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<\/a><\/p>\nAfter setting up camp, I hiked to the ledge overlooking the Pueblo Bonito site.\u00a0 The mesa ravines supported wiry bunch grass, cliff roses wafting an occasional sweet fragrance, an array of desert wild flowers and Apache plumes fluffy with seed pods illuminated like bright lights in the late afternoon light. Rocky erosional pathways were exposed like large veins in a human hand.\u00a0 Mysterious circular holes in the sandstone ledge looked human made and left me wondering about who, what and when. All the while, this persistent jabbing in my stomach was painfully present.<\/p>\n
This was the path of the ancients I was treading, the route so many walked by foot for hundreds of miles to the Center Place, this canyon where thousands of rooms in ancient pueblo buildings had been carefully constructed in alignment with heavenly cycles of sun, moon and stars. I wondered if I was part of an ongoing drama, coming here to help find my own center place to ground myself in my daily life.\u00a0 Back home there was the digital world wide web where I spent so many waking hours connecting to others electronically, but where was that center place in which I could rest and find the sacredness of the everyday?<\/p>\n As I walked along in the morning silence, I noticed a bit of crumbling red sandstone on the trail, and wondered if it might have served as paint for the exquisite Chaco pottery made hundreds of years ago.\u00a0 Kneeling down, I wet a piece with saliva on my index finger to determine the color and texture; then without thinking, licked the red earth again, like licking the sweet batter on my mother’s spatula at home when she was baking a cake. It was rough, sandy and not at all like cake batter.\u00a0 But for some inexplicable reason I repeated the procedure.\u00a0 More licks of the earth batter.\u00a0 Within minutes, my stomach pain vanished. I had no explanation, but Native American Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz<\/a> expressed it this way in his poem\u00a0 “Canyon de Chelly\u201d:<\/p>\n Lie on your back on stone<\/em> My son is near me. He sits I knew at that moment I’d become part of the place, was being given a gift from the canyon that day, no matter how or why.\u00a0 Then that night, another gift:\u00a0\u00a0 I awoke just as a waning moon rose above canyon walls–orange-gold, beautiful, complete silence in the campground.\u00a0 There was a blanket of infinite stars. I watched a meteor trail across the vast canopy and thought:\u00a0 “This is why I come to Chaco.\u00a0 To reconnect with my home in the stars.”\u00a0 Then, an even larger meteor blazed across the darkness, as if to answer, “yes.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After years of living in New Mexico, Chaco Canyon kept drawing me like a magnet. I felt a sense of mystery, wonder and timelessness just in hearing its name. But darn it!\u00a0 This particular trip I had a persistent pain … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>the stone carved to fit<\/em>
\n<\/em>the shape of yourself.<\/em>
\n<\/em>Who made it like this,<\/em>
\n<\/em>knowing that I would be along<\/em>
\n<\/em>in a million years and look<\/em>
\n<\/em>at the sky being blue forever?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nand turns on his butt
\nand crawls over to stones,
\npicks one up and holds it,
\nand then puts it in his mouth.
\nThe taste of stone.
\nWhat is it but stone,
\nthe earth in your mouth
\nYou, son, are tasting forever.<\/em>\u00a0<\/sub><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n