For Thanksgiving last year, I wrote about courage, about how I’m going to need more of that. I feel like I could just repeat that same story because it’s not much is easier now, but in a way it is easier because I’m not as afraid now and because I no longer care who wants to judge me for the not-so-good way I live. So I’ll give thanks for that. I have new people in my life, I have people who left, I have the people here, and I’m still thankful for that. And I managed a trip, a short trip, but a good trip! One day of that trip consisted of contact with Native Americans in New Mexico, Navajos in the stores selling rugs I cannot afford, art from a long-past time, and the present-day ruins of the 800-year-old pueblo called “Aztec,” stone buildings forged by peoples known as Hopi and Santa Clara where they lived and celebrated. That pueblo has history, with stone walls and log and thatch roofs all built from materials that the natives carried from more than 50 miles around. Those experiences were my Thanksgiving because for these actual days I must work. So I give thanks for what I learned and felt on my early Thanksgiving trip, lessons from the culture of the Native Americans I encountered.

I have had under contract since two summers ago, Lord knows how it still is under that contract but somehow I have managed to keep it that way, a little tract of land north of that pueblo, land well within that 50-mile radius of the journey of the Natives who built the pueblo. The land is just north of a town in Northern New Mexico that itself views the Rocky Mountains that are 40 miles to the north in which the trendy town of Durango, Colorado is situated, transitioning through the sky to the entire four-corners area, including New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. I contracted to buy this land, sight-unseen, so that I can use it for equipment and so that it can serve as a meeting place for my family in Texas as the half-way point between Los Angeles and Dallas. My brother had looked on satellite photos thinking that because the land is part of the northern-most mesa in New Mexico that the land might view Colorado, that the view might be of the Rockies. When I got to this relatively unknown New Mexico town and drove around the places we needed to go during the day before becoming tourists, I was surprised at the views. I hoped my brother was right about his thought that the land might view the Rockies. After doing business tasks that day, we finally drove to the land. On the drive I was very anxious, seeing as this was going to be a “surprise” as to what we actually had bought. And unlike many of my “surprises” from the past couple of years, this one was good. Sure enough, the land we have has that amazing view of the Rockies and the Four-Corners states, and better yet, is situated in one of the only forest-type tracts around and even has a creek-like feature within it. Trees, a creek-feature and a view, well except the catch is for us to actually see the view from a vantage point other than the road will require building a house taller than the trees, and that will be a long while before there is money for that. Still those trees give this amazing connection to the Natives and bring me full circle to the beginning of this story.

The day after we played around on the land, we toured the ruins. The tourist-movie-narrator said the natives walked up to 50 miles away for their wood and stones, and as the tourists were marveling over this place they might never see again, we realized that the day before when we went to look at our under-contract land for the first time, that we had been walking on land that probably gave the supplies for this 800-year-old pueblo, that the ancestors of our own trees likely are the roof, that the first Americans walked there long before we did, that those first Americans marveled at that view long before we did, that we had contracted to buy part of history, that this place would become … ours.

Coloring that realization was the shopping trip we did before touring the pueblo ruins, window shopping as it were, you know shopping when you can’t actually buy what you want but still want to see it? A Navajo woman in one store showed me a necklace. The necklace looked ceremonial; it was heavy with silver and a lot of turquoise, and it was a work of art. She tried it on me, said it was $1,500, then as she touched my long dark hair, said with both affection and pride “with your hair and this necklace, you look like a Navajo.” I told her I couldn’t afford the necklace, that I can’t really afford anything so that she wouldn’t waste her time with me, but it didn’t matter to her. She went into a discussion about other tribes, about spirits, about where we go when we die, about how she was convinced I had the blood of her peoples in me. My brother told her that there is a lot of darker skin and black hair in our ancestors, something nobody has ever explained. The woman decided these traits are Native American and declared me to be a Cherokee. I don’t really care about things like that, about what nationality my ancestors were, but what was amazing was this woman’s very apparent desire to include me as one of her people. That inclusion was way different than anything my own white culture could ever do. It was warm and sweet, but in a way that seemed to have a fire to it, a passion, a fight almost, a sense of belonging that I’ve never experienced, and something that was more inclusive than hierarchical. For all of our culture’s view that we should be on top, that we should be the best, the richest, the prettiest, the coolest, her discussion was something different from that; it was that we should just “be.” From that store, I bought two books, one about the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II, the other a true story of a Navajo woman’s journey in the long walk, skin cream made from pinion wood and a set of two small hand-beaded hair barrettes. She told me the barrettes are good for my Cherokee hair; seriously, she never let up on this stuff, as if she was trying to teach a long-lost cousin of her people.

Yesterday, I wanted to know what our friends here were having for dinner, a joke because the food for today is so important. We got many answers, and still most people focused on today. In that curiosity, I looked up the first Thanksgiving meal, wanting to see what the meal was. The meat was duck and venison, but because of my Thanksgiving having been so influenced by these Native American people and buildings, what interested me was that the venison was a gift from the local natives who came to celebrate with the white Pilgrim settlers. Those earlier natives brought their own tents, their own culture, and they stayed for a week, a week of fancy food that they helped cook. That Thanksgiving was a model of inclusiveness that we all as a country did not follow afterwards. I wondered what things had been like had we kept more of their culture. I wonder what those first pilgrims learned from the natives.

Last night, I read the first few pages of the book about the Navajo woman. Those pages simply introduced the character as a baby, but I was taken by her name, a long name but a name that included the word warrior. I’ve read many books, and the female characters in our books are often strong, but rarely are they named Warrior. In our culture a woman has to play down her strength; sure we can be strong, but we must never let on that we actually are, so a culture where a woman can be so obviously strong, so obviously courageous as to have the name Warrior, was awe-inspiring, especially when all I’ve been seeking for a year is courage. That’s the feeling the Navajo woman in the store had, the feeling that she seemed to be attempting to pass on to me. She said the spirits of her people walk amongst us, that we can feel them if we quiet, that those spirits will give us strength, will give us courage. The guides at the pueblo said the Hopi people believe the spirits of Hopi who built the pueblo return to the ruins to talk to their decedents, to give them courage. Somehow, after walking the very land where the rocks and wood came from to form that pueblo, land that is to be my family’s, after listening to the Navajo store-keeper’s teachings, I feel those natives passing to me courage, the same courage the first natives likely passed in the first Thanksgiving, that instead of venison, my gift was the gift of the thing I so wanted last year — courage, the same courage where a woman can be named Warrior.

And following the tradition of saying what I’m thankful for, I’m thankful for that experience, and I am thankful to have warrior barrettes with beads (a darn good friend for a sparkly headband) that were talked about with so much pride by this Navajo to her supposedly Cherokee kin. I am thankful to have the gift of courage. May I keep the fire that those people and places taught, and may I continue to have that kind of courage. May you all continue to visit me here, and may you all have love and … the spirit of a warrior throughout the coming year. Oh … and rock on!