Experience frames perspective:
"Once," he said slowly, 'my father told me to run to a mountain. I ran for three days across the desert. My mouth was dry and cracking and my tongue swelled from thirst. I came upon a fresh spring of water falling over rocks in the mountain. I wanted to rush into the spring and gulp the water so that my mouth would quickly lose its thirst. But I did not. I lay down beside it. I touched my lips to the water and felt its coolness. I took a little sip of water and felt it roll in my mouth and my mind, and my spirit felt the sweetness. I did not measure the time. How long did I lie there? I do not know; maybe a season, maybe a moment; maybe ten seasons. But I did not measure it. It will be with my spirit always. And," Gokhlayeh (later named Geronimo) said, "I thought, a man might be born beside this spring and live his life here beside this spring and his spirit never know what mine now knows. Perhaps he would never let his spirit feel this, though he lived beside the spring a hundred years."
from "Watch for me on the Mountain" by Forrest Carter (the story of Geronimo and the Apache Nation)
