Perfidious

I hate arguments. If I lose, it makes me feel small. If I win, I can feel the other person’s hate. I’ve always run away from a fight. No one ever picked on me, mind you, maybe because of my height. But when the heat starts up and someone demands my opinion, I want to vanish. Many times I’ve done just that: I took a walk out into the desert that surrounds us. When I got old enough, I’d take the horse out west of town, scouting different areas, eventually settling on a rocky area beyond the Rio Puerco. The horse became accustomed to the spot: I could drop the reins and let her browse while I climbed through the rocks. Later on, I came to carve the Ten Commandments into one smooth rock, as my own sanctuary.

The world has changed since my youth. New Mexico was not yet a state. And there was no Mystery Rock, because I hadn’t carved it yet. Now, thirty years afterwards, I must admit it makes me laugh. At first, I was angry that people had discovered my work at all it was my special place. But discovery was inevitable, so now I watch folks argue about what they think is weird language and try to figure out why it’s sitting out in the wilderness by its lonesome. And of course I have no intention of wading into that.

My life began with desert. Which meant everything outside of the Río Grande valley where we lived and...