We think of the title phrase as a reference to geography: specifically, the geography of pursuit — of running something, or someone, down to the ends of the earth. It’s not, all things considered, an especially attractive metaphor; it carries with it connotations of predator and prey, and a not-unnoticeable whiff of obsession, as well.
But there is another way to understand the phrase, one that implies a more practical interaction with our world, one built on a coming together of family and community rather than on the breaking apart of pursuit and flight. It’s an interpretation that speaks of intent, of purpose, of engagement with Mother Earth in a way that honors her most fundamental gift by sheltering and sustaining life.
In this place, the things of the earth are, first and foremost, the earth itself, this rich red soil that serves as floor and roof and walls of the village, from the dust of the plaza to the stepped shelter of ancient housing to the walls of the most sacred of spaces.
Here, the ends of the earth refer to ends as purpose, to ends that are means of sustaining life. Indeed, this is a place where soil itself is sustenance: a rich and fertile womb planted yearly with seed and nourished with rain. It is the substance of which the hornos are made, the domed traditional ovens that hold close the cooking fires. And it is the body and soul of the vessels in which the food is cooked and carried to the table. In this place, the earth, with a small “e,” is as integral a part of daily life as its capitalized counterpart, this roundish orb we call Mother.
We tend to think of the word “wall” in the negative: a barrier, a means of keeping out some predatory other. But as a practical matter, walls are necessary; they keep out not merely creatures of the night, animals and spirits alike, but the predations of the elements, forces that bear us no ill will, but whose power, however neutral, carries the capacity for destruction on an immense scale. Walls provide a place for the gathering of family, of community, safe from the depredations of the storm.
In this place, the ends of the earth are temperate spaces, warm in winter, cool in summer. The earthen walls of the ancient village homes are made of adobe, bricks of clay mixed with straw and water, and remain some of the best natural insulation known to humankind. Their particular arrangement here, an architecture of community and connectedness, potentiates that insulating power.
It’s a reminder of the importance of communal effort, that we are more powerful and more effective when we work together than when when we are in opposition.
In a very fundamental way, the earth here is a teacher and a guide. It is, in a sense, the first elder, the most ancient one. In this place, we sit not only at her feet, but upon her lap, like the grandchildren who sit on the laps of their grandmothers in the storyteller figures traditional to Pueblo peoples. We have much yet to learn from her, and there are not a few lessons that we seem to need to relearn, over and over again.
At this time of year, when Father Sun arcs strong and high in his daily journey across the sky, we are blessed with more hours to engage with the earth, to put it to use, to plunge our hands into the soil and plant our seeds deep. Meanwhile, the sun warms the walls and catches the mica in the clay, turning what might otherwise be an ordinary expanse of mud and vigas into a jeweled work of art, even seen in the gray shadows of black and white.
Summer is nearly here, a time of planting and building, of cultivation and construction, and it is time to renew our relationship with the ends of the earth.
~ Aji
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