ABOVE TIMBERLINE

As I stood alone on the rocky ledge at sunset, 

looking down into the canyon, a thousand feet deep,

the distant sound of water, the steep talus slope

ringing like bells as something above me moved,

and dislodged rocks that fell into the void.

I was stuck, nowhere to go, he stepped into sunlight, 

his white fur glowed with the sun as he eyed me. 

We stood there, for what seemed like an eternity 

as we debated what to do. Each not expecting the other 

in this remotest of places high above timberline 

on the glaciated slopes of Mt Olympus.

I canted back against the warm cliff, 

splayed like a lover as he slipped between my legs. 

I admired his black hooves, his dark eye regarded me, 

as his sharp horns pierced the air.

His soft fur smelled of lichen and moss 

and something wilder as he navigated past my body. 

One false move, and we would both be goners. 

But this longest day wasn’t about facing death. 

It was about emptying the chambers of the heart, 

ridding it of fear so that we may both live another day.

2/13 with Susie Terence

URBAN RENEWAL

URBAN RENEWAL

I used to dream the Bay Area was surrounded by snowcapped peaks, 

and I wondered which mountain range I was channeling. 

San Francisco was home, my natal ground,

but wanderlust took me to the Sierra Nevada range,

then north to Seattle, Vancouver, and Horseshoe Bay, 

and then up-island to isolated fishing hamlets, Naniamo, 

Uclulet on the mailboat, we drove to Tofino on dirt roads 

before there was a gringo trail. 

I remember walking along the bluffs below Pike Street Market 

where the native people slept it off from the night before, 

they were littered along the railroad tracks like strange pinnipeds.

The forgotten ones filled the jails, and a nation turned its back 

on the indigent and those of fragile mind and body, 

pushed for urban renewal to clean up the riffraff for once and for all.

The detritus of the past, swept away like a tidal wave before our eyes.

In Vancouver BC, first Gastown, and then Chinatown disappeared.

The streets of Ferndale and Eureka, steam-cleaned. 

There was nowhere else left for the indigent to go. 

Folks rejoiced waiting for fresh-eyed tourists to arrive.

The Marin architect that cleaned up Ghirardelli Square, 

blueprinted the way with cookie-cutter plans for urban renewal.

The underbellies of cities, gutted like fish, stripped of psyche.

It was like an echo, the cavernous gods of tourism, each town

lost more than an inconvenient eyesore. Now, across America,

malls, dressed in brick façades and quaint lamp posts, lie fallow, 

a wasteland of tourist dollars with shops selling teeshirts 

as if to prove residency, and bright trinkets made in China. 

Meanwhile, the indigent moved uptown to sleep on street corners.

Those mountains in my dreams, they were in mourning, 

protecting those who grew up in their shadow.

2/16/22 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class First final draft.

The West Coast is burning

Oh great, I was sitting outside during a red alert. The West Coast is burning. Ashes from as far north as British Columbia, where there are 560 wildfires, as well as wildfires from WA, Or, and N. CA, were falling on my Mac screen. And now my eyes sting. My throat is raw. All that unshed grief and death of trees playing out in real time.

Red Tide

The summer of 1981, we traveled north to stay at a friend's trailer in Pulsbo, on the Hood Canal in Washington. It was the summer solstice. At low tide, I waded in, Hood Canal was a seafood cornucopia. I gathered armloads of shellfish bounty (mussels, cockles, clams, oysters) like a mighty hunter. I swam seal-like and collected the bounty. The sea provided.  They called me mermaid, and goddess, seaweed wrapped around my thighs. (I was also the only one who knew how to clean the shellfish. So much for the menfolk). And that night we feasted on seafood. Breaded clams. Oysters on the half shell. Mussel and scallop chowder. But as we were all gorging on shellfish, seasoned with garlic and butter, and drinking wine, a news warning flashed on the TV. Red tide this far north? Gulp! I imagined symptoms of red tide poisoning, though there was no evidence of red tide anywhere. It was a long wild night of the imagination, but they soon forgot about it. Someone rolled a doobie, everybody laughed, and carried on, but I was checking for symptoms all through the night wondering if I had poisoned us all.

Wildfires in the Cascades

OK, it's time to jump into the fray, into the thick of it. No deep breathing allowed until we get past Sacramento. Burning, weeping eyes. It smells like we're inside a really big BBQ pit. We can't even see most of the Cascades. Are we in Armageddon yet? The smoke made vast black walls behind the clouds above Crater Lake.

There were hellacious thunderclaps in Klamath Falls the other night, and it railed all the way to Weed, enough to leave puddles in parking lots. Last night's thunderstorm cleared the air somewhat. We were stuck a couple of days in Klamath Falls, getting a windshield fixed. Not much to to there. Some cool old Art Deco buildings downtown, an old car dealership with frescos in the style of King Tut, but this is no Luxor, the town has been eviscerated.

