Once in my day dreams, a Basque woman with Cherokee blood came to me. Her voice pulled me like an undercurrent. "My name is Selu Ama Martone Naciente," she said. " I am an old woman living above an old river. My mother called me the Water Carrier."  

Selu has been in my dreams ever since. Together we are writing a story. A  red roan carriage horse with a black mane came to us.  Now when Selu walks along the banks of the river, she stops to stroke the mare's neck. The mare's sire many generations back was a thin young stallion who carried three captive children back to Denver after the Sand Creek Massacre,  two Cheyenne sisters and a young Arapaho boy. The mare knows nothing of this grandfather sire but the DNA of all of her ancestors still floats through her veins.  She feels them in her bones.

Yesterday, I thought of these things as I sat visiting with Bob Baron at Fulcrum Books. We talked about Wilma Mankiller, once the beloved Chief of the Cherokee Nation, and her book Every Day is a Good Day. I thought of our friend Kimberly Guerrero, the actor who plays Wilma Mankiller in the new movie Cherokee Word for Water. And because I first met Kimberly in New York, I thought of the carriage horses of New York and of the way the stories of our lives weave in and out, like water flowing under bridges and over river stones. I thought of all the water yet to come, of all the stories we have yet to dream, of all the ancestors' stories running through our veins. As I write, I feel the truth beneath my feet, like the river stones, and so I walk with care.   Page