A.V. WOMAN HAS PASSION FOR PRESERVATION.

Byline: BETTIE RENCORET Senior columnist

LANCASTER - Inga Nagel is an independent senior woman who still has a lot going for her even in her retirement years.

She retired in 1998 after nearly 30 years as a teacher with the Antelope Valley High School District, most spent teaching history, geography and German at Palmdale High School.

Since then it has been just one interesting activity after another.

She served as a docent at the Antelope Valley Indian Museum and helped get it declared a historical site. She's studied the ancient Mayan ruins in Guadalajara, Mexico; studied ancient Indian civilizations in the Southwest; and gone on a dig in Acari, on the south coast of Peru.

Even during her teaching years, she had outside interests that honed her mental agility and added to her already awesome store of knowledge.

A member of the Lancaster Photography Association, she claims she had to push herself into the advanced technology of digital cameras but now she loves that type of photography.

Her passion for good photography has assisted her in recording the wonders she's found at the digs and other places she's traveled.

In the early 1990s she began to take trips every year that could relate somehow to archaeology and she always carries her camera along.

When she fell in love with ancient Indian rock art she took classes to learn how to accurately sketch petroglyphs and pictographs.

``The rock art has sometimes eroded to the point that it's hard to make out all of its facets and that's where digital photography helps. Through visual enhancement with the camera you can make the artwork that is fading out show up again,'' she said.

She said she now has a library of 5,000 pictographs and petroglyphs on film.

Nagel belongs to the Antelope Valley Archaeological Society, the Arizona Archaeological Society and the Utah Archaeological Society. She has also joined a new organization, the Nevada Rock Art Foundation.

She donates her time, along with other volunteers, to make rock art site maps in addition to recording the art itself.

``I make scale sketches whenever I'm called in but I'm not an artist. I just learned to sketch accurately - if a horse has three legs, the sketch has three legs, not four. Artists sometimes paint interpretations of the art that is not exactly as the Indians created it.''

She said she is working sites in Nevada right now and she also carries her sketch pad and laptop computer with her everywhere.

``I don't try to interpret the drawings because nobody knows what they mean,'' she said. ``I'm just there to record them. I love that.''

She and her archaeology cohorts at least once a year go into small Nevada community schools to talk to the children about the ancient cultures that once existed right on their own doorstep. She said she always enjoys that.

``You make marvelous friendships,'' she said. ``I have friends now in four states. We are all very close because we have common bonds in archaeology and rock art preservation. Preservation is the key word.''

She said she loves the friends she already has but she also enjoys meeting new people in her travels.

``Before you know it you're part of a system because these people are all involved,'' she said.

Nagel was born Feb. 26, 1936, in Eschwege, Germany, about 150 miles north of Frankfurt, and moved to the United States with her family when she was young.

She earned a bachelor's degree in social studies from California State University, Northridge, and later earned her master's degree from Cal Poly Pomona.

Currently she is vice president of the Antelope Valley Chapter of the American Association of University Women.

She met a young Air Force officer on a skiing trip to Mammoth, and on June 22, 1962, they were married in Phelps, N.Y. They came back to Lancaster to make their home while he worked on the X-15 at Edwards Air Force Base.

``He designed the stands for the X-15 tests,'' she said, ``and he was only 32 when he died in 1967.''

They had one daughter, Kirsten Nagel, who now works for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Sunnyvale.

Inga Nagel has a full plate but she's still hungry for more.

A world traveler already, she belongs to the J&J Social and Travel Club where she takes short pleasure trips and meets even more new people.

``I'm going back to college again, too,'' she said. ``When I do, I plan to give it my all because I don't want to give seniors a bad name. The point is to be active and stay alive.''

Here are this week's menus for Senior Life Nutrition sites in Lancaster, Palmdale and South Valley. Meals include bread, margarine and coffee, tea or milk for a suggested donation of $2.

Monday: Macaroni and cheese with ham, spinach, tossed salad, apple juice, oatmeal cookies.

Tuesday: Braised beef and noodles, green beans, marinated salad, orange juice, fruit cocktail.

Wednesday: Barbecued chicken, rice pilaf, vegetables, lettuce and tomato salad, banana.

Thursday: Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, carrot-raisin-pineapple salad, pudding.

Friday: Roast turkey, bread dressing, parsleyed carrots, lettuce salad, grape juice, Jell-O with fruit.

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Inga Nagel has logged lots of miles for her interest in photography, archaeology and travel.

Bettie Rencoret/Special to the Daily News