As I walked, I realized what I wanted to find was
inside the trees—the pines. At one point, beginning in 2023, I hoped to find a volcanic blowhole. An uncle on the ranch told me that the blowhole blows air and that if you put a hat over it, it would float. I think a lot about climbing the Nevado de Colima. A couple of years later, returning from New Mexico, I noticed a volcano on the map. I took the route toward Wupatki in Arizona, a desert where the villages of Hopi, Zuni, and other tribes that passed through there were located. In some of the ruins, I came across a blowhole, outside the volcano, in the middle of the desert. I felt the cold air on my face, and to see if things really floated, I placed a piece of paper and blew on the ground.

During the spring, in the Comcaac lands, I felt the celestial nature of the desert. Without understanding the Cmiique Iitom language, I felt a connection to the plants there. The ocotillo trees were blooming.

The flowers and animals I came to know and appreciate hold my memories. Our ancestral lives are guided within the roots.

The day we carried my grandfather's ashes was also the day the fire arrived at Rodeo, his land, his cradle, his nature. The place where roots abound. Where I learned about the land and my family. The last moment I had with my grandfather, Francisco Reyes Reyes, was feeding the saplings. In reality, they were preparing me for this stage of ashes.
When I thought about the grief of death, not only of a human life, but of an ecosystem, my grandfather's presence was felt one last time. The pine trees and my grandfather embraced each other within the earth. The fire that day had come to heal a void in his heart.

The pine, now reduced to pine kindling, safeguards the memories of our loved ones.

-Edson