Holy Dirt

This is a personal essay I wrote in undergrad at FSU that won be the George Yost Award for Best Undergraduate Personal Essay.

Holy Dirt

By: Hilary Noonan

It’s five am. I’m only ever up at this time when I haven’t gone to sleep yet, although it doesn’t really feel like I’ve had any sleep anyways. Two hours. What good is two hours? My flight to Albuquerque, NM leaves at 7:15 am, landing me in the middle of the desert at around 10:30 Mountain Time. Mountain Time is two hours slower than East Coast Time, the same number of hours I slept last night. So, as far as New Mexico is concerned, I haven’t slept at all, which is great, because by the time I get out there I feel so doped up on coffee, fear of airplanes and exhaustion that I might as well have just stayed up. I don’t think, at this point, it would have really mattered. 

From the time I get off the plane until I am standing on the oddly placed escalators (two going down and only one going up, with stairs in between), looking for Justin at the bottom, I can’t place anything. This foreign land that is swallowed in different shades of beige, these foreign people that cluster with me in the airport traffic, none of it matters. I am just waiting for Justin, for some familiarity, a familiarity I’ve missed for four weeks. 

And then he isn’t there. I get to the bottom of the escalator, look around at the coffee-granola-potato chips bar on my right, down at the last leg of the escalator route directly in front of me, and up at the sliding stairs I’ve just exited. Am I on the wrong level? Maybe I should go back up, or maybe down. Or maybe I’m on the total wrong end of the airport. I’ve never been here before. I don’t know.

So I sit down in the large, yet awkward chairs on my left. A woman passes me on her way to the bathroom, or the payphone or something. She seems anxious. I watch the coffee stand that isn’t really a coffee stand because it sells too many items that go poorly with coffee. 

Then suddenly, Justin appears in front of me with his long dirty blond hair looking lighter than usual. He is wearing the jacket I had worn the night we walked down the street and around the corner to Bill and Donald’s house; it was freezing outside, swallowing me in its brown canvas and gray fleece.

Santa Fe is about fifty-seven miles or so outside of Albuquerque up into the mountains. The drive out there is long; all I want is to stop traveling, to stop physically moving in some sort of forward motion. We stop in a small town with a flare for all things taupe and eat inside the KFC. Across the street there is a discount tire store full of old looking tires that don’t really seem usable. But they are cheap; I guess that’s what really matters. 

Arroyos are everywhere, as Justin points out to me while we climb into the mountainous region of New Mexico. Their hard red walls cut through the earth, creating deep mini-gorges that basically look like oversized groundhog trails that had their roofs taken off. 

“When it rains out in the desert it doesn’t soak in, so there are these rivers of flood water,” Justin tries to explain, using a finger to point out the passenger window at a rather large arroyo to my right. “The flood water is coming out of the mountains, ya know, and where there wasn’t a river an hour ago there’s suddenly raging rapids.”

  “Huh. Yeah. Those are pretty interesting.” I look out the window at the natural phenomenon. I’d heard of such things existing, but I’d never actually seen one in person. 

“Yeah. Those are just the dry channels where the waters cut out the river bed. Eventually the flood water will flow down the same arroyos over and over again.” 

That explains why they get so deep. I could have easily stood inside one, completely enfolding myself inside the clay walls. Not that I would want to do that. Some of the arroyos are big. No, huge. They look like mini grand canyons and I suspect that to desert critters it has largely the same effect.

Phil is just waking up, making coffee, or Espresso, sitting on the couch with his grown out hair limply hanging over his eyes. Randy and Bill are over in the condo next door and Randy is sleeping in today because tomorrow Trish comes into town. Bill is outside on the patio smoking a cigarette, getting ready to go mountain-biking or hiking. He’s looking thinner; I can tell he’s been working out and his hair looks really blond from the sunlight. He smiles sweetly at me and we hug. 

“How’s Lindsey doing?”

“Good, she’s doing really good.” Bill is still smiling at me.

“Yeah, I heard she was just out here a few days ago. It sucks that we missed each other.”

“Yeah, yeah. She was hoping you guys could hang out, too.”

I smile at him, look at Justin and we ease our way past him into the apartment. It’s nice. There’s a fireplace and red brick tiling on the floor. The couches look comfortable. The kitchen is pretty small. 

