I float in the Gulf of Mexico beside the god sculpting North America. Grand to learn the recipe for a land that wild and wide. First you sing the mountains up. Then decide divides. Then rivers loop and bend. Then place a million species in desert, prairie, woods. Last install the ancestors of all. The Elders talked truth all along--Siberians never walked the icefield barrens, nor paddled down the Otter Coast; here from Creation on.

The god extends a cloudfurred arm and snaps a few wood counters on each tribal home. Tall as my thumb, each blocky figurine means one ancestor. The god chants nation-names I've heard, though couldn't place; the Plains and muggy East I've never seen. But as we wing past the Rio Grande I'm home--I know we're planted right where we belong. Tribe beside tribe, famed name after name. The board laid out... and now the game.

IN THE MORNING

The Creator places tribes like chesspieces: I just read Becoming Wild by Carl Safina. The section on whales documents huge migrations and behavior shifts in response to human attacks: whales grouped into convoys, tried counterattacking wooden ships, abandoned whole regions, and settled places once whaleless. Chess on a planetary scale.

Humans did the same. As the Ice Age died, and they overhunted prey to extinction... they had to move and change. Adapt or die.

My dream spells out that comforting traditionalist lie: the myth that the Creator placed us all just where we belong. It's not just factually but morally wrong; teaches us not to adapt. When we're dancers on the avalanche--refugees all! As the whales know. As humans better re-learn.

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