J.E. KNAUF

She was quite old even then and spoke very little English.

We were chasing colors when we happened on her blue pickup parked just off a bone jarring dirt track at the bottom of the ditch west of Chinle.
She had connected a garden hose to a galvanized water tank, tossing shovels and buckets and mixing boards into the surrounding riverbed. She’d located the colors she been looking for.

We joined her as she mixed Yellow Ocher, Raw Sienna, Burnt Umber, colors from the earth.

At the end of the day we left the riverbed much as we found it. What we took was wet and gritty covering the tools or drying in great broad flakes on the buckets and mixing boards, caked to our clothes, our bodies, our faces, and smeared all over the blue truck.