Roughly 10,000 years ago, a woman walked with her young child for a mile along the muddy shore of Lake Otero in what is now New Mexico. Today, the lake has evaporated. What was once a landscape lush with vegetation and grasslands spreading like the prairies of the great plains is a white desert. The dunes of the Tularosa Basin exist with their own different movement. Instead of a humid and lush landscape, one feels fine grains of gypsum sand on their face when the wind blows.

            The shift began 12,000 years ago as the Ice Age climate began to change. Rains became less frequent and as the large lake disappeared into the encroaching sands, gypsum crystals were left behind and broken down by the winds. We are left with white dunes—the result of the white sulfate crystals. We are left with a salty desert air; the salt reminds us of the life that inhabited this space. A lush lakebed is now known as White Sands.

            We know of the woman and child because their footprints have been fossilized in the former banks of Lake Otero. They track for longer than a mile telling a vague story of their journey. I marvel at the informed imagined space the scientists who have been researching these fossilized footprints live in and I enter into my own imagined space. The scientists tell the story of the landscape and I wonder about the story of the woman and child. I wonder about a connection I will never know about that existed 10,000 years ago.

            The scientific importance of the footprints is that they exist among prints from animals of the time. They give evidence of how humans interacted with their surroundings and lived among the wildlife and not just beside it. 

            I walk with my dog Kevin along the wooded trail by our house. I’ve seen ruby throated hummingbirds here during the summer. Kevin wasn’t particularly reactive to them, so I was able to watch them working for a while. Their wings beating into a blur and making me dizzy. Their long thin beaks searching the wildflowers that dot the edges of the trail and mix with the poison ivy that I carefully avoid and honeysuckle I take gingerly in my hands and suck on for the drop of sugary water that reminds me of childhood.

            We walk the same trail most mornings. Kevin, a 2 year old Labrador mix I adopted a year and a half ago, walks beside or slightly ahead of me. When in front, she glances back to make sure I am still with her. I walk in silence. I walk at a fairly brisk pace, but slow enough to be able to notice the deer that occasionally cross the path down to the stream that runs alongside it. After heavy rains, I look at the prints left on the muddy trail. Some parts of this trail never seem to be dry—just after a raised bridge that crosses the stream; just after a sharp bend in the path where I have been tripped by tree roots; just before the mark where Kevin and I typically turn back and head for home.

            I do my best to walk around the mud, leaving little trace that I was there. I see bicycle tire tracks and the prints from other, larger dogs that have not deviated to the edges. They are the signs of life that I notice on the trail. I occasionally am passed by a jogger, and while we acknowledge each other, there is only the fleeting moment of physical closeness, only the hint of acknowledgement. I am likely to learn more about these joggers, whose faces blend together, from the footprints I will see from their sneakers. Some barrel through and I imagine the dark blackish water that will splash onto their shins. Others will slow and walk along the edges like me. And I wonder if the others notice the tracks that I leave.

            The scientists who study the fossilized footprints in White Sands debate on whether they are the footprints of a young woman or an adolescent boy. Most lean towards the idea of a young woman. As they have studied the tracks, they have noticed how her weight has shifted from one foot to the other. The absence of the toddler’s footprints next to her during these stretches implies that she carried the child—shifting them back and forth across her body. The scientists do not delve into why she was walking along the lake shore, and if they have hypotheses about it, they have not published them.

            But I think about the woman walking with her child. And I think about how I walked down city streets with my mother. I remember her carrying me, even though I felt too old to be carried. I remember resisting and then feeling the warmth of being held, feeling safe, and settling in. Almost as though I were surrendering my own want for independence in favor of knowing that I just wasn’t ready for it yet. When walking, my mother’s hand kept me safe from traffic and unevenly paved sidewalks. Her hand was security and always knowing where to go. 

