adapted from Mountains of
Light
Snow begins falling while I'm
sitting by the river that winds its way through the middle of Yosemite Valley.
Birds splashing in the water along its edges don't seem to notice, although
some begin to play with a little more excitement. The large flakes quickly
change the landscape, covering the rocks and trees, the granite domes and
mountains, and unifying everything in a blanket of white.
My thoughts turn to the
Ahwanechee who used to live in this valley. Did Chief Tenaya's people gather
inside their shelters during heavy snowstorms to share stories, traditions, and
tribal concerns? Or did they go out and play?
I think of friends and their
struggles with illness, grief, poverty, failed vocations, or troubled
relationships. I sense that if we
all lived here our sorrows would not strike as deeply because our community
would be close by and share the burden. Our expectations would be simple — to
live this day as best we could. Living in harmony with the seasons of nature,
our basic needs of food, shelter, and fellowship would be met.
Black Hawk, chief of the Sauk
and Fox, spoke of this sense of community:
We
always had plenty; our children never cried from hunger, neither were our
people in want. ... The rapids of Rock River furnished us with an abundance of
excellent fish, and the land being very fertile, never failed to produce good
crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes. ... Here our village stood for
more than a hundred years in the Mississippi Valley. Our village was healthy
and there were no better hunting grounds.
The call of a Steller’s jay
brings me back to the storm. I must have been thinking for some time because
now I'm covered with two inches of snow.
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