On Fossils, Code, & Culture at White Sands National Park

All you need is a rented sled, sunscreen, and water to experience the wonder that is White Sands National Park in New Mexico. My sister, daughter, and I visited over the Thanksgiving break last fall, just in time to see the newly installed exhibit in the visitor’s center about the fossilized footprints that have been found in the park. Of course, my daughter will tell you that barrelling down the gypsum sand dunes was the best part and I’ll definitely admit to having to be dragged away when it was time to leave my artistic designs in the sand. But after we’d departed from the park, I found myself thinking about how the threads between those ancient footprints—inaccessible to the public though they are—and the ones we left, if momentarily, are somehow connected. 

A photo of the windswept gypsum sand before we gleefully pranced around in it 

It’s been known for a long time that there were ancient footprints at White Sands, but in the last twenty years or so, new footprints have been found, human and otherwise (ice age sloths and camels, yes and yes). Some of these new discoveries have pushed back the human record several thousands of years for this part of the world. Previously, the record showed 16,000 years back at most; now they’re saying 23,000 years. That is a very long time. Long before written record. And who knows what further archaeological investigation will show? 

According to the National Park Service, some of the more recently discovered fossilized footprints belong to what researchers believe is a female and a toddler, the toddler’s footprints sometimes disappearing. It reminds me of the poem my mother used to read to me, "Footprints in the Sand," which is about the hard times in life when the narrator was carried by God, much like a mother might carry her child on a long walk when her child got too tired, but they had to continue on. And like God carrying the narrator of that poem and the archaeological evidence of a woman carrying her child across the landscape of what is now White Sands National Park, I do know a little something about carrying a little person in my care when the need arises. I’m a mom, too. This isn’t necessarily something that only gods and humans do; so many creatures carry their offspring when the need arises. It’s only natural to protect your genetic code, right? 

Before our National Parks trip over the break, I’d been reading a lot more archaeological research (by which I mean, watching way more reels on Instagram), and I think it was (and is) a symptom of my frustration at being unable to find my biological father or have access to any of his cultural history beyond what a DNA app can tell me. All I have is his name and a list of third and fourth cousins (and supposed relatives even further out than that) that show up on the app I’ve chosen. And the choosing was not easy, dude. The companies that provide these kinds of services are private corporations who anybody should be wary of sending their personal information to. And I don’t actually know what’s more personal than the literal strands of code built into the human body you occupy. But I digress. 

The lack of personal information I have about myself is partially to blame for my desire to connect to something bigger than one person. While I am currently at a standstill in my search for my father, I now have information about my genetic history more broadly. That I have ancestors from a certain part of Mexico, different parts of Europe, and so on and so forth. The problem with this is that I am not connected, not really, to these histories, and it’s very problematic to equate this racialized data into any kind of cultural currency. So many systemic issues of settler colonization and migration and separation and power dynamics of different groups of people make these histories complicated. I am also learning about how problematic it can be to flatten those histories with the claim that we’re all human. We are, of course, one species, but of that species, our development has obviously taken many different paths. 

I may not know where I fit in the larger story of humankind, what sides of history my ancestors were on, or even who my father is. But I know one thing. I have to protect my genetic code, and so do so many other creatures. So did that woman whose footprints fossilized for us to see her journey and her (assumed) progeny’s. It’s easy to see in those footprints on the sand how so many of us are built to protect our genetic code and its future, but harder to execute in the terrain I currently occupy.