We don’t do much of anything that day, except lay in bed and watch the weather channel. Before Santa Fe we never watched the weather channel. It’s actually pretty interesting; Storm Stories is pretty cool. Tonight, it is about a kid caught in one of the raging rivers suddenly running through the arroyos. He’d been skateboarding with a buddy and had no warning of the insane rush of water headed right for him. A cop tried to help him, holding onto a rope that was strung across the manmade arroyo with one hand. He almost had the kid too, before he slipped away. When they finally pulled the cop out of the waters his hand was limp, hanging to one side, his nerves useless now from supporting all his bodyweight against the river. But New Mexico never shows up on the national radar, even though all its surrounding states do, so I don’t know why we are watching it out here. I don’t think it will really do us any good aside from the Local on the 8’s segments when they give updates on the local forecast. 

Across the street from the apartments is a park that overlooks the entire town of Santa Fe. At sunset the adobe buildings look pink as the mountains fade into blackness. The sky is red and orange and purple and blue, bits of blue that fly into the heavens, the mountains shaping the horizon with their black, jagged edges.

People drive to the park every night, groups of teenagers with their friends, old couples who stand there wrapped in oversized coats, young couples holding each other and kissing. Some people stay in their cars and just watch from the road, but most jump over the short chain that’s draped around the rim of the park. 

That night we stop into the studio, Stepbridge Studios, “A Full Service Analog and Digital Recording Facility featuring New Mexico's only Solid State Logic Console,” to check in with John Kurzweg, the big K. Randy is almost done recording drums, but since Trish is coming into town he’s taking a break. John is comping the drums on the songs they have recorded and Justin is checking in.

It is dark by the time we walk to the studio. It’s only a mile or so away from the apartment. It’s freezing outside, probably in the thirties, a little warm for early November. We hold hands tightly as we zig past the plastered walls that line the narrow sidewalks. Every building looks the same; small, flat, pink adobe that’s feasibly a knockoff, wooden rods sticking out of the structure and wooden ladders going up the sides, ladders that don’t even work. They look attractive lying against the adobe buildings. Everything about this town is “attractive” and not always functional. I’m sure the Pueblo people appreciate what the Santa Fe-ans have done with the place.

The studio is stuck at the end of a short road that’s hidden behind a gas station and some other extraneous offices. It’s adobe and has purple doors and gravel all over the ground outside. There’s someone outside smoking a cigarette when we walk up, it’s Andy, one of the assistant engineers. He’s young, probably about twenty-five. His girlfriend is an artist, one of the thousand artists in this town. He talks about her a lot, seems to really love her. 

I complain that I’m cold and we walk inside, taking an immediate right into Studio A where everything’s happening. John’s in there, sitting in a swivel chair looking crazy. He’s in his forties with an “aged wisdom,” but his long hair and wild eyes make him seem younger. He’s never had a real job before. He did have a solo record deal back in the eighties. When that didn’t work out he started producing. He recently turned down an offer to produce an Ozzy Ozbourne record.

Randy’s sitting on the couch in one of his fake polyester shirts that are never buttoned all the way and his eyes are looking wide and alive, listening. He’s a surfer who’s been playing drums since he was born, I guess, playing live since he was six and his parents are hippies from Cocoa Beach, Florida. His girlfriend, Trish, is a biochemist. They’ve been together for eight years.

I sit down on the cream leather couch and just stare at the huge console of recording gear right in front of my eyes. Justin points out the Neeves, an elitist level of pre-amp, that are stacked together left of the computer. “The Neeve is the most rocking pre-amp. I mean, that sound is just fucking rock and roll,” he explains.  Pro Tools glares out at me from the enormous screen sticking up off the table. It doesn’t seem right for a computer to have a screen that big, like it might suck you in and make you crazy if you look at it too closely. Just beyond the mixing board right in front of me is a little cushioned bench seat and then a huge window looking into a large room. Randy’s drum kit is in there surrounded by mikes; guitars lean lonesome in their stands. Oversized plants are scattered around; I’m not really sure if they’re real or not, and purple Christmas lights are strung randomly.  

Justin and John are talking about Pro Tools as John rolls around on his chair from the computer to the other end of the console then back to the computer again. I don’t know what he’s talking about; John might be a little insane and can be hard to follow anyways. I start to look for the porn Justin told me got hung all over the studio. It was supposed to make Randy play better, but it turns out they took it down. Randy finds and brings me the cut out pictures. I am half expecting to be utterly disturbed by the images in front of me, knowing Randy, but I can’t say that I am. The naked girls stare up at me with very open eyes, shamelessly shameful. I also can’t say which is more intriguing - sitting in a recording studio with thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment and one of the biggest music producers in the nation, or the cut up porn in my lap. I might go with the porn, against my better judgment. 

