Journal articles and academic publications

¶ … sun was high but the wind was cold. It came through the mountains and whipped through the arroyo. My cousin Jim and I were looking for jackrabbits. Our uncle Sammy had told us to get a rabbit for some stew. What did we know about hunting rabbits? We were just kids. I think he just wanted to get us out of the house. He wanted us to take a walk, down where the birds and animals live. Away from the houses and the cars and the video games. We never found any rabbits. We just walked for a few hours. The next day I came back, and walked again. I started walking every day. It was something I came to really enjoy. When years later I went to Albuquerque to look for work, I walked around that city but it wasn't the same. The city streets don't have nothing for an Indian. They have stores, sure, and they have people and coffee shops and things like that. You can always get an enchilada for lunch and things like that. But you can't get the open sky. You can't get a breath of air without exhaust.

I hated the city, and going there was something I only did when I had to. I remember the time that I met this white girl there. She said she was from New York, and she had never met an Indian before. She wanted me to smoke pot and tell her stories. I had a cousin that smoked a lot of pot and listened to heavy metal music all day. He was a jerk sometimes but I liked him. I told her that we don't tell stories just for fun, to white girls, when we're smoking pot. She didn't really understand what I meant. I think that was the point. She was pretty and I liked that, but that white girl could never understand me. She loved it when I told her about eagles and mountain lions and things like that. She wanted me to do a rain dance. I told her it rained last week. I did not stay in the city long. I never did.

I understand the sky

When it is blue, it is happy

When it is not blue, I like that too

When the white is on the mountains

The wind is cold

And the sky turns grey

We burn wood for the fire

And wrap ourselves in blankets

and All the stray dogs gather

I left that girl. I went back home, to the land under the sky, where every day I could walk in the arroyo, and up into the hills. I just liked to be in the world I knew from a kid. Not somebody else's idea of what my world was, but my world as it really was.