Peter M. Gardner
Because you were probably not ready for them, you may well con-
sider these findings on variation from person to person to be almost as
baffling or extraordinary as things that I’ve described to be strange to
me. I suspect you do, because your experience is different from mine.
By virtue of my background, I have come to anticipate that each new
culture I study will be uniquely systematized and a new approach to
reality. If we are lucky in the field, we anthropologists not only get
glimpses of these differing realities but sometimes also achieve expla-
nations of them that we can accept scientifically. That is one of the
supreme pleasures of life in the field.
Every once in a while, however, the glimpses we get are the kind that
only tease or baffle us. The dog tales, the totally disassembled camera
shutter, and the persistent “visions” I had in the course of captaining
the stick game, belong to the latter kind of experience. The last two,
especially, have left me absolutely stumped. While the empirical facts
of these cases are as clear to me as can be, and while my mind con-
tinues to ask for a rational explanation of them, I am obliged to con-
clude for now that reality is more complex than the scientific side of
me has been able to accept. But, then, I have never been one to ask that
my experiences be simple or predictable. If I had asked that, I would
surely never have ventured out into far corners of our rich planet. And,
surely, life without puzzles would be life bereft of all flavor.
Notes
- This chapter draws on and elaborates material from five chapters of Journeys to the
Edge: In the Footsteps of an Anthropologist, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006.
I thank the curators of the University of Missouri for permission to use material published
in that book. - Research on the Northern Dene was supported by nsf grant gs 43057 and an Urgent
Ethnology Programme contract from the National Museums of Canada. Preparatory and
pilot projects were supported by University of Missouri Research Council grants urc nsf
1201 and 1209. Because our project was collaborative, Jane Christian and I fed each other
information and theories all year. While she contributed to my understanding of the com-
munity, our perspectives were often quite different. She is not in any way responsible for
the thoughts I am offering here.