Presenting the poetry, books, and photographs of Nancy Wood, 1936-2013
He never dances, except with me, in
a swirl of love and half-remembered music
that pours from his lips as he turns me
toward him like a bird. His is not a dancer’s body,
but that of a man accustomed to living life
in the raw. He is clumsy on his feet and cannot
keep rhythm to the simplest tune. The peculiar grace
of men in love saves them from awkwardness,
especially when women don’t notice
the way such creatures
trample on their feet.
Many winters I have lived
Ever since the beginning of time
When the first snow fell
Covering the tired earth
Which played with endless summer.
Many winters I held the water captive
On the tops of many mountains
Still warm from the earth’s beginning
When the moon and the sun gave birth
To one full circle of beauty.
Many winters I blew the stars around
So that the place where each star fell
Was where a river grew
Taking as its course to the sea
The path of the winter sun.
Many winters the trees slept with me
And the animals walked on my breast
Just as the birds drew near
Seeking warmth from my fire
Which took the sting from the night.
Many winters I have been
Companion to the lonely moon
Chasing after the raging sun
Which listened to our song of thanks
Before releasing earth from winter.
Many winters I have lived
Ever since the beginning of time
When out of the melting snow
Came the first frail flower which said
I am the spirit of spring.
The Nancy Wood Literary Trust is pleased to announce the donation of 16 Nancy Wood photographic prints to the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors Photo Archive in May 2018. The vintage silver gelatin prints are signed and matted and include rare portraits of life at Taos Pueblo in the 1980s.
Nancy’s photographic work is represented by the Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.
The hearts of mountains
and the hearts of women
Are both the same. They beat to
an old rhythm, an old song.
Mountains and women
are made from the sinew of the rock.
Mountains and women
are home to the spirits of the earth.
Mountains and women
are created with beauty all around.
Mountains and women
embrace the mystery of life.
Mountains give patience to women.
Women give fullness to mountains.
Celebrate each mountain, each woman.
Sing songs to mountains and to women.
Dance for them in your dreams.
The spirit of mountains and of women
Will give courage to our children
Long after we are gone.
These poems, like the others, are based on my long association with the Taos Pueblo Indians, who shared their deep spirituality. From the time I first met them, in 1961, I was impressed by their values and by an unshatterable outlook that stemmed from their interconnectedness to the earth as a living whole. Was it possible for me, a white woman, to understand these values? For years I merely observed, absorbing what I could. Slowly my perceptions and, ultimately, my way of life began to change.
What did it take to become “in tune” with Indian beliefs far removed from my Judeo-Christian background? Learning to listen, for one thing; letting go of old, worn-out cultural ideas, for another. Solitude was necessary if I was ever to learn anything, so I retreated to the mountains for long periods of time. I still live that way, twenty miles from Santa Fe, at the edge of an old Spanish land grant. Loneliness is part of the lesson, my teacher Red Willow Dancing used to say. Empty your heart and mind. Do not become distracted.
But that was the catch. I was distracted – by the realities of having to support four children. After a time the children left, my life moved into a middle-age phase, my consciousness expanded. Distraction meant taking time to watch a red -tailed hawk soaring above my house or witnessing the drama of huge clouds rolling down from any one of the four mountain ranges I can see from my window. This is what matters now, acquiring what the Indians call the quiet heart. In so doing, I have learned to live life from the inside out.
We all are a part of something largely undefinable, call it God or the Great Spirit, Buddha or Allah, Krishna or Mozart. I feel connected to this mystery on rivers, in deserts, and on the sea, but mostly in the mountains. Twice a year at summer solstice and again at autumnal equinox, I make a pilgrimage to the top of Independence Pass, at twelve thousand feet in the Colorado Rockies.
As I am perched on top of the world, my ritual never changes. I carry a portable tape deck, tapes of beloved Vivaldi, the Mozart horn concerti, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, and hike out across the tundra until I am far away from people. I choose a spot on the knife-edge ridge that forms the division between the eastern and western watersheds of the country. There I unpack a long, billowing purple silk dress from my day pack and slip it over my parka and jeans. The music of Vivaldi plays to the wind, and I dance, on and on along the Continental Divide in my hiking boots, paying homage to the mountains, renewing my claim to a stubborn, persistent force that anchors me to this earth. Here is where I am free. Here is where I bend to examine, with a geologist’s loupe, a tiny yellow flower no bigger than the head of a pin, and weep because the Great Spirit has seen fit to create such perfection.
This is what Red Willow Dancing meant about interconnectedness. A blade of grass was where he said God lived; the wind was the breath of the Great Spirit, renewing us once again. To me, this is what life is all about.
There, between earth and sky, suspended in time, I begin to understand.
Nancy Wood
Santa Fe, New Mexico April 1992