Salt, Soil, and Story

Santa Fe Botanical Garden, 2019 When I moved to Santa Fe in 2019, I thought I was ready. I'd always believed myself to be culturally sensitive, open-minded, and deeply respectful of Indigenous communities. After all, I grew up hearing stories from my father, who lived with Indigenous groups in the Amazon. I had a reverence for Native peoples that I believed set me apart. Though I only lived in Santa Fe for two years, it was among the foothills and pinón trees that I learned how much I didn’t know. It was a conversation with a Diné friend that cracked my perspective wide open. I had been telling her about a late-night encounter with a coyote. I’d stepped out onto my patio to look at the moon, something I often do, when I saw her: a lone coyote standing still in the moonlight, her yellow eyes locked onto mine. Had I not been on the second floor, we would have been face-to-face. We were so close I could see the details in her coat, the vapor of her breath catching the moonlight, the t...