I spent a day in Eastern Europe at an old airplane field now being redeveloped into apartments, excavating a site that had been used as landfill after the war and filled with rubble from another fill. I worked early, layer by layer, uncovering bottles that dated back to the 1800s, graphite sticks from the 1940s military era, and a patch of redware brickwork. While reflecting on these finds, I recalled a local kid who claimed his âblack powderâ jar contained trinitrotoluene extracted from rusted armorâpiercing rounds. Amid this dig I spotted a shiny, iridescent crystal snailâa small, handâsized round object that felt like a lost treasureâonly to lose it when the workers arrived and a nineâyearâold boy ran by the collapsing wall; the crystal was gone before I could retrieve it again. The siteâs coordinates are 51°07â˛34.0âłNâŻ16°57â˛25.0âłE.






















