It was by a benchmark.

There were several benchmarks along our route that I had hoped to stop in and check but, thanks to construction, we were running late. So I opted for just this one. A quick pull off the highway, open the gate, follow the faint two-track to the top of the rise, and there the mark was. Surrounded by dried boards of fallen survey tripods.

It was just after lunch, which had consisted of a delicious, and certainly unhealthy, Split Rock burger in Home on the Range. This is the roughly half-way point from Regional Town, and the boss had brought down the supplies and kits we would need for our CWD sampling next month.

200 baggies with small plastic sample containers, about the size and shape of contact lens cases, boxes of latex gloves, scalpel handles and boxes of scalpel blades, four tongs, four bottles of the carcinogenic, mutagenic, hallucinogenic sterilant, and 200 sets of small barcoded stickers so the hunter can track their results. Plus coolers and ice packs.

He apologized for forgetting paper towels.

Then suggested, nay, almost insisted we go into the cafe for lunch.

The boss is always eager to volunteer for these equipment supply trips. Took me only a couple times to figure out these were sanity trips to get him out of the office, and away from the phone.

And he likes Split Rock burgers.

So, after a pleasant lunch, concluded with questions by the tourist from Connecticutt who was looking for a place to fish, and after giving the heelers their pieces of Split Rock burger, we had headed home with a full truck.

And were now parked on top of a hill just south of the Oregon Trail. Gave the heeler sisters their much needed break and drag race, as I hoofed the final 50 meters to the benchmark. Was a little worried when they extended their normal racing distance, and disappeared over the rise. But they had their orange scarves on, and we were a decent distance from the highway. They were fine.

The mark had suffered some, though. The brass surface partly covered with large scars from a beating. It had been here since 1948. No sign anyone had been here since, although the tracks leading up the hill belied that. Probably antelope or elk hunters, though.

And I got my question answered. The name of this mark in the database is a misspelling of a common word. Was this a typo in the database, or the ignorance or humour of the surveyors who set this brass disk out in the prairie?

The name stamped in the disk matched the database. Whether not knowing, or being clever, the men in the field had misspelled it.

Wasn't until I got home and examined my photos that I noticed the large battering on the benchmark hadn't been vandalism. The name and elevation (6620') stamps were newer than the dings. Which I could now see were actually made to flatten and repair a large crack across the disk. Something that had happened before the surveyors stamped their IDs on it.

How do you get a crack across the middle (but not the sides) of a brass survey disk?

Well, you'd have to shove something through it. Like a punch.

I now have a mental image of at least one amateur in this survey party, finally allowed to tamp the center dot and triangulation mark into one of the precious disks.

And he must have hammered right through it. And had to hammer it back into shape before it was set in its concrete stand and stamped and dated. And probably got chided along the way. Perhaps for the rest of the season.

Yes, an amateur, or apprentice along on the trip.

Or else a klutz. Or an angry drunk.

Because the center of the brass disk wasn't the only thing broken here. Less than a meter away I found this, the subject of this entry.

Blue glass.

One of several shards of a blue glass bottle, broken on the site.

Sure, it could have been anyone in the intervening 55 years who broke a blue bottle on top of this ridge. But look at that glass. That blue is pure. How long has it been since anyone made a blue glass bottle like that? How many decades? A century or more, even?

Actually, I suppose the bottle may predate the benchmark... it may be from the 1800s. This blue glass may have been old when the clumsy surveyor was here. Imagine that, some scout sitting up here on this rise, no highway to the south, watching the wagons slowly lumber along on the trail north by the river. Flinging away his bottle of "medicine" when it emptied.

Or some rancher in later years, sipping from this bottle to keep himself warm from the wind. Or drinking in peace, far away from the little woman in the cabin along the river, but high enough to see her if she came a-runnin'.

And perhaps the bottle wasn't empty when it fell and broke. Imagine the curses that flew in this clear air. Or the desperate moans of loss.

Either way, all we are left with are these, these cobalt-blue shards in a land of tans and greys.