#ute mountain

Ute Mountain from Wild Horse Mesa. Photo: Geraint Smith (May 30, 2023)

[Robert Scott Horton]

* * * * *

“In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out. They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water, and then they give it away.”

Boulder House on mesa above Brown's Ranch, McElmo, southwestern Colorado   

      Photographer: Jesse Nusbaum  

Date: 1908

Ute Mountain across the Taos Plateau. Photo: Geraint Smith (Mar 17, 2023)

[Scott Horton]

* * * * *

“Time as objective reality has never made much sense to me. It’s what happens that matters. How can minutes and years, devices of our own creation, mean the same thing to gnats and to cedars? Two hundred years is young for the trees whose tops this morning are hung with mist. It’s an eyeblink of time for the river and nothing at all for the rocks. The rocks and the river and these very same trees are likely to be here in another two hundred years, if we take good care. As for me, and that chipmunk, and the cloud of gnats milling in a shaft of sunlight—we will have moved on.”

Lichen, Ute Mountain, Sunset. In orange. 

Digital Painting, by Jonathan P. Thompson, 2019.