{"id":5529,"date":"2013-05-24T21:27:10","date_gmt":"2013-05-25T03:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5529"},"modified":"2013-06-13T12:24:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T18:24:05","slug":"an-offering-to-tlaloc-in-the-burned-over-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5529","title":{"rendered":"An Offering to Tlaloc in the Burned-Over Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"offering_at_spring_sm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week M. and I climbed over the ridge to “Camera Trap Spring” (our personal name for it) to leave an offering to Tlaloc.<\/p>\n

Thing have changed a little bit since a year ago. The ground is black with ash. Stones have cracked from the heat of a forest fire.<\/p>\n

That ground-up bark on the ground is mulch dropped from a helicopter in mid-April. Mixed with grass seed, it is supposed to help the grass grow to hold the slope against erosion. For more about that re-seeding and our visit, see the other blog.<\/a><\/p>\n

The tiny spring is in the upper right quadrant of the photo. The little jar holds a liquid offering, while the turkey feathers are offered in lieu of a real turkey, which if I had been an old-time Nahuatl-speaker, might have been offered in lieu of a human child.<\/p>\n

Obviously, things change.<\/p>\n

In my personal practice, I care less about questions of authenticity, ethnicity, book-knowledge, or “the lore” than I do about the land<\/em>. I think that I live at the fringe of the area in which Tlaloc (or Someone like him) was anciently honored; therefore, for the past two years, I have been trying myself to do so.<\/a><\/p>\n

This little seasonal spring is like a miniature version of the whole hydrological cycle. Rain and snow fall on the rocky ridge above it \u2014 the entire collection area is probably smaller than a football field. Then the spring flows, in direct proportion to the winter snows, until the water is all gone.Through evaporation, through the urine of bears and elk \u2014 however it goes \u2014 the water flows back into the cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week M. and I climbed over the ridge to “Camera Trap Spring” (our personal name for it) to leave an offering to Tlaloc. Thing have changed a little bit since a year ago. The ground is black with ash. Stones have cracked from the heat of a forest fire. That ground-up bark on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[186,23,40,149,187],"class_list":["post-5529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bioregion","tag-colorado","tag-polytheism","tag-tlaloc","tag-water"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1rb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2776,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2776","url_meta":{"origin":5529,"position":0},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"On Friday morning, April 29, back from a early morning fire call (shed + trash + grasses at the edge of the prairie), I climbed the ridge behind the house and made an offering to Tlaloc, the god of rain. (I think I need to make a lot more of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Feather offering for Tlaloc","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/TlalocOffering4-29-11_sm-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4372,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4372","url_meta":{"origin":5529,"position":1},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 5","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I think it is time to rebuild the shrine to Tlaloc under the bridge \u2014 the one that was mysteriously augmented last summer.\u00a0 I had taken it down before the spring run-off, which is just a memory now. Once the heat abates a little, I need to hike back over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3426,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3426","url_meta":{"origin":5529,"position":2},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 4","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Last June, as our creek began to dry up, I blogged about building a little shrine to Tlaloc, \"god of the hydrological cycle\" as Craig Childs described him, in a big culvert under our county road. It snowed, nearly a foot on October 26. The combination of trees pulling up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3043,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3043","url_meta":{"origin":5529,"position":3},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"As I wrote about earlier, I have been maintaining a small shrine to the rain god Tlaloc under a nearby county-road bridge. Our creek\u2014currently dry except for a couple of beaver ponds upstream\u2014goes through a culvert there, one big enough for me to walk through standing straight. When my shrine\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/tlaloc_dagger-300x193.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2824,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2824","url_meta":{"origin":5529,"position":4},"title":"Talking about Tlaloc, 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In her comment on my first Tlaloc post, Hecate Demetersdatter asks,\u00a0 \"What was\/is it about Tlaloc that called\/calls to you?\" It was my reading and re-reading of Craig Childs' House of Rain that made me conscious of how important a deity Tlaloc (under various names) had been from antiquity to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/tlaloc-culvert_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1875,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1875","url_meta":{"origin":5529,"position":5},"title":"Get Right with Tlaloc","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"On a recent trip to look at some Anasazi \/ Ancestral Puebloan ruins in northeast Arizona, I took Craig Childs' book House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest as my guide book. Driving and backpacking from southwest Colorado down into Sonora, Mexico, over a period of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5529"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5632,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions\/5632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}