The January air is so cold in Cortez, CO, that even the little lamb is wearing a sweater. With snow on the ground and a chill hovering below freezing, Linda Taylor (Diné) carefully separates the lamb from his mother, hoists him into her arms, and gives the two-week old a fat kiss right on the nose. The lamb’s mother nervously watches from the pen before Linda carefully puts little “No Name” back with his mother. “My grandsons have not named him yet,” she explains.

When I arrived at her farm, Linda was “experimenting” in the kitchen with a new bread recipe. In the course of one afternoon, she casually showed her award-winning tapestries and mentioned that she raises sheep and horses, creates sculpture, paints, teaches traditional weaving classes, hunts solo for elk and deer, and volunteers at the Methodist Thrift Shop. In the past, she has also cared for Native children in need, and she is currently applying to foster a Navajo girl. On weekends, Linda sells bales of hay at the Shiprock Flea Market, and if the buyer is pregnant or elderly, Taylor, 66, loads the hay. Even with her many interests and talents, Linda most enjoys teaching her grandchildren about lambs, wool, and responsibility.

Linda is also a tribal college student who practices lifelong learning. When she needed six credit hours to update her Colorado teaching credentials, she signed up for classes at Diné College at Shiprock, NM. Linda enrolled in a Navajo history class taught by Herbert Benally and a Navajo culture class led by Martha Austin Garrison. Both Benally and Garrison have been faculty members of the Navajo Studies Department for over three decades. This summer she plans to take a Navajo language class to polish her skills.

One of Linda’s class projects took her into the mountains to gather medicinal herbs and plants, and she learned more about making plant-based dyes. In the fall, while hunting alone, she bagged a deer on private land in the Sleeping Ute Mountain foothills. She butchered the animal into roasts, stew meat, and ground meat, and processed the meat with a vacuum bag processor to fill her freezer. “I really like deer meat. I bet I haven’t had more than two or three beef hamburgers over the last year!” she says.

After graduating from the Navajo Methodist Mission in Farmington, NM, Linda went on to Eastern New Mexico University in Portales. She earned her master’s degree from Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ, and has taught in various schools. She also worked as the Federal Projects Coordinator in several Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Now she teaches as a substitute in a Shiprock elementary school, and she has enjoyed getting back into the classroom.

ABUNDANCE. Awards and ribbons are not new to Linda Taylor. The first weekend of March, 2010, she was at the Heard Museum juried show and sold one of her special weavings. Taylor says the awards and ribbons feel good, but the real reward is that a sale helps to pay for a tractor she uses to keep up the Southwest Colorado hay farm. Photo by Kurt Umbhau

In 1990, Linda lost her hearing because of an allergic reaction, gave up teaching, and trained to be an oil and gas inspector on Navajo lands. After her insurance provider finally recognized that cochlear implants were no longer experimental, she was able to get the operations for implants in both ears. “It’s good to hear music again, and I’m glad to be able to use the telephone!” she exclaims.

An accomplished artist and master weaver, Linda sold two weavings at the Heard Museum in Phoenix in Fall 2009. In addition to fiber arts, she started illustrating books in 1967 for her school district. Linda was the sole illustrator for Wisdom Weaver, which was published in 2007.

When her husband died of heart failure in December 2008, Linda persevered through one of life’s greatest challenges— the loss of a loved one. Now she operates their hay farm in southwest Colorado alone. Even while her husband was ill, she kept hunting. “I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, and I felt that I needed to hunt for both of us.” She plans to continue hunting each fall.

As a demonstration of her devotion to the grandsons who live on adjoining acreage, Taylor recently traveled to Montrose, CO, to purchase five ewes. She intends for the grandsons (ages 9 and 11) to have some good stock for their 4-H projects this year.

“Last year the boys had a bad experience because their lambs were sickly and did not meet the minimum requirements,” she explains. “I want the boys to do well with their 4-H projects. It teaches children how to deal with competition. It pays if you do well, and they can start saving money for college. They have to work for the project, keeping daily records on food, and exercising the lambs.” The ewes had been bred and were expected to deliver in January.

Since childhood, Linda has raised sheep. As a Christmas gift for her sister, she went out on the rez with 30-year-old “Honey,” her favorite horse, and herded the sheep for a long weekend. This gave her sister a chance to shop for Christmas without having to be worried about the sheep. Taylor described how military jets, possibly from a base at Albuquerque, make training flights in the area and fly low enough to scatter the sheep. She and her horse, who is not bothered by the jets, regroup the sheep. Linda thinks the jets sometimes dip their wings when she waves at them.

One wonders if those pilots could possibly know what a beautiful and talented person they have just saluted. Linda Taylor is an accomplished 21st century woman. In the months that we have been good friends, I have become convinced that she can do anything.

MONEY FOR COLLEGE.“I want the boys to do well with their 4-H projects. It teaches children how to deal with competition. It pays if you do well, and they can start saving money for college. They have to work for the project, keeping daily records on food, and exercising the lambs,” say Linda Taylor. Photo by Kurt Umbhau

Eleanor Kuhl is the former library director at the Shiprock Campus of Diné College. She works part-time for the Tribal College Journal as a proofreader and researcher. In the summer of 2009, Eleanor Kuhl and Linda Taylor became friends when they co-taught the mission study on Native American survival for United Methodist Mission Schools in Utah and Colorado.