Audrey Lopez reflects on Tanya Aguiñiga’s growing relationship to cochineal through her conversations and fieldwork with Porfirio Gutierrez, learning both the Indigenous histories of the dye and the ecological relationships between the insect and the nopal cactus. Lopez describes how Aguiñiga moved from an intellectual understanding of cochineal to an embodied practice of walking, documenting, and carefully studying the landscapes of Southern California and Mexico where the insect lives.