2011 Issue - Santa Fe Community College

Looking for Dennis
Hopper’s Grave
by Nancy Stohlman
You’re on the outskirts of Taos, Rio Ranchos, eating at a restaurant
called the Trading Post. The walls are adorned with black and white
photos of Dennis Hopper, different era Dennis Hoppers from the
brunette, Easy Rider days with Yosemite Sam moustache and leather
fringed jacket to the aging gray goateed version of his final years. It’s a
message you both whisper as you settle into a small table on the patio.
“Yeah, he was old friends with the owner,” the waitress confirms.
“The service was here. I think he was buried off Highway 518, up there
somewhere.”
Up there somewhere is closer than you’ve come so far, so you welcome
the tip. Your boyfriend is the current events expert; it was he who
told you about the funeral, attended by the ever grinning Jack Nicolson
and a badly aging Val Kilmer-turned-Meatloaf in ranch-style hat and
bolo tie. According to the internet, Hopper was buried in a cemetery
just outside of Taos in a “humble grave” Native American style, piled up
with rocks and artificial flowers and a tiny green plastic marker.
And so began the quest. You’re both looking for some kind of desert
medicine that goes beyond Dennis Hopper’s grave, but you’re drawn to
wander the tawny dust of New Mexico graves, languish among the white
grotto rocks and iron scrolled fences and the simple purple crucifix at
the grave of Baby Martinez. There are too many of these baby graves you
both agree while a yellow garden windmill spins in eternity over Ofelia
Archuleta.
You head down Highway 518 in the direction the waitress pointed,
the same dusty roads where Easy Rider was filmed. You google the Jesus
Nazarene cemetery and study the picture of his grave for the dozenth
time. You marvel that you can be on the internet in the middle of
nowhere New Mexico—no such luck back when you were 20, when you
were your own easy rider, wandering around the country looking for it,
just like Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda did in 1969, purring across
78 Santa Fe Literary Review