My good friend recently introduced me to her beau, a very nice young man originally from Virginia, now living for the moment in Utah. He was visiting his sweetheart hear in the Land of Enchantment, and she was showing him the sights.
I am not sure how the conversation steered in the direction of bones, (pardon the pun,) but he amazed at what he called our obsession with bones. My friend had found a tiny animal skull the week before, and was trying to clean it so she could use it for a decoration. He was surprised. (Surprised isn't the word, but disgust may be too strong. Maybe.) I pointed out the cow skulls in my yard, I have three in different areas of my garden, placed strategically so that mint, flowers, and strawberries grow in, and around them. His reaction was anything but subtle. I think he was beginning to suspect that he had stumbled onto the New Mexican version of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
Trying to placate him, I pointed out that hunters frequently keep the mounted heads of deer and other prey over fireplaces. Quite correctly he mentioned there is a difference between trophy mountings and keeping the bones of varmints found on the roadside.
I admit I was a t a loss for words and explanations, and so he left my home quite sure I am crazy.
It wasn't until he'd was long gone before I realized that my inclination for collecting bones isn't as morbid or as unusual as it sounds. The New Mexican culture I have grown up in is heavily laced with influences from many cultures, most pointedly, the Native Americans.
Historically Native Americans as a culture have used whatever was available to them in order to survive. Wood, shell, stone and beads and clay from the earth; meat, hide, hoof, horn, and bone from the animals they hunted. Never a culture for waste, they created flutes, tools, utensils, jewelry, and other decorations of all kinds from what was left.
When I was a little girl my grandmother gave me a bone-bead necklace for my birthday. I have seen cow skulls all around me, painted with riotous color hanging on the walls of even the Capital Building. I had a friend who owned a beautiful horn cup, made from the natural shedding of a huge mountain sheep.
I sometimes forget that everyone hasn't grown up this way. Even though I have lived and traveled all over the US and some of Europe, I often take for granted that everyone hasn't been a part of this rich experience I have owned.
It's a place like no other, and that's why I come home after so many years. It's why I and so many love this wonderful place we call The land of Enchantment.
