When I was in the firewood business in Galisteo, I’d drive over to Rowe Mesa southeast of Pecos. At one time all of Rowe, and a lot more land, belonged to the Ortiz y Pinos, now the Ortiz y Davis’. It was a land grant for military services given to the family by the King of Spain 500 years ago. Frank, the old man, once had a museum connected to his grocery store on the main road, with artifacts from those centuries. One of them was an altar stone I'd found with a friend on a dig Frank set up. The church was burned down in the pueblo uprising of 1685.

On his land next to a volcanic hogback were the ruins of Galisteo Pueblo that preceded the Spanish by several hundred years. When the soldiers and missionaries got there they built a mission in the center of the pueblo and taught the Indians Latin and the meaning of hard work. They built their own town the other side of the hogback in what is now Galisteo, and it was where I rented an hacienda from Jose, Frank’s son. The hacienda was a few hundred years old, had been Frank’s family’s house, and then a Spanish restaurant that became famous for its cooking by Frank and his wife and daughter-in-law, Mela.

The woodyard was behind the hacienda where Billie Anaya and I’d split the firewood I cut on Rowe, and peel pines hauled in from Santa Clara Peak. I had a 1949 3/4 ton black Ford pickup that was now deep sea blue from 30 years of the New Mexico sun.

I loved driving in that truck up to Rowe and the wilderness. Because of the scarcity of water there weren’t many working ranches anymore other than Frank’s. Also few of the families that ran herds wanted to tough it out on their own, their kids’d moved to town, their wives wanted to be near the kids, there wasn’t much rain after the late Forties, taxes increased and prices for beef and sheep didn’t, the era had passed and these were new times.

I’d been cutting on Rowe for a few years off and on, it was a good source of pinon wood and cedar for fenceposts. Even the pre-Spanish Indians from pueblos along the Pecos River at the base of Rowe cut firewood and building beams there, we’d find the stumps of juniper and cedar with stone axe marks. They’ll likely be there 500 years from now.

I’d driven beyond an old wagon track until I got into volcanic rock and gotten out to scout for a new cutting area. I walked into a pocket of cool air and smelled water.

I came into a copse of tall Douglas fir growing among what looked like desert pinon except that these had trunks as straight and tall as the firs. These two trees do not stand next to one another reaching for the sun. The pinon is a desert pine, gnarled by adaptation to scarce rainfall. I stood there taking this impossibility in. These were pinons that had never known scarcity.

There was a spring somewhere feeding this small stream trickling along among ferns and grass. The grass was untouched. How could it be? The deer on this mesa were small and scruffy, the range cattle not much better. Nothing moved here, there was no sound of locusts or birds. This was a…what’s the word? A place outside time, a place where spirits come, a sanctuary, that’s the word.

I’d been in smaller places like this when I lived in Truchas cutting pinon a few years before in mountains cut over and over and over since the village began 400 years ago, and on some days out hiking and no saw in hand I’d find these glades with huge pinon and cedar growing in abundance. No matter how well I memorized landmarks and trails to find my way back I never did. The men in town I told about these places gave me a look. I might be walking into dreams of what was once, but such places had been found long ago and harvested. Anyone who walks into dreams is not safe to be with.

I tasted the water, touched the trunks of the trees to get a feel for them, took off my boots to soak my feet. There was no trace of man, no beer cans or tossed bottles of Old Mission Tokay, a woodcutter favorite, no paper or plastic, nothing. Any man finding this would have broken the protective field around it and other men would follow and there would only be stumps left within a week of its discovery. Had someone preceded me and made this place visible? Had they walked away as part of me was wanting to now? And if I did, would this save it? If not, would the Pecos and Rowe woodcutters get my trees?

I was working on finding a way to allow me to go get the saw from the truck and cut and haul the trees back to Galisteo with a clear conscience, but it wasn’t possible. There was a lot here. I’d need help. Word would get around, it’d be a fiesta here in a few days, cutters from San Miguel fighting with axes and guns. Maybe if I just backed out and forgot about it. But I’d left tracks. Someone would follow them in. I’d just killed this place.

