“The purpose of pilgrimage is to come home and realize your own backyard is sacred ground.”
—Thich Nhat Hahn, Vietnamese Buddhist teacher

This has been a wonderful year with special Earth Walks journeys to Chaco Canyon, NM and Canyon de Chelly, AZ.  An integral part of the experience was service activities to the Native American communities where we travel.  For Chaco Canyon, ancestral homeland for Pueblo people of the region, we helped dig and plant a garden for Tewa Women United, an organization in the Santa Fe, NM area.  http://tewawomenunited.org/  TWU is involved in many activities and services of their own and we were delighted to add our own efforts to their work.

The great kiva complex at Pueblo Bonito

In Canyon de Chelly http://www.nps.gov/cach/index.htm  we visited with an elder Dine (Navajo) weaver on her family farm.  Huge rains this year had inundated her fruit trees and massive weeds had grown up.  During our visit we dug out some of the trees and fed the cut weeds to her goats and sheep who happily received them.

Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly

Kathryn Pemala                            Dine (Navajo) weaver

Due to the interest in these two amazing places and the native cultures and traditions that they embody, Earth Walks will return to them in 2016.  Watch for the exact dates in a future message, but Chaco will be the next to the last week in May and Canyon de Chelly will again be in the fall.

If you would like to create your own special Earth Walks for friends, family, business groups or other organizations, please contact us. Service to the local communities is always a part of the journey. In the meantime, have a wonderful holiday season and may we all “Walk in Beauty” throughout the coming New Year!

—–Doug Conwell, Director of Earth Walks, Santa Fe, NM USA