What could possibly be abundant about the desert?
Glad you asked! The last few years I’ve been studying archaic sites in the Chihuahuan desert. Some of the oldest human remains — footprints of teenagers with toddlers— have been found in New Mexico, dating back over 20,000 years. With the coming of agriculture, these archaic people evolved into the Jornada Mogollon, and then the historic Piro, whose descendents live on today, in Isleta, Las Cruces, and El Paso. As the world warmed after the ice age, the megafauna on which the people relied died off. Lake Lucero, where the teens walked with their young charges, dried up and became the iconic White Sands. And yet the people stayed. How? Why?
While visiting some of these sites with a group of archaeologists specializing in the area, I literally ate my way through the landscape. The desert is full of miraculous plants, enough that ancient people didn’t really need to move into the mountains seasonally. Grasses provided grains; medicines were compounded from leaves, bark, flowers, and roots; fruits were versatile additions and could be dried; and even cactus crowns and pads provide nourishment. The modern indigenous people who rely on the Chihuahuan desert, primarily the Mescalero Tribe of Apache, practice gratitude while gathering, processing, and consuming these plants.
As our world warms, perhaps beyond recognition, I can’t help but think of the people who stayed close to the land and continued to survive and even thrive when the world changed before. Later people in New Mexico, trying to cope with the changeable desert climate, adopted a practice of creating cabañuelas. Every day, you record what’s going on with the sky, the water, the plants and the animals. For instance: today, the Rio Grande is high from recent snows, the cranes are picking through the fields, and the ducks and geese have also returned for the winter. In my cabañuela I also record what I have found and harvested, and where I found it, as well as recipes for preservation and preparation.
In this way I hope to create a record of the land I love so much, the changes that are upon us, and all the gifts the world bestows upon us if we choose to see them. If it can be done in the desert, it can be done anywhere.
But the desert (this desert particularly!!) is also filled with stories. Oh my goodness!! Such nutty stories of monsters and tricksters and witches and politicians. These stories feed my soul as much as the plants of the desert nourish my body.
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