By Alfonso Ortiz
A wise elder among my people, the Tewa, frequently used the phrase pin pe obi, “look to the mountaintop”, when he was alive. I first heard it twenty-five years ago when I was seven years old, practicing for the first time to participate in the relay races we run in the Pueblo country to give strength to the sun father as he journeys across the sky. I was at one end of the earth track which ran from east to west like the path of the sun. The old man, who was blind, called me to him, and said, “Young man, as you run look to the mountaintop’, and he pointed to Tsikomo, the western sacred mountain of the Tewa world, which loomed off in the distance. “Keep your eyes fixed on that mountain and you will feel the miles melt beneath your feet. Do this and in time you will feel as if you can leap over trees, bushes, and even the river.” I tried to understand what this last statement meant, but I was too young.
On another occasion, a few days later, I asked him if I could really learn to leap over the treetops. He smiled and said, “Whatever life’s challenges you may face, remember always to look to the mountaintop, for in doing so you look to greatness. Remember this, and let no problem, no matter how great it may seem, discourage you, nor let anything less than the mountaintop distract you. This is the one thought I want to leave you with. And in that dim coming time when we shall meet again, it shall be on the mountaintop.”
I did not have long to wonder why, for in the following month, when the cornstalks were sturdy on the land, he died quietly in his sleep, having seen eighty-seven summers.
— As quoted in Native Wisdom by Joseph Buchac (1995), originally published in Essays on Reflection, edited by E. Graham Ward (1973).