It’s raining in the Pacific North West, low clouds wisp in and around the peaks of the cascade range I can see from my window, but somewhere — in the dry desert — in the open space — in thousand year old villages — the katsinas are going home. Sung down from their summer dwelling on the San Francisco Peaks to the dark centers of the villages of the Hopi Mesas.

Somewhere far from where I’m sitting, people are preparing bread and mutton, others are stopping at grocery stores and picking up two liters and melons and chips to bring home. Families and friends are gathering. Aunties are clucking and torturing new girlfriends. Children are set loose to run with the dogs and chickens for a few days, only darting in for food or to try and catch a glimpse of the katsinas passing by and maybe to be given a gift. Old women sitting on chairs with their names written on the back are catching oranges thrown at them by nephews and neighbors. Young men are sitting on the rooftops shaking their heads at this or that gossip freshly heard/witnessed on dirt streets below. And somewhere throughout the seemingly chaotic reunion/ceremony/feast— perfect time is being kept. A heartbeat that says when the dancers start and stop. And all day long like the tide coming in and out of the square, the dancers sing, bring gifts, and keep the pattern of the world intact. Reminding us and themselves and the world of the proper balance to things and paying tributes to those small elemental forces holding us all together.

Tides, heartbeats, things that are effortless and unstoppable. But this whole scene — all the buns baked and stew stirred and masks painted carefully in the night after a full day’s work, the songs learned, the thousands of miles driven, hundreds of toys made for god-nieces and nephews, and thousands of dollars worth of food given away — this scene is thousands of years in the making and the result of lifetimes of effort to maintain. The Hopi Home dance — calling all the katsinas home — is happening far from where I am. A lifetime and a world away.

But there is another world out there where I am at that dance, sitting on hot asphalt, watching the kids and the aunties. I am an outsider wishing I knew more, but knowing enough to recognize that knowledge is a burden that must be maintained — the way this dance is maintained. The degree of my ignorance is the degree to which I am free to leave. Those with the most knowledge have the most responsibility. To stay, to maintain what must be maintained. Knowledge is a tether, and I have none.

Except … I find myself in the rain, slowly unscrewing the top off of a jelly jar full of Wupatki cinders and breathing deep the smell of sage that is only in my head. I rattle a tupperware of corn seeds, blue yellow and red, and know that in the other world, the one where I am sitting next to Neil and Ky on a rooftop of hot asphalt, I will never leave.