Attention determines what survives. It shapes memory, deepens grief, carries ancestors forward, and builds the worlds we inhabit. Where we place our attention may be one of the most consequential choices we make within this era of collapse.

The question followed me from Puerto Rico to the Camino de Santiago: what happens to a place when the people who built it begin to leave? A reflection on pilgrimage, belonging, and the invisible work of those who remain.

How do we enter into relationship with our ancestors? Most of us begin with names, dates, records, and family stories. I did too. But the deeper I went, the more I realized it is something we practice. A relationship built through attention, imagination, place, accountability, and the questions that refuse to leave us alone. Sometimes a thread begins in an archive but it unravels beside a river, on a mountain, or in the sudden feeling that a place you've never seen before is somehow already familiar.