As I pace the shore
Of a cirque-lake
Down from the col
Entranced by its glistening
Skin that dances
An endless dance
With no figures or progressions
Save the figures of wind
And the progression of sun
Suddenly a surge of anguish
Passes through me
That I will not always
Be here to watch
Be here to be
The spectator, unnoticed
But must drink once
Then pass.
Lucky the trees
That hold this shore
Even in death
They wear their eyes
Now gnarled and weathered skeletons
That mark their yearning
Their thirsts, their plenties
And they, torn down
To the shore by time
Broken to dust by countless storms
Do lay themselves
In water’s mouth
To join as one
In the cirque-lake dance.
29 August 1981
Sphinx Basin, below North Guard
High Sierra
While still in college I hitchhiked out to Cedar Grove in the Canyon of the Kings, a parallel Yosemite, as Muir thought of it, and climbed steeply up the Sphinx Creek trail, solo, vague about telling backpackers where I was headed, seeking solitude, continuing up the drainage, cross-country, while the trail veered off toward Avalanche Pass. Camping at the high lakes, the summit and winged shoulders of North Guard embracing me, I camped and next day scampered up talus and scree to a slight col, beyond which stood high Mt. Brewer further south on the Great Western Divide, an easy journey to its base across smooth glacial slabs, then class 3 up a chute to the summit, myself chanting the ‘Jesus Prayer’ to keep confident and in rhythm on uncharted rock. Little in record remains of that adventure, save this poem written upon returning from the peak to the barren, high lake of Sphinx Creek Basin.
Mountaineity 