A friend Returning from Bhutan Gave me a book On Emptiness… Shunyata — Nagarjuna’s four-fold Dialectic Philosophical nuance and explication Argued in monastery Courtyards on the roof Of the world.
Yes, fill me with that talk Of the emptiness of self - the Buddha way Or contrawise Of Christ’s fullness - his pleroma Declaimed by a Chrysostom Or Origin Against wine-dark waves Of an Ionian sea.
…On mountain paths It is all the same, these word scarves We wear to keep Wind out, to helpfully Trip us up, so that Wordless We stumble Into what saves us.
Far From Himalayan caves Or Mediterranean Churches I pick up one acorn cap On the trail Empty of its nut Even as a fragment Still full Of tree and forest Rain, mountain lion And sky
Standing still Mountain rides me Into darkness And back To light.
22 November 2019 Cedar Wings Cottage, 2680’ Cold sky full of cloud
* Narajuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Root Verses on the Middle Way) c. 200 CE, first sets forth the four-fold dialectic that denies affirmation of both the existence and non-existence of things as a way to clear space for the Buddhist notion of emptiness. John Chrysostom and Origen of Alexandra were 3rd-4th century theologians both influential particularly in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. The Greek pleroma finds its way into the canon as a technical term largely through Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians.
November Drier than it has ever been In its meteorological silence Red roses bloom
In the year 709 From the founding of Rome Ab urbe condita Our 46 BCE Julius Great reformer, soon to be murdered reset the days To end the ‘wandering years’ And its calendrical Confusion
Yet drift the days still did By 3, said Bede in 800 By 7 or 8 Thought Roger Bacon much later Until again, from that same Rome Pontifical proclamation Added 10 days to the year 1582 In an instant So that anniversaries and birthdays Were missed But human order now matched The flow Of the cosmos.
Yet now in November The red rose blooms
Calendrical days do not veer But earth itself We reread the ancient apocalypses For the like of their strange signs Flood and hurricane Pestilence, war Melting ice
Seasons slip False springs occur We untruth the world And hide from it Saying that it, not us Is fake
And still, the red rose Blooms.
24 November 2019 Cedar Wings Cottage Dry earth and cloudless sky
* Ab urbe condita, from the founding of the city (Rome), Compare the Byzantine ‘etos kosmou,’ marking its calendrical year from the creation of the cosmos. In similar fashion to the work of Julius and Gregory, the International Committee on Stratigraphy is considering a date for our current geologic age, the Anthropocene, most likely dating from the deposition of radionuclides around the globe caused by nuclear testing from the 1950s.
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.
For more than a week The persimmon Diospyros kaki Stood on the high counter Its bulbous teardrop mass, slowly Turning translucent Transforming from astringent fiber To almost liquid Sugar
Now cut into quarters Radiant, ambrosial, wholly Unearthly as only Fruit from this mysterious earth Can be I set it upon my plate Its neat sections oozing Dripping on white Porcelain
Meal finished I cast a finger across plate Catching that last Spilled morsel An orange ink splotch Finger leaving behind a hard, dark Ring where the juice has Coagulated
Coagulate Species of transformation Magic first named When seeing milk turned to rennet Or blood turned to clot And stain
Coagulate Here tracing that great circle Hard pome To ripening, pliant, yielding gel globe Only to return when Exposed To air, molecules stiff in their renewed Congregation
How is it That all things Permissions to empires Wars to romance Liquify only to coagulate Coagulate only to Harden Brittle-form The way we look upon Someone we once loved Or throw spears With clenched eyes Hating the other?
How is it Each moment Ripening to decay The entropy that breaks us Clears space For beginnings.
8 December 2018 Cedar Wings Cottage Moon in 1st crescent
* Persimmon, from the Algonquin, entering into English when British colonists learned the use of the astringent Diospyros virginiana from the indigenous people; Diospyros, from the Greek ‘food of the gods,’ for the genus of trees, the commercially grown varieties originating in Japan.
Waking in the full light of late morning I think of symmetry Those halves of a whole, arms or wings of a center Castle towers to the four directions Of a sand mandala sketched grain by grain Path of a labyrinth Face of a flower That centeredness that periphery finds In its furthest extension outward —Out becomes in.
