Horseflies on the Dosewallips Trail

The roaring of last night trees gives way to the multudinous drone of today's flies.

Scattered stones sink into snow leaving holes that drop way down into the snowpack. The pack rearranges itself as it slips downward from its own weight.

I am the only living thing around. The horseflies follow me for miles, flying a halo around me, each wanting to claim my flesh as his own. To the left, the Inland Passage, the Cascades and Mount Baker, are all dreaming, tucked in a layer of marine mist.

Scattered clouds drape folded shadows of black ravens over the snowfields and peaks.

Talus slides encourage flowers to grow in long lines downward, one plant below the other, the upper plant offering protection to the ones below, and so on, all the way down the slope, in vivid color.

As I hike on the thin trail, my feet convert the finely shredded talus into dust.

The mountains are breathing the honey of flowers.

I run into another backpacker. I can't even trade my flies with him and he is sweaty and tired too.

The panorama of the Olympics is too beautiful for me to take in–soon I cease to see them. Blinded by such beauty, I become blind to it.

I drop over the crest into the eastern rim where the darkness of the Brothers and the Mount Anderson massif pacify my burning, too bright eye. I traverse up the Dosewallips River. So much to see: Grand Lakes, Moose Lake. I can't take it all in. 

I look back in order to look forward, and realize that these are the same mountains you can see from Seattle. They say Doquebatl, enraged, changed a woman into Mount Rainier and her son into Little Tahoma.

The small inhaled double chirp of the striped chipmunk is the only song in this still landscape.

July 1981

rev 10/15/2015