Don’t get Justin started talking about Pro Tools. I’ve learned to zone it out unless he’s talking directly to me when I’m interested in hearing what he has to say. He has the uncanny ability to find the one person in a room that knows about Pro Tools, the hotshot audio recording software that’s all the rave these days, and start talking to that one person. And that quickly turns into talking about gear, which mikes make which voices sound better, how he likes his amps and cabinets to be built, and then back to Pro Tools, “Do you like Pro Tools 6?” “Yeah, we’re using that out in Santa Fe.” “I use Pro Tools 5 myself, anything after 5.3 is totally this or that.” I can’t follow even when I can. 

Really, he’s too intelligent for his own good, which he knows but will never admit. He’ll tell you everything you need to know about large dogs because he watched some special on TV one night about large dogs and why they’re cool. He’ll quote Mark Twain, or make some joke referencing some battle of the Spanish Revolution, like I’m supposed to know what he’s talking about. He’ll tell you all about different kinds of herbs that he wants to plant, or a certain strain of trees that is becoming extinct in South America. A part of Justin wishes he was a cowboy back in the 1800’s riding on open land, which makes me think he probably likes Santa Fe for its southwesterness even though he refers to it sometimes as Santa Gay instead. 

I somehow manage to get him to go sightseeing with me. We walk around downtown Santa Fe. Apparently you can walk anywhere in this town and you won’t feel tired, but the altitude will make you pass out before midnight. We stop into the old Catholic church on Cathedral Place. It is made of stone, but is still beige. How do they do that? It is gorgeous and ornate and demands our respect as we walk down the long open aisles studying everything that lies before us. As in most Catholic churches there are little tea candles lit in prayer.  A statue of Jesus on the cross hangs on one of the back walls. All of his fingers on one hand have been broken off, except for his middle finger. We stand there and just stare at it, the irony of it all; Jesus is flicking us off. Such reverence mixed with such ridicule, as some girl sits a few pews away deep in prayer. I want to take a picture of it. I always want to take pictures in churches, but I can never bring myself to do it, especially here, of this mocking image of Jesus Christ. His eyes seem sad and I wonder how many people have stood before it and laughed. I’m a little sad now, too, and we leave.

The next day we drive out to Bandelier, the ancient ruins of the Ancestral Puebloans who disappeared before the Spaniards colonized America. No one knows what happened to them, all that’s left are the cave dwellings they lived in and what’s left of the town central. 

On our way out there we stop to get snacks, and I suggest we buy some “authentic” beef jerky. It turns out to be the foulest tasting meat I’ve ever encountered. The taste doesn’t leave my tongue all day and it gets left in the car - in the heat. 

“It’s nice out today,” I comment as we get started on the two hour recommended tour of the ruins. I am wearing jeans and a black sweater. “I can’t think of better weather to walk around ruins in.”

At every designated marker we take out our map and read the little description that goes with it. We find out that most of the area hasn’t been excavated yet. The archeologists are waiting for better digging techniques to be discovered so as not to damage the ancient ground, which we think to be very noble of them. Not enough people have that kind of patience these days. Looking at the bubbly mound of grass (with an ancient kiva somewhere underneath), I think about the wonder there would still be left to discover if there were.

We climb inside the cliffside dwellings and I pose next to a cactus plant for a picture. We finally make it to the Ceremonial Cave around four in the afternoon. First we stop to go to the bathroom at the only port-a-potty on the trail. It is the nicest port-a-potty I’ve ever seen, on the outside at least. It is enclosed in thick, wooden paneling with an arched roof and a sturdy door. Sadly, though, inside it is just like any other port-a-potty; dark (apparently no port-a-potty anywhere has a light inside it), dirty, and smells so bad I hold my breath the entire time I am in there. And no sink. But there is a water fountain which just seems uncouth.

Justin makes it halfway up to the Ceremonial Cave, seventy of the one-hundred and twenty foot ascent, climbing only one of the three wooden ladders that lay vertically along the face of the cliff. I make it to the top. The view takes my breath away, or that might have been the one-hundred and twenty foot climb. Either way, I’m breathless. I wave to Justin, who looks panicked, and then sit down on a rock. An Asian woman and a Caucasian man are up there with me and I take their picture. We all climb down into the kiva which has little of the emotional impact I am expecting. How did people sit in these little holes in the ground? But the view is spectacular and the air feels fresh and sacred. 