How I cast myself out in confusions Of dis-metry, unmeasured, no longer in sacred tension With the heart of things, the whole How I forget and am mindless of the dance Between spokes and axle This fiery, hypnotically turning Cosmic wheel.
Shiva Dances my head to remember Christ lays his cross down Over the abyss to lead Me back Sunlight butters my eyes To turn me, hungry, for that ever-beckoned Homecoming.
I rise then, through the empty skeleton house Of walls and furniture To clear space Sit before an altar Tokens of the real on a table Wooden carving of a faintly smiling buddha Legs crossed, ears, eyes, shoulders In all balance But for one arm, reaching down Symbolically touching Earth One gesture out of the wheel’s center Offering the way Back to symmetry.
3 April 2012 Cedar Wings Cottage, 2680’ Sun after Spring Storm, Moon moving toward Full
Long moments Watching the hairy woodpecker Making her way Up the burnt and blackened ponderosa From recent wildfire Bark flicking off Probing, insistent pecking While the figures and shadows Of turkey vultures Cut across sky On this promontory Ridge with afternoon updraft And views out over The great valley Even to the Coast Ranges.
Upholder of the way Keeper Of the practice Grooved deep in instinct Buddha To my bodhisattva I vow To listen To your braaap-bra-da-dap As intently as to A temple bell Calling To prayer.
15 November 2019 Kentucky Ridge, 2300’ Moon past full, waiting for rain
Sun frees itself From a golden sandbar Of dawn clouds And nests in a juniper tree.
I watch mosquitos Gathering in the sun-painted Cave Of my open tent.
1 June 2012 Indian Well Camp Lava Beds National Monument 4680'
For 15 years I led students on a five day field trip circling Mt. Shasta, spending two nights at Indian Well Camp in the Lava Beds. With its pumice underfoot and scatter scattered basalt, its aromatic scent of piñon and juniper and the dark, cool openings of lava tube caves nearby, the place has an atmosphere that swallows the banter and kinesthetic energy of students, particularly as night comes on, and I make one last sweep through camp, parents and students alike in tents, stars crowding dark sky in their absence. Drinking that darkness and quiet until dawn, watching the morning light fill the tent was always a gift, even the surprise of visiting insects in the vaulted ceiling of the tent.
In January South Yuba twists Sideways through polished Slate canyon Making its escape Long ago having stolen River upstream
Heedless Of theft and transgression Translucent white mistletoe fruits Festoon oak branches Down the steep ledges to pools Golden-capped acorns lie in clusters Radiant in sharp sun While Ice Draws patterns In small hollows above the falls
Close-mouthed Wordless sky Will not give witness And sings only Of drought.
12 January 2014 Emerald Pools South Yuba River 4500'
Mid autumn Sun fled Rivers of color Drying up on each Black Oak Leaf
Down to the Underworld it goes Persphone’s paint pots All winter full.
ii.
Murmuring with silence This forest Cold air hugging ground Empty windows Between straight conifer tree trunks Arched Oak-leaf canopies fingering air With bare branches Like gasping sea-anemones Tendrils out of water
iii.
Slow dying Autumn leads processionals Throwing brown leaves everywhere Behind it Skittering shuffles of Towhee Hidden in the Kitkidize Each day’s step Closer to some heart of cold And darkness
Moon Trails behind Waxing ominously, eating sky With brightness Bragging heaven Of stars.
9 November 2019 Coffee Berry Hill Northern Sierra Foothills 2680'
Eastside Up the Little Truckee yellowing meadows, rusty willows Cold Stream Creek iced edges October’s early snow crescents against volcanic headwalls
Mt. Lola prominence highpoint November’s low-angled sun Sierra crest lifts choppy waves South, white-frothed All the way to Round Top Rose, in Nevada Arches her double back, east Lassen, leaning forward from far north close enough to taste with vision West wall of coast range holding the skirt of Central Valley, Sutter Buttes poking up through the haze and fog.
