It is morning in the Santa Monica mountains

As I wind through the high grasses

Painted golden by the sunrise

In my nose is the tang of mustard and fennel

Wilded from their farms a hundred years ago

Their yellow blooms nestled

In the native purple of hummingbird sage and lupine

It is quiet, the buzz of the highway muted

The rooftops hidden by the scrubby chaparral

Like I have stepped from the bustle of Los Angeles

Back in time to the villages of the Tongva

My footsteps soft in the sandy soil

I round a bend and she is there, willowy, silent

We both freeze, eying each other warily

Her with bright eyes and ears pointed

She is thin, the countour of her abdomen visible over her long legs

I take in her coppery coat, the hair tipped in black

Her bottle-brush tail high, her glossy nose flared

The birds have stilled their chatter

Perhaps they too wait with bated breath to see the predators

Face to face, wondering what will transpire

I do not move; She seems uninterested in confrontation

The very air stills

I turn; she slinks into the undergrowth

The birds resume their gregarious conversations

Flitting round the tops of tall yucca and riotously white-lilac ceanothus

I resume my walk, knowing I am on her land

The wind in the branches whispers to me of coyotes

The trickster hero who has padded this land

Since long before any human feet

And who has outwitted us all

To thrive in the dense thickets, ever shrinking

That cluster within human habitations

In a world that has been tamed she is still wild

Still proud

Still free