Every Paiute story involves recurring themes. One of these themes is change. Necessary to this change is its agent; a force of chaos which is neither evil nor good. This is coyote, or it is water. Both of these are seen as the essential communicator between worlds, and so they are transitive constants.
The flows of water shape the landscape through carving the sandstone, just as the chaotic trickster reshapes the world around him through his impartial actions. Similarly, the coyote, as an animal spirit, represents a deeply primal part of the human psyche, capable of both good and bad. Water, the advent of which brings on life, and in so many cultures the transition of which is the final passage to death, symbolizes the intangible links between heavens and earths; this world, the next ones, and the ones before ours.
Regardless...
Glenn was telling us about how the trees and rocks came to their present state.
People, animals, and water are able to move over the earth, and to us freedom of movement feels natural, and
inherent in our state of being.
Long long ago, Glenn said, the rocks and the trees wandered over the earth, much as we are able to do so.
One day, coyote played a trick on these rocks and trees, and they lost their ability to move, and so became permanent fixtures in the landscape. So now they sit, stuck where they were brought into existence.
We know this to be true, because people, animals, trees, and rock; still they drink the water.
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