Making my way back to where gravity would have me stay, I gain a fear of heights suddenly. I am leaning awkwardly on the side of the cliff, a hundred and twenty feet in the air. The only way to reach the solid, stable earth is to climb down the oversized ladders loosely attached to the cliffside. The handles are wooden, worn smooth from so much use and a little too big for my hands to get a tight grasp on them. I can see Justin, who seems to think I am going to plunge to my death right before his eyes as he stands on the small ledge below me. I climb down with my back to the ladder, facing out to the great wide open. That way I figure I can lean against the ladder for support and see where I’m going. I am sure I am going to fall, too, my knees are shaking so badly, but some little kid just did it so I better be able to do it. 

At the end of the day when we get back in the car to go home, it smells like a dead cow, with salt on it.

We pull over on the side of the little two lane road leading us to Chimayo. Justin rolls down his window and I hand him the camera. The clay mini-mountain juts up from the edge of the road, spreading from an earthy brown to a sand-blown beige and then finally into the rich orange of sunset. At the very tip stands a lone white cross, towering above us, lonely and strong. 

Justin leans his head out the window to take the picture. He is too close. He leans across the seats into my chest, laying flat against me, but is still too close. He opens his door and creeps out of the car, avoiding the humble rush of traffic rolling past us - the rusty pick-up truck with its rusty locals and the occasional shiny SUV with its shiny tourists headed to the slopes. 

“I bet they think it’s weird that people would pull over and take a picture of that,” I say to him as he climbs back into his seat.

“Yeah,” he replies as he pulls back onto the road. “To them that shit’s just normal.”

We drive into Chimayo, the small Puebloan town, home of the holy dirt. 

“Check that out,” Justin says as he points a finger towards my side of the car. “That house has its own chapel attached to it.” I look out the window as we pass the oddly modern looking brick house with its own small brick chapel sitting just feet away. 

We see the sign that reads “El Santuario'' and the arrow that points us to the left. We pull off the main road onto a dusty, clay side road that looks more like a driveway or an open space that could be used for any purpose one might desire - driving, throwing a football, spinning wool, chasing cats, offering prayer. There are adobe buildings on the right and left, in front of us, and depending on where you stand, behind us as well. One of them is selling Christ figures, paintings of the “Virgin One,” tacky odds and ends and bundles of red chili peppers. Another is a house, another is a chapel, another is abandoned and stands there hauntingly alone - dying before our eyes but struggling to maintain its existence. At first glance I don’t notice the town’s emptiness. It's only when I stop to observe its purpose that I see the solitude there.

El Santuario, the small chapel in the middle of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, looks ancient and surreal when we pull into the parking lot. The parking lot is paved and there is a small gift shop on the side that is obviously modern, but the church rests there soaked in wisdom.  

We walk through the adobe courtyard that leads to the main building and read the tombstones, sucking in our breaths for reasons we don’t yet understand. We pass through the Chapel’s foyer; I peer into what looks like a miniature classroom with tiny chairs and a low ceiling. 

Some people stand in the back reading the pamphlets on El Santuario’s historical background. Tradition has it that in the year 1810 on the night of Good Friday, Don Bernardo, a man of good standing in his community, saw a light shining out of the ground. He went to the light and started digging until his hands uncovered a Crucifix. The men of the town carried the Crucifix up to their Chapel for three days, every morning to find it back in its original location. Everyone knew the Crucifix meant to stay where it was found, so El Santuario was resurrected at the very spot. 

Other people are sitting in the main Chapel, mostly in the first few pews, though there are only about twenty rows of pews at most. There are an old man and woman sitting in the front with their heads bowed low, there are two small girls sitting in a pew a few rows back and they occasionally get up and walk around. We sit down in one of the pews on the left, about three rows back, and stare into the deep stained glass windows surrounding us and at the statue of Jesus before us. The little girls run up to the front of the sanctuary and stare into the eyes of the Saints that surround the statue. I watch them silently through the large crosses at the front of the first pew. I hold my breath and hold Justin’s hand. We close our eyes and pray. I pray for the freedom of those little girls, for the serenity of the old couple sitting close by, for the pain I see in the eyes of Jesus. I pray to always feel the way I feel now. 

After a while we wander into the other rooms of the Chapel. There’s a long, narrow room with uneven clay acting as the floor. There are pictures taped to the walls, rosaries resting purposefully against mantles and vases of flowers. Poems are nailed up; stories of miraculous healings and tragic losses. Prayer fills the room so thick I can almost see it. Justin wanders around the room reading the bits of papers; I study the pictures and long to hold the delicate beaded crosses in my hands. 

