From Mammoths to People
by Stuart Murch

Alaska is not the first state that comes to mind when many think of mammoths, what most people think of is Texas. Jennifer Barnes, a student of anthropology at Texas State who is spending her summer working in Alaska, helped unearth a mammoth in Texas.
         Jennifer spent her childhood wanting to become an anthropologist. She grew up near an archeological site in Austin, Texas where she spent here summers working. “At the site they discovered evidence of European settlers, cowboys and indians, those kinds of things, going all the way back to people who came down during the ice age,” Jennifer said. They also found a mammoth, an ice age animal that closely resembles an elephant.
         In short, anthropologists study people, but anthropology is a broad subject that can incorporate just about anything having to do with people and their habits. Anthropologists study people who live anywhere; they study people in cities, people in the jungle, and even biological anthropology.
         Jennifer is spending her summer in Alaska working at a flying charter. She came to Alaska looking for a job because there was so little work where she was living. She first came to Alaska two years ago and decided to come again and see what work she could find. Another added perk of moving to Alaska is the change of scenery and weather. During the summer in Texas the temperature is in the hundreds, in Alaska it’s around 70 depending on where you are staying. In Texas it’s usually dry and very hot, in Alaska the weather can change drastically from one minute to the next.
         Working at a flying charter Jennifer sees some interesting people go through. One such example of this is an old lady she met one day. “She was just so determined that she was going to see these bears before she died,” Jennifer said. To accomplish her goal this woman brought her son and daughter-in-law all the way from New Jersey to come and search Alaska for bears. According to Jennifer the people who come through the charter are “tourists with a lot of money.”
         The world works in mysterious ways and you can find interesting things in unexpected places. You can go to school and learn to study people but the real learning comes when you are out in the world interacting with real people. The most mundane things like finding a job for the summer can become an adventure where you meet very interesting people. In the end people are all you have in the world, and these people have amazing stories to tell, if you are willing to listen.