pretty wiped by the time we get back to camp. (Plus the Internet is touch-and-go.) In the meantime, I’ll keep playing that musical melody– discovering history, and having an adventure of a lifetime.

Not long ago, I asked my local writing community for book donations to help orphans in Tanzania. (Orphans Africa, a non-profit 501 (c) 3 charity which I co-founded, was having its first gala dinner and auction and we needed auction items.) Two days after I broadcast my plea, I received some beautiful autographed books. That was only the beginning. Over the next few weeks, autographed books flooded into my local post office, eliciting raised eyebrows from the postmaster as I walked out each day, arms piled high. Picture books, novels for children and adults, self-help books, inspirational books, chapter books for young readers . . . the writers of the Pacific Northwest sent their very best. Their generosity literally brought me to tears.

So this is my official group hug. To each of you who gave, thank you and God bless you. And for those of you who attended the auction and purchased book baskets, wow! We raised over $17,000 at our auction, enough to nearly complete a kitchen and dining hall at our nursery and primary boarding school for orphans! Even now, our official group hug is reaching across the ocean to embrace children who otherwise wouldn’t have a chance at a quality education. It is essential to their well-being to know that people care about them.

The following authors generously donated books. As an extended group hug, I invite you to visit their websites, peek around, and post your accolades and appreciation. They deserve it.

Kobbie Alamo

Andrea Torrey Balsara

Anjali Banerjee

Carole Stevens Bibisi

David Bouchard

Martha Brockenbrough

Royce Buckingham

Dia Calhoun

Janet Lee Carey

Nina Durfee

Marilou Flinkman

Heather Vogel Frederick

Kathryn Galbraith

Ron Hirschi

Peg Kehret

Judith Laik

Kirby Larson

Margaret Lippert

Susan Marlow

Clare Hodgson Meeker

Gretchen Olson

Craig Orback (illustrator)

Terry Persun

Colleen Reece

Joni Sensel

After weeks of scurrying around trying to get everything ready, I am still scurrying around at the eleventh hour. I have yet to gather all my vital paperwork, or organize anything. I then need to cram a mountain of stuff into my suitcases and backpack (sit on them first), and then drive the two hours to Tacoma, sleep, and fly out in the morning. So, please understand that this will be a shortie.

I’ll be doing Orphans Africa project work in Tanzania through August 13, at which time I’ll fly from Dar es Salaam to Arusha to climb Kilimanjaro. You can stay tuned to our expedition’s progress via a cybercast at www.AlpineAscents.com/kilimanjaro-cybercast.asp. Each day there will be a summary of what we’ve accomplished, where we’re at and how we’re faring, plus brief daily dispatches given by the team via phone and then relayed through the cybercast. (FYI — the lack of a current cybercast does not indicate a problem with the team. Mom . . . don’t panic.)

Thanks to all of you who’ve sent me your well wishes and who are offering your prayerful support for me, my OA team, and the expedition. I am truly humbled. You are the best, and I love you all.

Michele

But the real reason has been brewing for more than forty years. When I was a little girl, for some reason, the name “Africa” seemed to quiver with mystery. It was remote, exotic, and foreboding. . . . I’m not alone in my mysterious imaginings. Historically, Africa was known as the “dark continent,” not because of the dark skin of the inhabitants, but because the interior was so inaccessible that the Western World really didn’t know much about it beyond its boundaries. Though calling Africa the “dark continent” today is definitely not PC, and though the interior of Africa has long since been explored and exploited, the continent is still shrouded in mystery, conjuring up images of adventure, danger, and “other world-ness”. At least it did for me as a child.

Today, Africa is a continent in turmoil. I could go on and on about its troubles, but I’ll just mention one here that is germane. Due to AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases, there are currently over twenty million orphans in Africa. It is estimated that by the year 2010, there will be fifty million orphans. Africa is in the throes of a vast humanitarian crisis– a crisis that will only worsen unless the world awakens to its cry.

I first visited Africa in 2007. I’d agreed to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a friend of mine, Connie. But while we made plans, checked schedules, and tightened the straps of our backpacks, something kept bothering me. How could I just waltz into Africa (Tanzania), climb the mountain, and then leave with only a “thank you very much”? Didn’t I have a responsibility to effect positive change? Didn’t I have a responsibility, as Emerson wrote, “to make one life breathe easier”? This was the continent that had beckoned me all my life. Perhaps there was a deeper reason for that beckoning, a purpose beyond curiously fathoming its mysteries.