A much smaller room is just off one end of the narrow room of prayers. There are more rosaries, more pictures and letters, more images of Mary. In this room, though, we barely notice those things. Instead we kneel down to the earth and stick our fingers into the pit of loose dirt in the center and wonder about its magic. It is the hole where the crucifix kept relocating itself. Now the holy of loose dirt never empties, no matter how many people pull from its depths, the hole of holy dirt. We don’t speak much; we just share the moment, too moved to make conversation. I do ask him if he thinks it would be wrong to take a picture of such a place. We decide it is. 

I met a woman on my flight home that was healed by the holy dirt. She told me that fourteen years ago doctors diagnosed her with terminal cancer and only gave her a few months to live. She went to Chimayo and visited the Chapel. It was something she had always wanted to do and never done. She went into the small room in the back with the hole in the ground, scooped up the holy dirt off of the earth below her and smeared it all over her body. Fourteen years ago that happened, and she’s still alive today to tell me all about it. Ever since she has gone back every year and rubbed the holy dirt on her. This past year she moved out to Santa Fe and says she goes to Chimayo now all the time. 

“I went to the John Hopkins Hospital in New York,” she told me. “I told them to study me, that maybe they could find some answers that would help other people with my same problem. They told me they wouldn’t do it. They said there wouldn’t be another ‘me’. I’m still technically terminally ill. They can’t explain it.”

We walk outside to the outdoors Chapel, a decent sized area enclosed by a chain-linked fence. There are brown and golden leaves carpeting the ground and rows of stone benches surrounding a wooden Crucifix draped by a golden Jesus. Sparse mountains linger in the background. When we look closely we see more crosses atop more mountains, though these are larger and grander. 

“I wonder how many people it took to carry those crosses up those mountains,” I ponder out loud.

“I’m not sure,” he responds, gazing into the marked mountaintops. 

“A lot, I’m sure. To be able to see them so big, from so far away, those crosses must be huge.” I want to climb to the top of the mountain and see for myself. 

We walk up to the chain-linked fence, noticing that something is different about it. Once we are close enough to see clearly, we realize the “something different” is caused by the hundreds of hand-made crosses hanging in the metal holes of the fence.

“These are people’s prayers,” I say slowly as I eye the delicate twigs bound together by their middles. They cover the fences, all around the outside Chapel. Not one corner has been left un-prayed upon. We stand there on opposite sides of the path, staring into the little metal fence. Some kids on their bikes ride past us, through the Chapel yard, laughing and screaming, totally indifferent to the sacredness they live upon. Their bike wheels make the leaves spin around our heads. I smile to myself and a laugh escapes my lips. I know the moment will only last a second. Maybe two if we’re lucky. 

Later, Justin and I stand on the middle of the rotten, wooden bridge granting us access to the other side of the slender Rio Grande. The sun is bright in our eyes as we chat with the other couple sharing our view.

“I told you there would be more people stopping on this bridge,” the young man says to his small, blond wife. 

We vaguely introduce ourselves. They are nice and take our picture in front of the scenic landscape before driving off in their mid-sized vehicle. Looking around I notice the lack of any signpost or indicator of our selected lookout and think maybe we have trespassed onto private land. On the other side is a dirt road leading up a small mountain. It is spotted with dried shrubs and yellow grass. Ah, and there’s the house. Oh yes, and scattered horses. It’s all making sense to me now. This plot of astonishing earth is actually someone’s home. A Pueblo woman starts across the bridge in her shiny, grey SUV, waving to us generously. We cross the bridge onto her land and move out of the way. She drives off and I stand there stunned for a moment, staring at the blue river lacing its way through the desert. I feel like I’m in an old-western movie for a second and pretend it’s true while Justin takes some more pictures. 

The rest of the day is filled with orange sunsets, gas stations for directions and a six hundred foot gorge that Justin refuses to cross. I think this is the right way to end the trip as I look off the concrete bridge, hovering high above the thin little river. A semi-truck whizzes past at what seems like a hundred mph making the entire bridge shake. Families huddle together fighting off the violent winds and taking pictures. Justin stands at the edge of the bridge waiting for me and I laugh a sad laugh to myself. 

The sun is mostly gone; the sky is turning a dismal grey darkened by the enclosing ridges of mountains. I think of the arroyos, of the adobe houses and fake wooden ladders, the young girl praying alone in the church and the crosses in the fences of Chimayo. Wonderful, wonderful Chimayo with crosses on the mountaintops and crosses in the bleeding hands of Jesus. I scold myself for not grabbing some holy dirt on our way out of that blessed town. Perhaps I desire some protection from the daunting world that is our own, or maybe just for my plane ride home tomorrow. Either way I figure it could have come in handy. How foolish of me to pass it by. I need to get some holy dirt, to bathe in.