Salt Pilgrimage

PROGRESS REPORT

New Words: 900 original words plus a 150 word song (not one I wrote but traditional to the Tohono O'Odham, the tribe formerly known as the Papago) for Chapter 1 ("Those Who Came Before") Section 3 ("The Canal Builders") of Arizona. Kwewu makes a "salt pilgrimage" from Hohokam land across the Sonoran dunes to the salt fields along the beaches of the Gulf of California, which is followed by a revelation.

Total Words: 39500.

Reason For Stopping: Laurie treated me to lunch before work.

Book Year: 756.

Mammalian Assistance: Vegas, following what is becoming a routine when he doesn't catch the signs that I'm getting ready to write: I go find him, say his name, he replies with his inquisitive trilling meow, I make a gesture for him to follow me to the Writing Room, and he does. Once the door is open he bolts past me and launches himself onto my his box pile.

Exercise: Walked Tucker around the neighborhood; walked down to campus. No solar phenomenon this time, alas.

Today's Opening Passage: Kwewu was not soft, nor weak like an old man. He farmed, and his trading expeditions could stretch for two hundred miles, crossing mountains and canyons and rivers on his own legs and sandaled feet. Yet the days he spent crossing the great dunes were savage, with terrible heat even in the autumn and frigid cold at night, blinding sun, drinking little more than a trickle of water from his gourd canteen and nothing more to eat than a pouch of cornmeal. And one did not walk—you ran, or you did not move at all.

Darling Du Jour: Come morning they went to the beach and its crystalline salt field. The leader—a man who had made the salt pilgrimage ten times—planted a stick with an eagle carved at the top in the middle of the field, and all ran around it four times before gathering the salt. Once the gathering was complete, they walked into the sea and sprinkled the waves with their cornmeal. With every swell and crash of water came power to fill them, power to clean their bodies and spirits. Each brought strength not only of body but of purpose, and Kwewu felt some purpose of his own seeking him out - unknowable as yet but crystallizing like the salt. Then out of the water they ran, running for miles along the beach, through the remainder of the sun’s light, before returning to the camp.

As he eased down to the sand and prepared for sleep, Kwewu’s mind was racing as fast as his legs had at the start of the journey. Normally he could focus his thoughts on the task at hand, but this time his body was so weary his mind did what it wanted. And as he stared over the vast moonlit ocean, he wondered about a great mystery: How could the land be so dry when there was so much water beside it?

Non-NaNoWriMo November Word Total: 15850.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Michener; Aurelius; Baxter. (This sounds almost like the name of a world-hopping tycoon.)