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The Way to Make Perfect Mountains: Native American Legends of Sacred Mountains
"There are certain mountains / Indians know are holy places."
64 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1997
27 people want to read
About the author
Byrd Baylor
59 books73 followersByrd Baylor has always lived in the Southwest, mainly in Southern Arizona near the Mexican border. She is at home with the southwestern desert cliffs and mesas, rocks and open skies. She is comforted by desert storms. The Tohono O’odham people, previously known as the Papagos, are her neighbors and close friends. She has focused many of her writings on the region’s landscape, peoples, and values. Through her books of rhythmic prose poetry, written primarily for children, she celebrates the beauty of nature and her own feelings of rapport with it.
Byrd has written many books for children.
Byrd has written many books for children.
Her books have been honored with many prestigious children’s book awards, including the Caldecott Award and the Texas Bluebonnet Award. All of her books are full of the places and the peoples that she knows. She thinks of these books as her own kind of private love songs to the place she calls home.
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December 8, 2022
You can tell which ones they are
because storm clouds gather at their peaks
and lightning strikes more often
than it does on other mountains
and eagles circle in the afternoons
and winds beginup there.
Those are the mountains
where the power of ancient spirits
still hovers like a mist.
Those are the mountains
where gods still live and plant their corn
and dance.
In the southwest, each tribe has a homeland
marked off by sacred mountains
and each mountain has a story.
Call them myths—or call them truth.
It doesn't matter.
Just remember that people who have looked
at sacred mountains all their lives
say nothing is as real
as the high thin music they have heard
coming from inside the rocks up there.
What is written here is what the people tell
about their mountains.
These are stories from a time
when the world was new—and softer—
and magic was much better understood
than it is now.
To tell them is to honor
sacred mountains.
because storm clouds gather at their peaks
and lightning strikes more often
than it does on other mountains
and eagles circle in the afternoons
and winds beginup there.
Those are the mountains
where the power of ancient spirits
still hovers like a mist.
Those are the mountains
where gods still live and plant their corn
and dance.
In the southwest, each tribe has a homeland
marked off by sacred mountains
and each mountain has a story.
Call them myths—or call them truth.
It doesn't matter.
Just remember that people who have looked
at sacred mountains all their lives
say nothing is as real
as the high thin music they have heard
coming from inside the rocks up there.
What is written here is what the people tell
about their mountains.
These are stories from a time
when the world was new—and softer—
and magic was much better understood
than it is now.
To tell them is to honor
sacred mountains.
Displaying 1 of 1 review