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the fossil record
Please Note Due to budget constraints, the publication date for the 1st annual print edition of TFR has been changed from 11/27/03 to: June 20th, 2004 Please feel free to contact me (sam@thefossil.com) if you have any questions or concerns regarding this change of schedule.
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#28
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At the New Mexico Archeological Society's Rock Art School Far in the distance, a pinnacle of smoke signals a brush fire. Below is desert, black rock mesa, red rock mesa, orchard, the dull green Rio Grande disappearing among cottonwood and pink tamarisk planted against floods in the Great Depression. They left signs for us—graffiti: 1938. I Love Margo. WPA. Young men and poor, but with serious government jobs; on the blazing ridge among cacti and rattlesnakes, 6500 feet high, air thin as a paper-cut, did they think themselves historians? As we do—our team, with our giant trail boots, our wide, unbecoming hats, recording petroglyphs chipped on boulders sometime in the Middle Ages; here, a turtle or perhaps a frog, there, a birthing figure looking like road-kill, with the guts running out. Whatever it signifies, our guess, says Will (retired from NASA), is good as the next guy's. Debra says if you dream of an animal, that's your totem. But the only one she's ever dreamed of was that lumbering, misfit, scare-show critter, the possum. When we find one, chipped into stone, we shield our susceptible eyes. Will says some tomfools think this art was put there by aliens. Then Sheryl says she once dreamed she fished her bra out of a swamp and it was full of little green frogs, all screaming. I say in myths frogs stand for change. That's when we notice the black and white thunderhead. Soon it will rain and blow so hard, back in camp we'll have to chase down our papers, while high above the rising river, a young man in sneakers and cut-offs will close his eyes before barreling off the rattletrap bridge into frothing, brown water and, clapping in admiration, the mute Hispanic boy will write for us with one finger, Beau, his improbable name in the sand. —Frances Ruhlen McConnel
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