Night falls.
Stars climb over the ridge
holding luminous heads
high into the darkness—
clambering ants intent only on their ascent
oblivious to the solitary glow
of waxing moon
commanding western horizon.
Steep avalanche path
I scrambled up in twilight, reaching
its gurgling mouth of water
waist–high cow parsnip meadow at my feet
green tops of forest
crawling over raw flanks of peaks . . .
all gone now.
In their stead
one broken shard of obsidian-horizon
winds scrapping at the valleys
the curlew footprint of moonlight
on mottled
sand–bars of cloud
brighter, more insistent
the clambering stars.
A shudder passes
through me, alone in this
unyielding—
as close to twig
cloud, deer imagined
in the darkness, to quartz
as to my humanity.
Death and life
make no difference
for wind
rubbing skin to skin
on the night earth
for star or forest...
or hemlock sapling
propped
against rock–fall boulder.
9 July 1992
Rattlesnake Creek
Pasayten Wilderness
North Cascade
In the summer of ’92 I made a road trip to visit friends in the ‘greater west,’ stopping at Bend, Oregon, Missoula, Montana, and Lopez Island, Washington. Along the way, I ventured into various out of the way places, including this one-night foray into the Pasayten, close to the Canadian border.
Mountaineity 