Today the cold comes in gray clouds of blowing snow.
The little lambs stand close to their mothers.
Yesterday the sky was blue and the sun warmed the land.
The lambs do not know that sometimes cold days make mistakes and come again after they should have gone away.
They do not know that tomorrow will be warm again.
They have not been here long enough to know these things and their mothers have not told them.
My father says, "Next year I will try the white-man's way of breeding the sheep.
Then the lambs will be born later, when summer has come to stay."
My mother says, "Yes, next year we will try that way."
There are many things about the wind that I do not know.
I have not seen the wind, and no one has told me where the wind lives, or where it is going when I hear it and when I feel it rushing by.
And something more I do not know about the wind.
I do not know if it is angry or if it is playing and just doing the things it does for fun.
Sometimes the wind gathers the sand into whirlwinds and makes them dance over the flat lands until they are tired and lie down to get their breath.
Sometimes the wind bends the wild grass down to the ground, and makes the sagebrush bow its head as if a giant moccasin had stepped on them in passing.
Today the wind makes the tumbleweeds look like sheep jumping off high banks and racing up arroyos with no dog to guard them, with no herder to guide them.
Poor tumbleweeds are frightened because they do not know where to go.
I want someone to tell me if the wind is angry or if it is playing with me and racing with me and my many skirts across the sand.
When the wind blows my long skirts, my many skirts are in a hurry to get to the hogan where the wind cannot push them.
They pull me along when I am walking and my feet have a hard time to keep up with my skirts.
Everything is resting, the sun and the sheep and the shadows.
And I look at Beautiful Mountain behind my mother's hogan.
Earth, they are saying that you are tired.
They are saying that for too long you have given life to the sheep and The People.
I cannot do big things, but I can do this for you.
I can take them the long way around the arroyos, not through them, when we go to the waterhole.
This way their little feet, their sharp pointed feet, will not make the cuts across your face grow deeper.