            In the past, I have had a tendency to look down at my feet and carefully anticipate each step on a hike. This habit came after many slips on loose rocks or raised tree roots. The fear of twisting an ankle and being left dependent on help to get me off the trail prompted this awareness. I have noticed that while walking with Kevin, the tendency is to look forward. I glance at the ground when I feel it becoming uneven. But I watch her and her body language. When her slight frame tenses, her head raised and ears forward, I become more aware of the movement in the woods.

            We see adolescent deer drinking from the stream. She sees them first and while her body bristles with curiosity, she glances to me for reassurance. I watch the deer for a moment. I kneel beside Kevin and she watches me as I observe them, glancing between my face and the young spotted deer. I wonder if their mother is nearby, or if they are of a mature enough age to have ventured out alone. They seem to be right on the cusp of adulthood. They move confidently, and though I am sure they have spotted us, they do not view us as a threat, and I am both grateful of that and worried that they are unaware of the damage that humans can do.

            10,000 years ago, a child trusted the person that was carrying them. I feel confident in that assertion. A scientist would say that it is likely that the child was carried based on the disappearance and reappearance of the smaller footprints and the variation of weight distribution in the larger ones. An anthropologist might say that the mother carried the child based on cultural norms of the time. I read that the original, ancestral form of bonding is the attachment between parent and child. I wonder when we began to confuse that attachment with love. I think of how I define love—specifically familial love; unconditional is a word that I want to use but hesitate on.

            While browsing articles about the footprints, I see an artist rendering of a scene in which a young woman with long black hair clutches a naked toddler to her chest. She is slightly bent at the waste and wearing, what I think the artist thought to be a primitive, hide dress that stops at her thighs. It looks like a mini dress that Twiggy would have worn for a Warhol shoot and I question whether the artist rendered this based on research or her own imagination. The child is crying, and the woman looks off and to the side with concern. The sky is ferocious, and lightning is striking in the distance. Just behind her, are two mammoths whose trunks and curved tusks are quite menacing. Rain falls in sheets at a diagonal.

            I read in the article that this image is associated with the fact that scientists have indeed found fossilized tracks of Columbian mammoths in this region. They’ve found evidence of giant ground sloths and dire wolves and American lions. The former banks of Lake Otero are rich with fossilized tracks and the pools of water that formed in the lakebed as the water dried up became watering holes for all kinds of species.

            What interests the scientists most is the relationship between the wildlife and humans. Inside the tracks of a giant ground sloth—a creature that when reared up would stand 7-8 feet tall—they found human footprints. These suggest and give clues as to humans stalking and hunting. They give insight into the risks of these people as they navigated the land. They show the risk of survival. Evidence showed that these hunts often ended badly for the humans. About one in five were successful and to fail was often to die.

            Few tools have been excavated in the area. The people were nomadic, following their prey and existing with few comforts. So, was attachment their comfort? The tracks of the young woman show a journey of about a mile. She turns around and returns to where she came from. I read an article that makes me laugh because I find it ridiculous. There are only a few lines on the White Sands National Park website that infer that human prints found in larger mammoth tracks could have been children playing. I laugh because the imagery associated with children jumping into the pools formed by mammoth footprints completely goes against the artist rendering of the menacing creatures kicking their feet and flailing their trunks behind the woman and child weathering a ferocious thunderstorm.

            I’m not entirely sure why I adopted Kevin. I had been longing for the companionship of a dog having come to a realization that, after several failed romantic relationships, I was not capable of giving and receiving love. I was not capable of the vulnerability and compromise and accountability required to foster and maintain companionship with another person. I felt stifled by relationships. I felt trapped by invisible ties that restricted where I went and who I spoke to and how I interacted with the world. I felt burdened by the simple act of telling another human being where I was going. I felt resentful and as though a freedom to act and be was being slowly stripped away from me. And I felt incredibly lonely.

            I browsed images on shelter websites for months before actually taking the jump to visit one of them. My mother was also in the process of looking for a small companion dog. She had resigned herself to living beside my father in their small townhouse, with little interaction. She told me of a shelter she was visiting and asked if I would meet her there. I didn’t tell her that I was thinking of adopting a dog too.

