I spent many childhood afternoons searching for sea fossils in the Chihuahuan Desert, finding geologic history strewn throughout the brown and dusty land. My neighbor Mr. Carmichael, an archaeologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, taught me and his daughter, Andi, to look with care at the floor of an ocean dried for 500 million years. Sand pails in hand, we climbed the short rock fence enclosing the Carmichaels’ backyard. Their home, like mine a few blocks away, was built at the bottom of a desert hill in northwest El Paso. We hiked up the mild slope toward the empty lots of a street called La Posta, where new four- and five-bedroom homes boasting sunset views were rising.
The first few minutes of our search were rife with anticipation as we waited to see who would be the first to exclaim, “I found one!” We tiptoed on hard, rocky land, stepping around ocotillos, nopales, and lechuguillas. Andi, who had the advantage of poring over fossil illustrations and photographs in her dad’s geology books anytime she wanted, was better than I was at spotting ridged Spiriferid brachiopods. Beaming, she handed her discovery to her dad for inspection; he either confirmed a fossil finding or said, “Try again.” I thought the brachiopods looked exactly like seashells, but learned that the long line along the hinge distinguished these creatures of the Cambrian Period from the shells I collected at the beach. Into the sand pail they went, and we continued our search until it was time for a snack.
Back at the Carmichaels’, we lined up the fossils on the kitchen table. We took turns looking through the magnifying glass at the waves and curves in the crinoids, horn corals, and ammonites. I learned that water once submerged the Chihuahuan Desert, its mountain peaks miles beneath the surface. I imagined the mountains murky and alone at the depths of the ocean where nobody could climb them, where no snakes or rabbits or coyotes could hide in them, and summer rain couldn’t make their dry shrubs turn a pale shade of green.
