The Rake Magazine

Kate Hearth shared some extracurricular reading material with her son, Nick, in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Nick was working at a field school of the University of California-Riverside Archaeology Department, about 25 miles west of Cancun. Kate and husband Steve visited Nick and helped him and his work partner map several Mayan dwellings at an archaeological site. “We may look overdressed for 95-degree heat … and 95 percent humidity,” she writes, “but protection is essential—snakes, poisonous spiders, poisonous trees. Too bad you can’t see the snake gaiters, leather wraps around our lower legs.”