Not literally, not even figuratively, but I can explain why I say that, what I mean.

At this stage in my life, I’m realizing things.

When I was living my life, I was only dimly aware. Life passes by so fast that you don’t have time to catch up with yourself and reflect on it because it’s still going and you’re going with it.

Now that I’m older, though not old yet, but fully retired from day to day, I have time.

I can sit and remember. I’m getting to know myself. I can hold monodialog conversations with myself for hours.

People say, “Who you talkin’ to?”

I say, “Myself.”

They say, “You crazy.”

I say, “Not yet. And I’m a good listener.”

I add, “And, apparently a good talker, because, once you get me started…”

I might add, always the teacher, “You should try it. Listen to yourself. You might be surprised.”

The current self-thought process this time has made me realize that I’m Navajo.

I mean that only in the best sense, admitting that I don’t really know what I’m talking about, haven’t done the research, am not invading or stealing anyone’s heritage, but am sharing an epiphany.

Writing it down helps me work it out and preserve it. Finding the words anchors the thought.

Talking to myself puts the words into the air where I can hear them. They give me companionship. No one wants to be alone all the time.

And there’s a pleasure in realization. It’s the pleasure you get when waking from a troubled sleep, suddenly things become clear, questions answered, problems solved.

Every author who writes anything down does it with the expectation that someone will read it. It may only be for himself, a solitary diary to preserve his life, sometimes discovered by the outside world when the detritus of his remains are sorted through.

Sometimes it’s an author’s intended gift to the world. “Here, take it.”

I’ve written too often about the impulse to create. I have insufficiently considered the impact the creation has upon its creator. “Did I write that? What was I thinking?”

To cut to the chase (this time), I realize that I am Navajo.

I’m reading Hillerman.

The Hillerman dynasty, father Tony, daughter Anne.

The books satisfy a hunger and a thirst.

Not for murder mysteries. Not as a travelogue. Not even just for the pleasure of reading quality writing.

It’s true that writing, if we let it, takes us into another world where we lead another life. We expand our own life, and become more than we were.

If we’re lucky, and become better readers of better writers, our own world remains larger.

I’ve written elsewhere how Hillerman infuses me. This time, I’m realizing with greater clarity that my life is like Leaphorn’s famous map, where he highlights the points of interest and the pattern becomes clear.

He connects the dots. Dots good.

In no particular order, and if I have the energy to follow my speculations and flesh them out with written words, I turn back the pages and suddenly re-remember our visit to Acoma.

As you know, if you’re been reading what I’ve been writing, Shirley and I were part of a field trip with the Anthropology class at PCC.

In Acoma, the adobe village atop a mesa in the Southwest, we encountered, on a backstreet, a pitiful sight.

A prematurely aging Native American man, scrawny skin and bones, more bones than skin, sat in a corner, back against the wall, a box of piki bread at his feet.

His eyes were bleary with drink. Alcohol had infected all the tribes like an early covid. The tribes resisted with abstinence and ancient native medicine, controlled the epidemic, and only a few victims remained as reminders. This man was one of them.

He was like the frequent sinner for whom sin has become a way of life.

He pitied himself for his inability to resist his own body’s addiction.

He was a tragic figure and knew it. He loved his tribe, his family, his heritage, and had betrayed them all by his own weakness.

He knew his tribe, like all the tribes of the Southwest, share a reverence for the Great Mother Earth. Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, were like families in the greater community. Families can squabble, but they share a common essence. Their stories overlap, intersect.

The Grandmothers of Acoma (see my poem) represent a practiced patience with eternity.

They take care of their own.

Our drunken Indian knew he was still part of the family that tried to protect him. They heal the sick to live in harmony. They endure.

He was given a job, to sell piki bread. I suspected that he must have taken the money and exchanged it for alcohol.

He was relegated to a back alley, aware of his transgressions as a tribal disgrace, sat in the stupor of the sun, and waited for death or absolution.

The panic in his eyes and shaky hands showed he could not control his own awareness, wanted so much to do his part, to belong, to contribute, to offer something of himself, when all he had was a box of piki bread.

He tried to force it on us as a gift. “No, no,” we said, “we’ll pay, it’s only fair and right.”

I don’t remember the details of the negotiation, only that we wound up with a box of piki bread which we shared among our group, for most of us our first taste and an unanswered question, ”Why?”

Our group moved on to meet the Grandmothers of Acoma, sitting in a circle, massaging the clay into pottery, firing it in the open flames, selling it to tourists.

