Translate yourself to spirit; Be present on your journey. Keep to the trees and waters. Be the singing of the soil. - N. Scott Momaday

A Story of Light

When the leaves turn
And the light of the forest deepens,
I will remember a thousand words between us.
Those that enclosed us, as in the pattern
Of shadows that shiver with the turning leaves,
Recount a story that was told about us by those
Who told stories in the caves. We danced
To the music of the words. On our tongues
Were shaped the names of our original being.
This is what the storyteller said: The leaves turn,
And in the light that emanates from the leaves
There is enchantment. There is wonder.

We humans must revere the earth, for it is our well-being. Always the earth grants us what we need. If we treat the earth with kindness, it will treat us kindly. If we give our belief to the earth, it will believe in us. There is no better blessing than to be believed in.

The other, latecoming things — the beasts of burden and of trade, the horse and the sheep, the dog and the cat — these have an alien and inferior aspect, a poverty of vision and instinct, by which they are estranged from the wild land, and made tentative. They are born and die upon the land, but then they are gone away from it as if they had never been. Their dust is borne away in the wind, and their cries have no echo in the rain and the river, the commotion of wings, the return of boughs bent by the passing of dark shapes in the dawn and dusk.