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1

Calm sky
Endless forest
Early autumn quiet
Crackers, cheese and fruit
for lunch

Water low now
Its muddy bottom polished
In stillness
Cirrus pulling tendril threads
Over blue sky
Webs to catch our thoughts
As they rise idly
Into air

Summit Lake

2

Climbing down
To water
Guarded by block-barked Silver Pine
Narrow, droopy-topped Hemlock
Shadow-painted depths

That stuttering ‘kreek, kreek’
High in the sky

Sandhill cranes
Flying back north
across the dividing range
Unfurling clouds
Pausing to gape at their
Drifting, insistent
Flight

Shadow Lake

3

Autumn-yellow
Spirea
Edging the shallow
Muddy, green-yellow surface

Spears and crescents
Of refracted light
Haloing the cliffs
As one looks across
Towards lowering
Sun

Cliff Lake

26
IX
2020

Lassen National Park
Moon Waxing Gibbous

After visiting our daughter in Redding, a September day-trip led us to Lassen Volcanic National Park and a visit to a few of its glacial lakes. The volcanic rock holds fewer lakes than in the granitic terrain of the Sierra. So each lake is the more precious. Summit Lake is situated in open forest near the ‘summit’ of the main road that traverses the park. Shadow and Cliff Lakes are found along a 3 mile trail starting from a shoulder of Reading Ridge and both sit in glacial cirques carved out of the ridge. Forest is similar to the Sierra, but striking for its mature stands of Mountain Hemlock. Early autumn gave a crystalline clarity to the day. The photo is from the descent into Shadow Lake.