The first time we arrived here, I didn’t understand what waited for us. I knew there was something about this place – a weight under the air – I felt it as the sage roads pulled us forward, toward infinite mountains. The air thickened; a mountain stood up with a cloud covering half of it, passing through us, dissolving in our bodies like a breeze. Our grandfather asked us to walk in the curve of the serpent, and so we did.

We were all carrying the serpent, and as we moved with its weight on our shoulders, we felt the mountains narrow the hours into – days, weeks, years –

We waited patiently for the clouds to move as we continued to feel a slight drumming in our hearts. My grandmother once lived on this side of the mountain. She had been asleep all this time, and she woke when we lit the fire; the beams of light became the mountain’s pulse. Unknowingly, we were standing at the foot of the sacred mountain. It was the energy of the land. We hadn’t arrived just anywhere.

During the night, after our grandmother went back to sleep, we spoke to the oak trees, the deer, and to the mountain itself. And as we watched the river take the land at dawn, we knew that we had arrived—we had arrived at Maihayuwit,

la serpiente de luz.