The Story of My Place

I live where water yearns to be weightless, where the air is thirsty, where each and every molecule of water disappears into a love affair with the still, blue sky.

I cannot tell if I am a mirror to My Place, or if My Place is a mirror to myself. Does Skunk Canyon, shimmering after the late summer monsoons, look upon my soul and see itself as I stroll through its tall grass? I sometimes lose myself in the story of a single drop of water, as it falls from a pine needle onto the back of my hand. Which do I know better, my hand or the drop? My own life story has taken me from desert to sea, desert to sea and back again. Somehow, the sea seems to live within my deepest longings, and the desert in my heart. So, this is my place. In the desert—as the desert—With the sea seated in the swell of my body and soul like a beloved I cannot leave. The older I get, the easier it is to see the kaleidoscope of my belonging; the easier it becomes to become My Place. 

The more I become My Place, the less I long for explanation. My tongue is tired of objectifying my story, and My Place, to make it palatable for others. We humans just have words, and we do our best to push the deafening power that My Place speaks behind our words like the sea does behind her crashing swell. But they are just words, and My Place is a presence. 

There were many people who belonged to this Place before I did, before the white settlers, before the city of Flagstaff crept out from the base of the Kachina Peaks. The Hopi were just one of many tribes who called, and continue to call, this Place sacred. They are running people. I ran with them on their land, at Second Mesa, as a medicine run. I was 22. When they run, they kiss the earth with the soles of their feet. Their trails are veins, the carriers of blood and water and life. They run to keep the veins of the land alive. They run as a prayer. 

I have always been a runner. As a teenager, I woke before dawn to run through the desert. I found my spirituality on those mornings, more potent and alive than any desperate effort at faith in the church I grew up in. I didn’t know then that Hopi wisdom was pulsing beneath the surface of why I ran, that their ancestors had once run the same trails, keeping them alive like rivers. I didn’t know then that I was blowing kisses to Earth with my footsteps, stepping on the sole prints of runners who had done the same for millennia. I didn’t know then that I was praying with every breath, praying to the sunrise, the saguaro, the willows, the water. I was becoming My Place, being shaped and chiseled and molded by the Sonoran desert like the dry clay my feet were also molding and shaping. My prayers were being answered in real time, moment to moment, with each breath and step and kiss and prayer that were all pulsing under the surface. I did not know that I was marrying myself to My Place. 

I know now. That is what the Hopi taught me. A run is always a prayer, always erotic, always a salute to the artistic hand of the land, sculpting me into itself.

The relieved fingers if chaparral reaches from their monsoon-embraced leaves toward the sky. Water inspires the ancient shrubs to dance in the downpour. My feet pound and thunder the earth, my baby feet, the feet of innocence, worshiping the rain, as the arms of creosote reach out, grabbing my hands, leading me through the steps. The unique perfume has no other kin, it is too ancient. It dances me, my feet on their feet like my feet on my papa’s as he taught me to waltz. My feet on creosote’s aroma, as they teach me how to delight, how to dance for thunder. 

The desert is in a great romance with water. This land is shaped by water just as I am shaped by the land; the Grand Canyon lives in the desert, shaped by mighty waters. I am also in a great romance with water. The water that meanders like blood down canyons and seasonal creeks—trailing life behind it—is always a cyclical blessing when it arrives. A blessing, because of its rarity. Every being, every life form, in this place, patiently waits for rain or snow, never taking it for granted. 

The desert loves water most, I think, because no other place is so shaped by its longing for it. And when the rains come, they come thunderously, with a life-giving air of annihilation.  

We all arrive in the sea, one way or another. Even the desert—my place and my bones—touches the Colorado River, dances in monsoon rains, caresses the water that passes through here. The same water that evaporates into dry air who sips the moisture from my own body, carrying it westward to the sea. The vast ocean, gentle but fierce, roaring “come into me.” Into the body that is full of infinite drops, each with their own story, a journey from the highest mountain streams to thunderous downpours, all returning to her. When unencumbered by dams and greed, the Colorado races toward the delta, where the long worn-out water finally tumbles into the arms of home.

That is My Place, the Place that the land sees when it looks upon me, as I look upon its dew drops.