Normally it would have been out of character to drive this far for a glimpse of something as common as graffiti. I can find that scratched on the toilet seat at my local Walmart. But these etchings, hundreds of years old and scrawled into the base of a towering sandstone bluff in the high desert of western New Mexico at El Morro National Monument, are special.
Mostly a vast collection of names, some historical accounts and even a poem, the sandstone chalkboard at El Morro is a mesmerizing window of times past, a testament to thirsty Native American Puebloans, Spanish colonial governors, Anglo-American homesteaders, soldiers and surveyors, and 25 confused camels that traversed this well-trod corridor.