            I walked into what looked like a residential home, but what certainly smelled like a dog kennel. Volunteers in matching neon t-shirts shuffled around frantically trying to appease a fairly large swath of persons crammed into the small waiting room of the facility. I was taken back towards a room that smelled of dog urine and sanitizer and was filled with cages occupied by dogs—some barking, some whining, some looking out from their small spaces with big terrified eyes. I know that there is practicality to these setups. I know that they are an efficient way of housing these animals for a short time. But I think of the children kept in cages along the US border and I associate and anthropomorphize these dogs with the emotion I’ve seen on news broadcasts. The practicality of the setup also lends to our human nature to protect.

            I saw a small brown dog lying in a cage. Unlike the others, she seemed to have little interaction with the world outside of her immediate space. Balled up tightly, as though to make herself invisible, I asked to see her. What should have been smooth short brown fur had a grimy texture and her hip and rib bones defined her slow resigned movements.

            I stroked her face and teared up and knew that I needed to take her home. The adoption volunteer told me that she had tested positive for heartworm and would need to undergo a fairly rigorous treatment. She was a stray that had been found on the side of the road outside of San Juan, so she was not housebroken or socialized. I looked at the woman, who seemed like she could have been fresh out of high school and told her that I understood and would still like to adopt. I was already feeling a sense of possession and ownership that has since been replaced by a general respect for the life that I brought into my home that day.

            I named the dog Kevin because it made me laugh. A distinctly human name for a distinctly canine companion gave me a sense of connection and imposed a certain level of personality that had yet to be uncovered.

            Kevin slept for the first two months that I had her. I would wake in the night and feel her stomach to make sure that she was breathing. When she moved it was only to be fed and to go between soft comfortable spaces that she could bury into and make herself small. She cowered from other people and dogs. We were restricted to short walks because of her heartworm treatment. I feared that the anxiety of seeing other people and dogs and cars and bicycles was putting an unhealthy level of stress on her heart—which the veterinarian had told me would be dangerous for her condition.

            I worried about her constantly and debated whether I had taken on too much. I had been incapable of loving and caring about the feelings of a self-sufficient human being and had somehow thought that caring for a dependent dog would be more manageable. I had discounted the complexity of her fears and instincts.

            But I loved that she trusted me enough to curl up next to me at night—fitting into the curve of my body as I lay on my side stroking her rough fur and feeling the warmth of her breath on my face. I felt immense joy when she began wagging the tail that usually curled up between her legs and under her body at mealtimes. And over time her tail would flick back and forth when I would walk into a room, or when I would speak to her, or simply look at her. I felt honored that an animal that had not trusted before would trust me. I felt genuine joy and pride when she began holding her head up on our lengthening walks and she began venturing further from me in order to explore.

            The White Sands toddler’s footprints show up periodically across the mile-long tracks. They are beside the woman’s prints and when they are not present, the depth of the woman’s prints increases and show shifts in the distribution of her weight as she walks. The artist rendering of the woman carrying a child amplifies the sense of protection while the actual prints of the child beside the woman imply a burgeoning independence. I wonder if she held the child’s hand the way my mother held my hand through city streets. I wonder if she guided the child and pointed out both danger and beauty. I wonder if the child wanted to venture further but realized their dependence, attachment, love for the woman that was their protector.

            Dogs have evolved over time to be more attractive and relatable to humans. 33,000 years of domestication have influenced the physical evolution of a dog’s facial features. The term “puppy dog eyes” is actually explained by the development of a muscle in a dog’s forehead named the levator anguli oculus medialis (LOAM). The LOAM raises the inner eyebrows—a feature that wolf ancestors and decendents do not have. Some domesticated breeds like Huskies and shepherds—the more wolf like breeds—have less pronounced LOAM activity. Other breeds, further in appearance from their ancestors have active LOAM that mirror the expressions of their owners.

