In western New Mexico, on the edge of the Zuni Mountains, there’s a place called Inscription Rock. It’s a pale sandstone cliff rising out of the desert. Bleached-looking bluffs. A kind of rough-hewn natural fortress, towering two hundred feet over low tangles of juniper and ponderosa pine. The conquistadors called it El Morro: “the promontory.” (Or else: “the nose.”) Walk around the base and you find a fold in the cliff that makes a small, shaded grotto where rainwater gathers in a pool. Just
