Thanks to recent events, I have a new appreciation for the function of arteries. They carry blood, yes, and that is essential, moving that most elemental of reds into and out of a beating heart. But more than that, they carry the breath of life itself. It is the arteries that move oxygen throughout the body, quickening organs and enlivening limbs, keeping the delicate functions of the brain in balance.
In the art Native to this place, one common motif in carving, pottery, graphic arts, even jewelry is the image of a bear or other animal spirit with a zigzagging line entering at the mouth, terminating somewhere in the body with an arrow at the end. We call it the heartline, although non-Natives sometimes refer to it as the breathline or lifeline. In truth the first encompasses the other two, because the vessels that carry blood to and from the heart also carry, by definition, breath (oxygen), and therefore life. This is as true of our own bodies as those of bears and wolves.
What is also true is that, at least in humans, what we call “blood” is 92% water.
Our arteries, veins, capillaries — all carry life in the form of water and oxygen and blood itself, red cells and white cells and platelets. This is why, even as the whole world has seemingly coopted what the people indigenous to Red Willow have always known and said, that water is life, Wings has always said, beyond that truism, that water is breath.
And for the earth of this place, the blood vessels are the channels that carry the waters: the acequias and ditches, the capillaries; the creeks and streams, the veins. And the rivers, here so many and so varied and so full of life? The arteries.
In a good year, the waters run high and hard and fast, carrying the winter runoff downstream to feed the smaller veins and capillaries of the region’s extended lands. The Río Grande, of course, is the greatest in size and force, hence its name (Great River, or Big River). Upstream from us, it is fed by the Red River; downstream, as the canyon wends its way through the mountains south of town, the Quartzite tributary feeds into it.
This time of year, the waters should be relatively high, but stable, slicked here and there with sheets of ice. At this hour, we would be solidly in the throes of the winter snows, and the snowpack would accumulate steadily in the peaks above us, thence to melt and flow rapidly downward with the thaw.
What is dark green and studded with basaltic rock and darkened slate here turns, with the spring, into a rushing river of roiling waves that capture, hold, and reflect the bright turquoise of the warming skies.
That’s in a normal year.
These are not normal times.
There was a faint chance of snow yesterday, or so the forecasters told us, but as has been the case all season, nothing materialized. By darkfall, the clouds had mostly dissipated, leaving icy stars like a thousand tiny diamonds scattered across the black blanket of the sky. So we had no reason to expect anything but sunny skies this morning.
Dawn broke wrapped in a blanket of fog.
As it cleared, what also became clear is that beneath it was a heavy layer of clouds, gray and lowering. Stepping outside, we felt the bare touch of a very few dry and fragile flakes, the most scattered of flurries. On a day when the “experts” insisted, even as the flakes descended, that our chance of snow was precisely zero.
And so we were hopeful: After all, the mountains themselves, fully shrouded only moments past, were beginning to show a faint dusting on the slopes. Surely the clouds that hid their peaks were busy delivering solid precipitation, its birth now so long overdue.
But when the sun finally began to break through, it showed the veil around the summits’ faces for what it was: more fog, with barely a snowflake in sight. By afternoon, all that remained was a faint dusting on the treetops of the shadowy north slopes.
And once again, the earth of Red Willow felts its collective heart sink, as the bitterly cold and windy day unfurled, bone-dry in the harsh light of a wan winter sun.
This drought is bad for everyone, but it is especially perilous for the people themselves, particularly for those who live in the old village.
In a good year, the waters of the Río Pueblo also run high and hard and fast. They are fed, in part, by the Río Lucero upstream, but also in large part by the runoff that finds its way down from the mountains through a ditching system near as old as time itself in this place. The Río Pueblo bisects the open space of the village between North House and South House, a natural line of demarcation between homes and clans, but there is no division in its use: These are the waters by which the Pueblo survives. Drinking, bathing, cooking, ceremony — all of these most basic of needs are filled in the village, on a daily basis, by the waters of its river.
It’s not too much to say that the Río Pueblo is the main artery of the village, that which carries life itself through it.
This year? Everyone is worried about the water.
In this place, the inhabitants have long been blessed. Even in the face of dire regional droughts, the complex network of watersheds and the widely variable weather have worked in concert to keep the land here thriving, and the people with it. The rivers here are the arteries of the earth and the breath of life, and as with those in our own bodies, it’s easy to take such autonomic functions for granted . . . until they no longer function properly.
As climate change accelerates, we may see circumstances come to such a pass sooner than we ever imagined.
For now, we remain fortunate; there is still water. But as Wings and I were discussing earlier today, in this place where water is free and has always been so, that may change, soon and drastically.
In a time of heavy competing demands on our time and resources, we have work to do. Above all else, we must maintain the health of the arteries. Our Mother needs them if her body, our earth, is to survive . . . and us with it.
~ Aji
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