All etched crystalline sky, dry autumn body laid out on its own operating table sagebrush summit white bark and mountain hemlock ourselves
10 November 2019 Mt. Lola, 9,143’
Cold Stream Canyon to Mt. Lola — 10 Nov. 2019, 1.5 hours to trailhead from Nevada City: Turn off from paved road, to the right, crossing the Little Truckee river and taking the first right onto the old Henness Pass Road, dirt, about 4 miles total to the signed trailhead, 9 miles return, about 2.5 hours ascent, elevation gain +2,500′
A party of seven, leaving from the trailhead a bit after 11 am and returning in the dark at 6 pm. Spent 2 hours on the wide, open summit, taking in the view, the warm sun, sky clear, almost windless, exceptional clarity.
Upon close examination identified four conifer species on the summit in isolated stands — Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi) on the warmer west and south slopes, Mtn. Hemlock down from the summit snowfields, Western White Pine (P. monticola) on the approach ridge, and one verified specimen of White-bark Pine (P. albicaulis), as indicated by the dense groups of 5-bunch needles, bark paler and less grooved than P. monitcola, and broken-apart cones at the base of the tree.
Along this section of the Northern Sierra, Pinus albicaulis is rare, occurring only on a few summits and ridges in the stretch between the higher Desolation Wilderness and the higher and more northerly Lassen National Park – Anderson Peak, Castle Peak and Basin Peak being the only locales presently identified. That the species can persist in very small numbers at wide intervals along the crest is intriguing. Clark’s Nutcracker, seen perched on a P. monticola during the descent, is a main dispersal agent. Further field work is needed to confirm rarity and distribution. This is hampered by the similarities between P. albicaulis and P. monticola, which is widespread on the approaches to the summits and adopts a ‘krummholz’ form very similar to P. albicaulis. Presence of cones is currently my only way to verify species definitively. For comparison, consider the cone of a Pinus monticola, found less than 10 meters away from the single, verified Pinus albicaulis:
Mt. Lola itself is a center post of this tent landscape that is the Northern Sierra. Highest peak in our Yuba Watershed and in Nevada County, it is also has a prominence of over 2,000 feet, the nearest such peaks being Mt. Babbitt to the north and Pyramid Peak in Desolation to the south. With its flat summit and long, high ridges it stands as a viewing platform for the Northern Sierra. One gazes almost to the Pacific, with the Coast Ranges forming the western boundary and the vast Central Valley spread out below. To the east, there is Mt. Rose and first ranges of the Great Basin, with the high, dry Sierra and Martis valleys in between. To the north, the first great volcano of the Cascades, Mt. Lassen, looms, with the last crests of the Sierra trailing off. To the south, most dramatically, the Sierra Crest builds with peak upon peak, gradually rising up to sculpted Pyramid Peak, Round Top, beyond Carson Pass, and wide-saddled Freel Peak, lording over Lake Tahoe. This, then, is home country. On a crystalline day one feels the closeness and connectedness of the landscape, each feature flowing into the other, all equally part of my walking, traveling, visioning, dwelling body. Storms feed the summits here with water coming to my house, to local streams that wind their way through the foothills, with farms, gardens and orchards that bring food to my table. To the east, dry lands connect me to the wet, Pacific slopes precisely because of their dryness. It is the necessary balance, the yin-yang of earth, wet, forested range bound to dry, rain-shadow hinterlands. In similar ways, I am connected north to south by the cresting ranges themselves. My foothills and their high peaks stand only in solidarity with the whole range of peaks. They cannot exist alone. All of them, they participate in that same rise and stretch of continent, age-old, with its volcanics, its fault blocks. On Mt. Lola this day, I stand atop an axis mundi, a shaman’s pole from which heaven is not far and the rootedness of earth drives itself firm.
In some faint way, we all feel it, journeying up here. Mountain bikers who passed us on the trail linger on the summit with us before making their extreme, quick descent to cars below. Other hikers join us, finding their own solitary vistas. We pry open the metal summit log box to leave a note of our visit here. The mountains stare at us with their own open mouths, each their own tent poles holding up the whole-earth fabric as much air and stars as ridge and valley. Pleasure hike fuses in this modern age with the echoes of pilgrimage – for me, simply to the center of ourselves, to the home altar we speak from and breathe from that is everywhere.
Mountaineity 