Mis Raices Estan Allí

When the light dances across the wind swept mesa, I delight in what I see. The uncommon beauty in the middle of poverty is breathtaking. It’s difficult to comprehend why people long to escape from this place and even more difficult to comprehend why I long to be there. Pictures cannot capture the sounds. They cannot capture the smells or the wind. Yet they take me back to a place so far from home, but so close to what home really is.

I think the sounds are what makes the visual so appealing. Without them, the color fades to black and white. They alert the visual but they fail to bring the entire picture.

The days spent there have a pace so different from here. Sometimes the pace seems slower, but that is not the best way to describe it. Calling it different may be enough. Perhaps it is not even so much the pace that changes as the priorities. The former priorities still come to the forefront of the mind, but they are quickly replaced by ones that are of utmost importance. It is hard to be worried about the superficial things when the ones that have urgency are there.

Attachment is a funny thing. It makes you do things that you wouldn’t normally do. It changes you. What is most spectacular is when it brings you close to people of the most improbable sort. Perhaps even stranger is when it provides a definitive experience in which to view things in an unmistakable light.

I won’t go back for the light playing softly on the hillside. I won’t go back for beauty of the earth. I won’t go back for the fun. I won’t go back because it’s a good thing to do.

I will go back because of the laughter and the dirty faces, for the pain and the strife. I will go back for the relationships and for the hope that comes with the sun every morning. I will go back because I am called back. I will go back because it is where I belong.

Is it there that I belong? Maybe, but maybe not. It is the idea of there that is the place where I belong. But my roots are buried there. Mis raices estain allí . It is hard to describe that.

Maybe I’ll be somewhere else when I discover that I am there. It’s hard for me to say. It may be another continent or a place so close that I can see it. But I know that I have roots and I know that they will cause growth. Knowing where you are and where you came from can just about get you to where you are going.

Mis raices estain allí.