Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Jake Skeets is Black Streak Wood, born for Water's Edge. He is Denei from Vanderwagon, New Mexico, and the author of the Poetry Collection,

Eyes Bottled Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series,

and the American Book Award.

In this essay, Jake offers a Dene perspective of time, memory, and land.

As he reveals a new realm of depth and relationship in our memories, which are woven within

both time and land, he conjures a deep reverence for the spaces we remember and explores the fields

of memory that can unfold through language and storytelling.

Yacht E. Matthew Jake Skiy's in the Shia.

So now Jinnin the Shlin, to go by and Bashes Chin,

Tchini Daschette, or two-gojind dash nila.

Memory is a touchy thing, and I mean that in the realest sense.

The earliest memory I have is of my hand feeling the chin stubble of an older man.

The room is evening lit. My hand reaches out and I

graze the chin's prickly skin. The older man smiles. I can't see his entire face. I don't

recognize the house we are in, but it feels like a small home. I see the color red, but I don't recognize the house we are in, but it feels like a small home.

I see the color red, but I don't know what in the room is red.

Maybe it's the man's jacket, made of a shiny fabric with a red band across the back and chest.

I hear no sound, taste no thing, and I smell no distinct

aroma. I can only feel the rugged chin and my hand gliding across it. Then the smile of the man.

...