Nature Attachement
Growing up with nature and wild places at the center of my family is a building block that still helps create who I am today and who my daughter will become. I believe in the importance of Nature Attachment. It is healthy way love the earth we live on. A way to keep Earth as a member of the family. Like family, we don't always behave nicely to one another. But also like family we are there for one another. My family taught me to stay attached to nature. I am so grateful for that. Now it is part of my job as a parent to raise my child with Nature Attachment.
The following is something I wrote for The Art Junket magazine for the issue on "The Trickster and Me, Issue 5" You can read the original article and more here.
The Trickster
I can not say for sure that my dad was always fascinated by the trickster for the same reasons that I am. Even when my father was not an old man he referred to himself as Hosteen Coyote.
When my mom moved to California to live with us after he died we found letters he had saved over the years from me. I wrote to him and my mom often during my years in college so far from home. My letters were more often than not addressed to Hosteen Coyote.
Coyote is by no means the only trickster in our collective consciousness. Coyote has many guises that run the gamut from silly, to self-reflective, to sexually deviant. That is quite a spread for one entity, but not unbelievable.
Our family had a little adobe tucked in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico. It was a magical place that certainly housed many spirits and beings even when buttoned up for the long harsh desert winter. Our family spent summers there wandering the desert with a collective urge of searching. We were always searching with eyes, ears, tongue, nose, fingers, and spirit. We voraciously read about Navajo, Tewa, Zuni, cowboys, saints, and artists. Every people that stopped just for a moment to breathe in this high desert-scape also felt that deep drive to search.
I think we are all searching for Hosteen Coyote. This elusive spirit will bring us fire and knowledge. It will laugh in our faces until we laugh back. Coyote holds up the mirror so we can see our true nature for the first time. We can even follow coyote back to the den, if we dare, for more tempting secrets. And like the desert itself, coyote is not always fun and carefree. Life lessons come with a cost. Sometimes we overlook the consequences of our thirst for more. Never underestimate coyote and never underestimate the desert. They are both more powerful than us. And we humans need things that are bigger than ourselves.
When I look up to the galaxy cluster in the deep night and hear the yips of the coyote pups I know my place in the world again. Hosteen Coyote, father, trickster, desert embodied, pads through my heart and sends me to sleep body and spirit sated.
