Friday, September 05, 2008

Westering 19: Dialogue at Taos Pueblo
While Sitting by the Waters from the Sacred Mountain



And it came to pass that I was resting near the Red Willow River flowing down from the Sacred Mountain and Blue Lake where all life began, and I’m sitting in the middle of historic Taos Pueblo, looking at the one-thousand year old adobe structures brown with life and not necessarily with age, basking in the early morning, late July, New Mexican sunshine, talking to a Taos Indian by the name of Julian, who lived in town but was visiting his grandmother living at the pueblo. He was nine years old.

He asked me where I lived and I told him in New England. He asked me whether we had big tornadoes and I told him they just had a bad one just the other day. He asked me if we ever had an earthquake and I told him that we had a little one ten years ago. He asked me if I had been going to the bathroom at the time.

I told him that I lived right near the ocean, and he asked me if we had big crabs and seashells. I told that we did have both and then he asked me if the crabs would bite. I asked him what he liked to do and then he told me he made dirt bombs. He threw one that came close to me and then I showed him red dirt that fell from it upon my knee. He quickly brushed it off.

He told me that the kivas were the round things with the ladders, but I didn’t ask him anything about them.

~Son Rivers 2008



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