From beneath the sage, the world is unchanged. Here the world opens, curtains drawn back along the cords of scent, moonlight, time. Moments, months, years unravel across a landscape sculpted in low scrub, slender-stalk flowers, and the naked arms of dead sage, pointing skyward.

From here, the subdivisions retract, are unbuilt. Lights that glow low along the horizon dim, then flicker and go dark until the world's only illumination is the moon's high white light, washing everything. It is the light that holds the coyotes play, the chuckle and yip. Snakes' scaled bellies slip through it. Rodents, too, moving fast.

This is basic -- root and leaf clinging to hot soil, pushing out from hills and returning year after year. Here is a Yakima story, a simple story of tenacity, of grace, of common celebration, a story told slow, told in a whispered breeze, while the moon rises full.