The Shade Of His Arrows

There is a saying of
the Paiutes that no man
should go far in the desert
who cannot sleep in
the shade of his arrows,
but one must know the
desert as well as the
Paiutes to understand it.
In all that country,
moon-white and misty blue,
burnt red and fading ochre,
naked to the sky, it is
possible for a man to travel far without suffering much
if only he keeps his head in cover; two hands' breadth of shadow between him and the smiting sun. So if he has a quiver full of feathered arrows, winged with three slips of eagle feathers, he sticks them in the sand by their points, cloudy points of obsidian flaked at the edges, and lies down with his head in the shadow. This is mere hunter's craft, but the saying goes deeper.
When a man goes into the big wilderness, it is to meet perils of many things, against which, if he carries it not in himself, there is no defense: against death and perversions and terrors of madness, the shade of his arrows.
Knowing all that the land does to humans, one would go fearsomely except that the chiefest of its operations is to rob one finally of all fear.
--Mary Austin