From the editors.

As humans we have no special claim to memories--what we forget to remember is found all around us, not only in the things we create--our dwellings, workplaces, structures we build and abandon--but also on the forests, rivers, deserts; and nature of course has its own history and memories, separate from ours. In this issue, we consider some of these different kinds of memories--personal, institutional, cultural, and yes, lithic.

Chacabuco, in Chile's Atacama Desert, has a fair amount of human history for such a lonely, wind-whistling place--it was once home to a booming nitrate industry and then a concentration camp during the Pinochet regime. "It's strange to be here," remarks a man who gives contributor Tomas Dinges a lift. "It's not helpful to go back to the way things were, to your memories." (Memories can be good travelers, but it seems we don't always want them along for the ride.) Caretaker Roberto Zaldivar, however, once a prisoner within the walls where he now leads tourists, holds a different view, reinforced by the memories of adobe walls and desert sands around him.

And in another desert, across the Andes...