I began to search for volunteer opportunities — you know the kind: fly in for a couple of weeks, teach at a school, sing songs, clap, smile a lot, and then show’s over. The schools were pristine, the uniforms pressed and gleaming-white, the students smiling and healthy. While this was all well and wonderful, I felt a deeper calling. After more searching, digging the dregs of the internet, we discovered a small, grassroots organization called the “Marilyn Orphans Projects Foundation,” founded by Zambians and Tanzanians. This ragtag group of nobodies went around building schools for orphans, staffing them with volunteer teachers, and putting orphans (yatima) in the care of kindly widows (wajani). This ragtag group had nothing and yet they were making a difference. Their vision, their passion, moved me to tears. I signed on to volunteer and managed to talk my husband, Carl, and my friend, Liza, into going with me. By this time, I no longer desired to climb the mountain.

We spent two weeks there. No running water, no electricity, no clean uniforms, no nothing except the extreme need of the orphans and the heartfelt goodness of the adults who were trying to help. We came home exhausted, but on fire. They needed our help and we were going to give it.

Since 2007, the three of us have founded a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit charity called Orphans Africa (www.orphansafrica.org).We have helped to construct three schools, each at various stages of development, educating several hundred students. In just a few short weeks, the dormitories will be finished in one of the schools, and we will then be able to house forty orphans. We have sent hundreds of books and countless school supplies and equipment. We’ve planted hundreds of trees on 80 acres donated by the Tanzanian government and will soon break ground on a self-sustaining K-12 school where orphans will learn agriculture and animal husbandry. Someday the orphans will be able to raise food to put on their table, while selling the excess in the market. Someday it is even our dream to send the most academically inclined orphans to university, and others to our on-site vocational training school, to help them become productive leaders and members of a struggling society. We have big plans.

In a few short weeks, we leave again — Carl, Liza, and me (Connie’s coming too — but later). This time we’ll travel to interior Tanzania, near Zambia, where it is even more primitive. There is little infrastructure, no medicine, no running water, and no electricity. Communication is by word of mouth, by bicycle, or if you’re lucky, a rickety car. Once there, we’ll meet with community leaders and revisit our strategies for the orphans. It is our hope to see new buildings rise out of the dust, witness hope spring anew on tired faces, and to see lives transformed. It’s the highest mountain I could possibly climb.

I’m tickled to announce that — woo-hoo! — the entire series of DOYLE & FOSSEY: SCIENCE DETECTIVES is being released in paperback by Sterling Publishing. THE CASE OF THE GASPING GARBAGE and THE CASE OF THE MOSSY LAKE MONSTER will be released on June 2 (that’s next week!), while THE CASE OF THE GRAVEYARD GHOST and THE CASE OF THE BARFY BIRTHDAY will be released on September 1.

My fellow scientists, these are not merely reprints. These are new improved editions, with new colorful covers. Trust me on this one. I’m soooo excited!

And in case those four books aren’t enough to keep you happily experimenting, THE CASE OF THE CROOKED CARNIVAL is with the illustrator right now and will be coming out next Spring. I’m currently writing THE CASE OF THE CREEPY CAMPOUT, which is due to be released in Fall 2010. So, tons of DOYLE & FOSSEY stuff is coming your way, guaranteed to keep all you young scientists up to your ears in bubbling test tubes and baffling mysteries!

1:30-2:15 PM: Mockingbird Books, 7220 Woodlawn Ave NE, Seattle, WA, (206) 518-5886.

4:00-5:00 PM: Orca Books, 509 4th Ave E, Olympia, WA, (360) 352-0123

It looks like it will be another gorgeous day here in the Pacific Northwest, and I’d love to see you there!

So tomorrow at my designated time, I’ll switch off all my lights, TV, computer, etc., light a candle or two, and simply enjoy an unplugged evening with my husband and kitty. Maybe we’ll tell ghost stories. Or maybe he’ll play the guitar and we’ll sing.  Maybe we’ll take a stroll outside and see if we can find the big dipper. It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

I invite you to share Earth Hour with me, wherever you’re at. Drop me a line about what you plan to do or how it went. And wherever you’re at, I’ll be thinking of you.

Click here for more information about Earth Hour.

For those of you who know me personally, you won’t be surprised when I say that I tend to be a very private person. Disclosing information about myself in a public forum is really a new experience, and there were times when I had to push myself to continue telling my story. I was surprised, therefore, to realize how much fun it was. Storytelling is a rewarding process, whether I’m telling a fictional tale, or recounting my life. It is my intention that through the regular writing of this blog, that I will continue to open myself to telling my story, to expressing my thoughts and opinions about a variety of issues and literature, and to interacting with my readers.

One of my favorite quotes in all the world is by renowned author Ursula K. LeGuin: “It’s good to have an end to journey towards, but it the journey that matters, in the end.” LeGuin reminds me to step back and simply enjoy the journey. It’s the difference between hurrying along the road, desperately striving to reach the “end,” and truly looking at the companions who walk beside you, hearing the sound of your footsteps, and smelling the aroma of the wheat fields as you pass. That’s the kind of journey I want to take. So, I invite you to walk beside me — through the twists and valleys, wherever it leads us.