D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July 2009
Rivers of Rocks
Stones that absorb hurts and sorrows and don't return them, helping to restore balance to the world.
Once in a while in the evenings, I love to walk in the arroyos at the base of the mountains near Deming.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between arroyos and dirt roads. Arroyos are often about the same width as roads, just as neatly cut out of the desert soil and flat on the bottom as if they'd been humanly engineered. Roads and arroyos braid together almost indistinguishably as they wind around in the areas at the foot of the Florida Mountains.
I found a new arroyo to explore a little while ago. It has lots of reddish stones that look as if they were washed down and hurled into the bends of the arroyo very recently — maybe early last July when we had all that rain. I'm beginning to haul off rocks from this place for my collection at home.
Typically there are reddish-orange or pink stones with big, visible chunks of other stones in them, like chocolate chips or macadamia nuts in cookies, with a range of tones — grey, purple, brown, off-white, pure white.
I have a friend with a degree in geology who has maps and books about local geology. These reddish stones she thought at first were rhyolite, but then she changed her mind and said they're probably a "tuffacious sandstone" (derived from rhyolite). The ones with the angular chunks in them are breccia.
Apparently some movements of volcanic ash caught up these smaller, older rocks and incorporated them into their matrix like chocolate chips in cookie dough. It seems pretty simple.
But the history of the Floridas is extremely complex, she says, with all the volcanic action and uplifts that have occurred. The current activity is lively, too, with "the really young stuff shedding off the peak." The rocks I found are hard to analyze, she said, because they're so "scrambled."
When I walk along the arroyos I'm fascinated by the variety of forms and designs of the stones, almost as great as that of Mata Ortiz pots, with all their permutations.
Sometimes the chunks, or "clasts," in the stones look like nickels tucked away in coin collectors' albums. Sometimes they take up half the rock, or two-thirds of it, opening up a window to the soul of the rock.
In a small parking lot in Deming I've seen a dark gray stone a couple feet high that's got cracks filled with dull red, like subtle streaks of lightning. One small jet-black stone in the arroyo was shot through with tiny white streaks like heat lightning.
At home I have a breccia-type rock, one clast of which is made of a lavender and pink and gold blend that seems to come directly from a California sunset.
Some stones have tiny swirls of color like Florentine marble paper. I saw one rock that had blue-green stem and leaves climbing upward on a dark background.
Some quiet gray rounded stones have a cool layer of white on the outside, or a transparent wash of milky white daubed on one side. Some have a wash of almost imperceptible light blue like coyote scat, and some are washed with light pink scat, as if there were such a thing as pink scat. Some stones are daubed with black tar, I swear.
My favorite rock in my possession is a large, ruddy, multi-clast rhyolitic stone roughly soldered at the diameter to its other half, a gray sedimentary stone whorled and striated like a seashell. This strange union was created by wild volcanic and erosive forces long ago.
These stones hold their silence, and make good company. They absorb hurts and sorrows and don't return them. They help restore balance to the world.
A lot of people in Juarez these days would like to find a river of rocks like the one I found.
Many are finding refuge behind their closed doors again, as the violence surges once more. Anna, who makes funerary wreathes of silk flowers in Palomas and goes to Juarez to sell them, says store owners there won't open their doors until they know who she is.
Some are finding their river of rocks in their rosary beads. A Catholic priest in Juarez has started a marathon rosary recitation. Some have found refuge in the rock walls of churches or temples.
There isn't the slightest doubt that Juarez is between a rock and a very hard place.
They've got to find a way of making their law enforcers trustworthy in the midst of a crime wave that's really a war.
There was hope in March when 10,000 army troops were sent to Juarez and the violence went way, way down. This at least gave people a space to breathe. But over just a few short months the number of killings has risen to more than it was one year ago.
As of June 19 this year there were 807 killings in Juarez. Last year's total at the end of June was only 542. This year journalists were beaten by soldiers, another drug rehab center was shot up, leaving five dead, and several children have been killed. There have been about 2,500 cases of torture reported to the Chihuahuan Human Rights Commission.
There's no doubt that the Mexican police and military institutions are fraught with corruption and violence, although the military have had a better reputation than police in recent years.
Last fall, when I asked a security guard I know in Nuevo Casas Grandes whether he'd ever thought of becoming a policeman, he laughed breezily and said, "Policemen here aren't like they are in the US" — as if no honest person would think of being a policeman there.
I think there are good people in law enforcement. But they may be like mere clasts in the larger matrix.
The Spanish phrase for "between a rock and a hard place" fits the situation more accurately: "entre la espada y la pared" (between the sword and the wall).
It's hard to imagine where Juarez will be in a year.
Borderlines columnist Marjorie Lilly lives in Deming.
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For those who want to be reminded of the situation in Palomas, here is more food for thought.
Maria Lopez, who distributes food to hungry people in Palomas, did her rounds a while ago with a woman who took pictures of various families on her route. Maria says some of these people didn't want their pictures taken because they had no soap and felt dirty.
There's a long list of "personal care" items that people are missing in Palomas, from shampoo to diapers to toilet paper. This is not to mention things like laundry and dish detergent. There's no end in sight right now to this economic crisis. The donations we've received are very appreciated.
Contributions for people in Palomas can be sent to Maria Lopez/DIF, c/o Desert Exposure, PO Box 191, Silver City, NM 88062.