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Garbage | Oct 26 2002

Some things make me happy.

Many years ago I tripped on mushrooms with a friend in the low hills outside Santa Fe. We wandered through a maze of prickly bushes and speculated about the people who had lived there once. Had any walked where we now walked? Had any seen what we now saw? What thoughts had they had, thoughts unthinkable to us, two men from a world which bore little relation to theirs, though it occupied the same space.

While pondering these things we came upon an empty Doritos bag. Evidently those barren hills had been visited more recently than we had imagined.

There was a commercial on television at this time in which a woman dressed in Native American garb held up a stalk of corn and said, “The Indians called it maize.” It was a commercial for corn oil.

One of us, I forget which, wrote a few words on the Doritos bag and attached it, flag-like, to the branch of a bush.

Whenever I remember that day, I wonder if the Doritos bag is still in place, waiting to be discovered by others. If so, and if its future discoverers understand English, this is what they will read:

THE INDIANS CALLED IT GARBAGE