Movement and Place-Based Consciousness in Leslie Marmon Silko’s The Turquoise Ledge

This essay examines Leslie Marmon Silko’s place-based consciousness in her relational, anticolonial memoir The Turquoise Ledge (2010). In the book, Silko portrays herself as a protective figure in constant motion through solitary walks where she combines urban speed walk tactics and slow movement, both of which enable her to change perception and engage the land in a caring and creative manner. During her walks through the Tucson Mountains, she ponders on what she sees and experiences from a philosophical, environmental, and historical perspective that is grounded on the Indigenous concept of land as “earth house.” As she walks with the land, she keeps three aims in mind: 1. to revitalize Indigenous environmental knowledge and praxis; 2. to create a safe homespace for more-than-human others in and around her ranch in southern Arizona; 3. to preserve place-based memories and sites from colonial destruction. Silko engages the storied landscape through repetitive pedetic actions where observation, surveillance, and protection of her more-than-human neighbors, strongly articulate her centripetal process of self-construction. These neighbors and friends include palo verde trees, arroyos, gila monsters, birds, ants, rattlers, and grasshoppers, among others. Through her walks, observations, and acts of radical hospitality, she formulates a relational and decolonial spatial praxis—where familiar repetition converges with the wondrous and unexpected, Silko teaches us a more sustainable way of engaging and respecting place—one based on observation, reflection, care, gratitude, and solidarity.