They had been sitting there for thousands of years.

I did not fully realize at the time how our minds had melded.

When I stepped in to control Crocodile Bernice (see that blog entry) after her famous outburst against the Grandmothers when she yelled, “This pottery is crap! I can get better for less at Kmart!” I took her aside to show her the edge of the cliff. I had become one with the tribe.

I realize now, as I did not have time to then, that my reaction to our earlier encounter with the drunken Indian was an example of my own belonging.

Others might have felt disgust or sympathy. I felt something deeper than empathy, an identity with a member of a family, the human race.

We are unified by humanity.

The Southwest tribes have known this forever. Beneath their intermittent wars for dominance and territory, they are (we are) all brothers and sisters under the skin.

Tony Hillerman and his daughter Anne have made me Navajo.

I did not fully realize it, those many years ago, when Shirley and I were returning from one of our many Southwest trips, and stopped to rest at the small Navajo reservation at the Nevada border.

We parked in the empty lot, fronting a church, a store, and a school. We strolled over to the school where children were playing on the playground, their young teacher sitting and watching over.

She welcomed us, and we pushed the children on the swings, and laughed with them.

We sat down with the teacher and talked as friends and family. She was surprised.

“We’re a small reservation. Most people just drive on by, don’t bother to stop. They’ve already bought their souvenirs from the bigger Trading Posts down the road, and they’ll have dinner back home in California. What made you stop with us?”

“Well, we’ve been driving for hours, needed a pause, and your little reservation has a parking lot, looks welcomingly charmingly real where life seems day to day. We’re not the typical tourist. The castles in Europe are worth a look, but we wouldn’t want to live in them.”

The young woman’s projected thought didn’t register until these many years later. “So you’re Navajo!”

One of the great regrets of my life is that we didn’t accept her invitation to stay for dinner at her house. We were already behind schedule, running low on gas, and I had to get back to work the next day.

She understood us and extended a hand.

I suppose, after the honor of the meal, I could have driven through the night, but after eating, I tend to fall asleep, something you should never do while driving.

Life is full of missed opportunities.

Sometimes what is missed is the realization.

I don’t know what it is about us, but every tribe we ever encountered has welcomed us in. At the Morongo Casino on the way to Palm Springs, we skipped the gambling and talked with the workers manning the shops. They revealed the secret of where they live, over the hill in a hidden valley, beautiful landscaped houses and an iconic ancient tree that centered their village. Off limits to the public, we were invited to visit.  

Another time, when we were driving back home on a back road through the reservation, probably after the rug auction, the road was narrow and there was a sheep in the middle blocking the way. Some people would have just swerved and driven by. Some would have hit the sheep, feeling self-righteous that the sheep had no business being there.

We pulled over, stopped, parked, and Shirley ran to the sheep and hugged it.

A Navajo family, coming home from an auction and farmer’s market, stopped their truck and laughed at the spectacle of a white woman hugging a sheep.

It may or may not have been their sheep.

The children got out of the truck to take a closer look, the parents were in no hurry, and we all chatted as long-time friends.

I won’t repeat more of the story, because it’s elsewhere in the blog, but the point I want to make now, is the realization that we were Navajo too, we’re all Navajo in the ways that matter.

A pleasant afternoon.

It’s easy to make friends when you’re open to it.

We bought from their truck some of the fruits and vegetables left over that hadn’t sold at the farmer’s market.

I marveled at how small the cucumbers were. I didn’t take the time to think the thoughts. That living in the desert, where water is scarce and rain is an infrequent memory, which is why we call it a desert, there are people rooted to the land.

Life is hard. We all scrabble for a living, but love and family and roots allow us to live in an inhospitable landscape where even the weeds die. I admired the little cucumbers for their courage.

Though I’ve interacted with various tribes, even taught them at Sherman Institute (see the blog), Hillerman has made me Navajo. I don’t have to know the details of Navajo, don’t have to research to verify, I just know that Hillerman has taken me into that world, I belong, can’t escape and don’t want to.

The more you live, the more you read, the bigger your life becomes.

That’s been my life-long plea and job, to get people to read, really read, and live fuller lives in a bigger better world.

I’ve read a lot of the Hillerman books.

As of this writing, 2026, (the current Hillerman book I’m reading, Lost Birds, by Anne Hillerman, a first edition, 2024), there are 26 books in the Leaphorn, Chee, Manuelito series, 17 by Tony, 9 by daughter Anne.

I’m going to read all of them.