The Chiricahua Mountains hold forests of pine and oak at their upper elevations — a world of juniper and oak and hoodoo rock formations at their base, giving way to open grassland as the mountains flatten into the valley.

The country changes dramatically with elevation, and the Apache people of these mountains knew every canyon, every spring, every useful shelter.

For a people whose traditions were embedded in this specific geography — whose sacred places, whose seasonal movements, whose understanding of the world was organized around these mountains and rivers — exile was not merely physical displacement.

It was a severing of connections that organized life itself.

Geronimo was born in this country.