The southwestern lands of The People are at once beautiful, harsh, and lonesome. Poverty, by most current standards is the standard. But Native Americans tend to live by another set of standards when it comes to measuring things like that.

Land of The People: the Living Desert

A millennium is a hoped-for period of joy, prosperity and peace.

For millenniums, home for the people in the southwest has been the desert. One minute the fragrance of tender blossoms is with you and the next the sandblast power of a blizzard freezes your senses. The landscape is harsh, yet it explodes with color. The cycle of life has gone on for millenniums, with plants and rocks...and with people. Life and death happen every day in cycle with nature. The People live on today as they have for countless years of blossoms and blizzards.

Soft, sunset skys paint vivid pictures of shadows across the lands of the Sinagua, Hopi, Tohono O'Odham, Navajo and all of the desert people.

The usually present Father Sun plays games with the cactus, waking them up for another day.

The cactus forest was food and drink for the desert people, a long time ago, and even today.

Hoodos "live" throughout Southwest Native America. This choir of stone people stretches and reaches to the Creator today as it has for thousands of years.

The Joshua Tree might be something we heard about in the Bible. Maybe the Bible writers visited Native America where the lonesome tree struggles today in small forests.

The People live with harshness. Whirling and whipping winds and blowing sleet smother the nectars of spring.

The desert and the people have always followed the cycle of life. From far away in the past, and most likely far away into the future. From death in the winter to rebirth in the spring, the cycle goes on even today as it has for ever. The desert, and the people constantly are renewed.