I walked the periphery of the sanctuary. Looking out over the mesa it was clear this place would be easy to see from out there. Here it was dense and green and tall where out there it was spare and dun colored. And yet it had been invisible until I walked into it.

I found a cedar with a massive trunk and pointy top not but a few feet higher than me shaped like a cone or dunce hat with branches. It seemed to be just outside the sanctuary, a border guard. It would be a test tree. I oiled up the blade with STP because desert cedar soaks up the oil and makes the bar expand and stops the cutting chain. It took an hour to get through it. Then it wouldn’t fall. The notch hadn’t been deep enough, so the saw was trapped by a thousand pounds of wood sitting on it. I went to get the sledge and wedge.

Once it was down I decided to cut it up the next day. There was a huge dead Douglas fir I’d found well beyond the sanctuary and being a softwood would only take a few hours to cut into rounds and load. It was worm eaten but would do okay as firewood. I cut the notch and took a rest before cutting in from the other side. No, it was more than needing a rest, there was something odd about this tree, about its branch arrangement. The branches looked tormented. If a tree can have slow motion epilepsy this one did.

There was a huge burl halfway up that would make its fall tricky to direct. The burl was thicker around than where I stood at its base. On most trees I’d take into account the wind, the lean, the pattern of branches that told which side was heavier, the depth of the notch and the angle of the cut. This all computed automatically and helped me plot my escape route should the wind shift or a big branch break off from the vibration of the cutting blade. I thought of getting my hard hat from the Ford but decided to risk it. I’d never been hit by a falling branch in seven years of cutting.

I went back to the cedar and stood there feeling like the fir behind me looked. This tree had been here before the Conquistadores, maybe even before the local Indians. I’d stopped counting at 800 rings. I said out loud, What have I done? This cedar was the doorway into a holy forest that I’d opened for others to see what was apparently invisible normally. I’d been given sight to see it, feel it, walk among trees and spirits from long ago.

I couldn’t live with this on my soul. I went back to the fir to get lost in work and a funny thing happened. Something hit me on the head as I was cutting through the base. It shocked me but didn’t hurt. I touched the top of my head and there was a stick no bigger around than a pencil and maybe twice as long arrowed into my head at where the cranial plates join. I pulled it out and looked at the end that’d been in me. No blood, just wetness.

I decided I better sit down although I felt okay. Still, there was something a little off I needed to track down. I leaned back against a tree and slid down to the ground, switched off the Husqavarna and checked myself over mentally. There was an itch on my face and something moving across my cheek. I swatted at it without thinking and big violet and pus yellow centipede only a little shorter than the stick went flying to the ground and chased itself away. How had it gotten there? Its leg hooks left tracks across my face that were already swelling.

The light was different, the sun way over there where it’d been noon when the stick hit me. And I was cold. I’d been drenched in sweat a few seconds before. I touched the chainsaw and it too was cold.

I got up and didn’t have a clue as to where I was. And with the Where comes a Who? I didn’t know that one either. When I happened upon the truck I didn’t know what it was. This was a prelude to what would continue at the Strathallen Hotel while having dinner with my grandmother in Rochester, New York ten years later.

Between the time I sat on the ground and felt the itch of the centipede on my cheek was an impression of three old men in rough woolen robes angry at me. I can see them now. Twenty years in the future Marilyn would buy the print of a painting of three southwestern Indian women in profile with pots on their heads that captures the memory of those old men. I was coming up out of somewhere deep and these old guys were right there beside me giving me hell. This is the only memory I have from those five hours I was unconscious. I’d been somewhere else yet not missed a beat in regular time, sitting against that tree. I’d sat there, felt the itch and gotten back up.

I put some pieces of the puzzle together when I put the saw in the truck. This was habit, I didn’t know what I was doing, but my body did. I opened the cab door and studied the things in there like a young boy for the first time.

Savvy nerve patterns got the Ford started, worked out how the clutch and accelerator worked, and the stick shift. I started moving, the low sun highlighting the grasses either side of the grass flattened by the tires coming in. I was doing this intuitively. I still didn’t know who it was doing this and it didn’t matter. I was at peace, I had no questions yet, there just wasn’t enough self-awareness for it.