            I have been taught to never look a strange dog or predatory animal in the eyes. Their instinct tells them that it is a challenge and it can cause aggression or fear depending on the animal—either way, an undesirable result for a person just trying to connect. I honored this teaching when I first adopted Kevin. Looking instead at her frail body and stroking her chest and sides. Slowly I would make eye contact, but look away gently, shyly. I began to feel her watching me and unlike the confinement I felt as the result of the perceived watchful eyes of various romantic partners, I felt a comfort in Kevin knowing and watching my movements as a gauge of my general well-being.

            She gained weight and the hip and rib bones that had been so pronounced became softer lines. Her coat became smooth and soft and shone when the sunlight hit it. I began to experience the world as she saw it, noticing the birds that flew overhead and the walnuts that fell loudly from the tree in our back yard. I realized that her confidence was directly tied to mine, and when she hesitated at heavy summer rain, I ran out ahead of her, looking upwards, laughing, and holding my hands out until she walked tenderly towards me. I watched her swim only after she saw me wading forward into a shallow body of water.

            White Sands has yielded many fossilized prints besides those of the woman and child. These prints tell stories of the interaction between species. They inform the influence of human beings, their hunting tactics and influence on the decline of animal populations. They show the movement that existed before the movement of the shifting dunes. They show a harsh but natural environment—relationships in nature that categorize prey from predator. They show an evolutionary progression—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyful—in which the earth dictates a natural order of living things. What strikes me when I look at the images of these fossils is that they have existed for thousands of years and yet, there is still an impermanence to them. Scientists are actively working to preserve the fossils—a difficult job because of accelerated soil erosion in recent years.

            Present with the signs of life is the knowledge of death. Death is always the same. It is a life that once was but no longer is and, in its place, we are only left with absence. The fossils themselves are a perfect example of this absence. They are depressions in the earth—taken and buried and uncovered. They exist as a reminder of the impermanence of life despite their ability to last.

            The footprints in the trail that Kevin and I walk will not last past the next rain. They will be covered by other tracks and by shifting dirt. They will be obscured by the leaves that will fall in the autumn. I know that Kevin will not live forever and while I imagine that I belong to her, I accept that she does not, in fact, belong to me. She is not mine to possess, but she is what I choose to protect. She is an avenue for me to feel a connection, sense of attachment, and even an idea of love. I’ve walked the trail alone once.  I was attempting to be a jogger like the ones who pass me on my walks with Kevin. I focused on the ground in front of me, weary of tree roots and loose gravel. I heard my feet padding quickly down the trail and only realized the spots I had seen the hummingbirds, tasted the honeysuckle, observed the young deer, once I had passed them. I came home and washed the black mud off my shins and took my muddy trail running shoes off so they could dry after plowing through the muddy spots I am typically so careful to avoid. I only remember the absence of observation on the run and the sounds of my breathing as my muscles and joints propelled me further, and then back along the same track I had started on.

            And so, I continue to walk the path with Kevin by my side, occasionally pulling ahead of me. I accept that while she is not mine to own, the bond and relationship and protection we provide each other is what ties me to a sense of place. I recognize the impermanence of our relationship. I recognize the limit of the connection that I am able to have with her, though that limit does seem to ebb further past where I imagine it to be. I realize that with a connection comes a sense of purpose and not a burden. The burden is in the fear of failure to protect.

            The woman at White Sands protected the child for at least the mile forward in their journey and the trek back from where they had started. There are differing opinions on the purpose of their journey. The idea that she would hunt while carrying an infant feels removed, while the idea of foraging and possibly even teaching the child how to interact with the landscape doesn’t seem too far from the imagination.

            In revisiting the artist rendering, I acknowledge the want to showcase the harshness of a life devoted to survival, but I want the nuance of connection to be considered as well. That we are capable of more than simple attachment; that we find purpose and have developed the ability to move that sense of attachment—love—outside of blood relation and necessity is something to be considered. Though, I suppose, those stories might be the most difficult to tell.