About 28 miles West of here is one of the most remarkable places on earth, and one of the main reasons that I've chosen to live here. For me it has always been a doorway to another dimension, but in reality it is an escarpment that runs for hundreds of miles north and south, is the western edge of the Llano Estacado, and is referred to along most of its length I would guess, as the Caprock. It doesn't have very dense vegetation or much water, but the cliff face has hundreds of small caves that my friends and I have explored and camped in since we were children. At the bottom of the escarpment and on to the West are numerous sand dunes (the white ones are hallucinogenic in themselves on a full-moon night), and, just to keep everyone alert, what occurs there is known as an ecotonal situation, which is where two biomes intersect and is an area of intense predation. There are more of more kinds of plants and animals, including lots of venomous snakes. Just the intense primitive beauty of these elements are magnetic, but probably what has drawn me there the most is that it has been a highway for many thousands of years. You can find everything from a hubcap off of one of this year's cars to pieces of pottery so ancient, and so far from where they were made that the implications are mind-numbing. From the amounts and varieties of pre-historic occupation sites and artifacts, the place was more than just a highway, it was a freeway. Shards from every pottery type ever described and named, practically litter the place. Since childhood I've known people who hunted the region for arrowheads throughout their lives, and many had impressive collections. So did I, then several years ago I was showing a method of introducing high school students to Anthropology and used my personal arrowhead collection in the demonstration. At the end of the presentation one of the audience asked to speak to me privately and I instantly recognized him as the graduate assistant from my Physics classes in college. He is an Indian from one of the Northern Pueblos and I remembered him as an excellent instructor and a nice, but reserved, person. When we were alone he very seriously asked if I would consider parting with one of the arrowheads that I had shown. My first reaction was confusion and it must have been obvious because he said that he needed one for a medicine bag that he wanted to give to his son. I remember thinking "but you're an Indian, isn't your house full of arrowheads", and I guess that showed too because he said that when the Museum collectors had invaded the pueblos and created their collections, they started a flood of collecting, and there weren't many arrowheads left for people who used them in the traditional ways. He then said that his people felt they should be used almost like medicine (and explained how), but instead we were holding them captive and putting them on display. He said that he just needed one, preferably one that emanated kill point characteristics and that he might feel that if he could examine them. For some reason, at that point I was believing everything he was saying, and feeling terrible about having captured something that he understood, needed, and should have easy access to but couldn't even find. I gave the entire collection to him. Although I do feel that some stone tools (a perfect Clovis or Folsom point) are unsurpassed works of art and that it's remarkable to experience them - I didn't like how the "capture and hold captive" thing that I was doing made me feel. My friends who later wondered where the collection went, mainly felt that I was taken, but I never have. I've never believed in anything except that anything is possible, and on the strength of his convictions I felt that it is possible that some grains of corn and an ancient tool in a small leather pouch could protect certain people through the centuries. I actually only halted what I suddenly perceived to be my unwitting interference in a process unrelated to me. The whole point for the story is that I recently experienced similar feelings, but because I made the opposite decision. I loved the rocks seen in the photo and I remember the day I started collecting them 35 years ago. I can bring up an instant memory of the discovery of nearly any of them and I've always kept them near. I moved most of them with me to different houses in different places (hard work), I kept them clean and positioned to show their best features, and I would have fed them if they had needed it, but the most important thing was, no matter where we were I let them be free. Then I chose expedited personal concerns (the fill pipe to the pond was ugly and I don't have enough years left to have waited for Bill to locate the materials to build the waterfall) and now they are cemented into a mound for water to splash over and moss to grow on. I almost feel bad for them.