The AncestorsThose Who Called Me Sacred

There was a time when people knew me by name. Not this name: this one came much later.

I'm talking about when this land was full of people who knew how to listen to me. The Maya.

Maybe at school they told you about them the way people talk about things that are far away and finished. Hold on tight to this: they are not far away, and they are not finished. They are the grandparents of the grandparents of the grandparents of so many of you reading me. Their blood still walks barefoot on my paths.

They read the sky. They built temples so precise that on certain days of the year the setting sun drew serpents of shadow on the steps. They had calculated it, while elsewhere people still believed the sky was a roof.

And they called me sacred. To them I was not a place to use up: I was alive. When they needed something, they asked. They didn't just take.

So listen to me well, children of here: when someone tries to make you believe that coming from a jungle family is a small thing, remember that you are the children of the children of a people who read the stars while half the world slept in the dark.

As long as one child remembers, the ancestors are alive.

Tonight the wind also told me the story of a princess who ran barefoot through the night, and of the jungle that hid her.