now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts

As you walk across Lighthouse Field a glistening black ribbon undulates in the grass, crossing your path from right to left. You swallow air, your primal senses flare open. From the middle of your forehead, a reptilian eye blinks, surveys the terrain. This visual intuitive sense, like the intellect of heart and gut, reveals a discourse of signs, images, feelings, words that, once decoded, carry the power to startle you out of tunnel vision and habitual patterns of thought. The snake is a symbol of awakening consciousness-the potential of knowing within, an awareness and intelligence not grasped by logical thought. Often nature provokes un “aja,” or “conocimiento,”2 one that guides your feet along the path, gives you el animo to dedicate yourself to transforming perceptions of reality, and thus the conditions of life. Llevas la presencia de este conocimiento contigo. You experience nature as ensouled, as sacred. Este saber, this knowledge, urges you to cast una ofrenda of images and words across the page como granos de maiz, like kernels of corn. By redeeming your most painful experiences you transform them into something valuable, algo para compartir or share with others so they too may be empowered. You stop in the middle of the field and, under your breath, ask the spirits-animals, plants, y tus muertos-to help you string together a bridge of words. What follows is your attempt to give back to nature, los espiritus, and others a gift wrested from the events in your life, a bridge home to the self.