I was shocked to discover that there are no falls in Klamath Falls.The entire Lower Klamath Lake has been drained. You can see the levees. I had no idea that the entirety of the Trinity River Complex, a major contributor to the Klamath River, is almost all diverted, and all within my lifetime—to sell alfalfa hay to the UAE, and China. So much for the Klamath River salmon run. No place for them to go. Meanwhile, the drought continues unabated. Wildfires have become the norm. This is not good. A thirsty earth, angry wildfires. The name of the future is upon us.

My. Shasta hiding behind a veil of smoke.

I did not clean my cover photo up with auto contrast so you could see how thick the smoke really is. It got worse by late afternoon. How thick was the smoke? Can you even see Shasta looming dead ahead in this photo? We're at the Hwy  99 overlook. It's mid-day, around 2 PM.

And this is only the Northern California fires....

Home again, jiggity-jig. Never thought I'd say the air is so much better in the Bay Area than in Northern California....the smoke was MUCH worse as we headed south into Weed, Shasta and especially Dunsmuir and Redding, it was almost like twilight with smoke, though the clock said 3PM. Highway 97 goes right past Shasta, and we could barely see it. Smoke was thick as knives as we neared Davis, from Lake County fire. It was like a brown cloud roof over us, the sun glowed like a strange pumpkin. A portent of things to come.

Added 8/19, from Facebook posts

The Pacific Northwest is on fire (photo)

Moonrise over Mt. Baker, 3 nights ago., now you can't even see the mountain.

The Pacific Northwest is on fire. Yikes! The Olympic Peninsula is burning—Paradise on Mt. Rainier is burning. The Hoh River Valley rainforest—one of the wettest place on earth, is burning. I'm crying useless tears for the venerable trees of antiquity burning. Much of Western Canada is burning. The Vancouver sky is a dirty vanilla color with all the smoke. You can no longer see the mountains—not even Mt. Baker. In California, Humboldt and Trinity, as well as Lake County are being evacuated. It hurts to breathe. Is Yolo County still on fire? What about Sierra Foothills? We need a list of places burning. There's no one central site. Wondering how we're going to get home if Interstate 5 is closed. Everything is burning.  SoCal, San Marcos/San Diego. Where else? Happy Lúgnasadh, some bonfire, the West Coast is burning—the gods must be really happy.

added 8/20

Circling Tehema (photos)

We drove around the entire mountain today. We circled the god Tehama. We took a gondola ride up to a ridgetop called Crystal Mountain, or, Paradise and gazed at her face for hours. Rainier was sublime, as were Adams, St. Helena, Baker, Glacier, and many other peaks in between. We found a geocache and a memorial marker for a man who fell from a great height. Because it was a clear day, I orchestrated the mountains with my walking stick. And for a moment we saw into forever. And beyond while ladybugs coated our arms and legs with their carapaces of gold.

Apparently I'm conducting the Olympic Range and Mt. Baker too, from Crystal Mountain near Mt. Rainier, WA (or surveying my kingdom; or maybe I'm fly-fishing). My wand is pointing to Glacier Peak, my arm to Mt. Baker.  Not sure what the other arm's pointing to. Grandeur was to be had, by all accounts. Not one got away.

I was driving through the forest and saw the gondola sign for Crystal Mountain Resort, so I impulsively flipped a U turn (in the midst of a lengthy traffic jam at either end) and I went up the mountain to see what I could see. Great vistas unfolded as we climbed up to the ski resort. And lo, there was a gondola with promises of even more vistas at the summit. I was ravenous for beauty. Despite Neil’s objections, we went up the mountain. It was a spot-on impulse that changed to course of our day—and our journey. I was just so glad to be back in the heart of the mountains, gimpy knee and all, while learning to use a ski pole as a third leg. I hobbled to the crest where beauty times beauty was equal to the equivalent of sublime joy, or euphoria. Perhaps it was merely a lack of oxygen. The resulting knee pain that followed was worth it.

rev 8/17

If you visit the Crystal Mountain webpage, there is a live cam, and  link for a 360º view.

WHILE WAITING FOR THE ANACORTES FERRY

Once, long ago, on an unreasonably hot day
like today, while waiting for the Anacortes ferry,
I jumped off the dock to cool off in Puget Sound.
Baby flounders scattered like rusted fall leaves.
One tiny fish swam into my palm—and settled in.
His eyes hadn't yet migrated all the way to one side,
so he watched me as carefully as I watched him.
When his jewel-spots changed to blend with my hand,
his eyes retained the dreams of sea and sky.

7/10/2014

ACROSS THE BORDER

ACROSS THE BORDER

Within hearing distance of Victoria Harbour,
we sit and savor the long white nights;
but we're really south of Friday Harbor, San Juan Island,
So why does twilight seem so much longer
across the border?

6/25/2009

ORCAS IN THE STRAITS

ORCAS IN THE STRAITS

Orcas on the Straits,
we sang them in on the Solstice.
Kyaked into English Camp
& hiked Young Mountain (awk, I'm not so young)
for a panorama of the San Juans;
the Olympics so clear, so close,
you could touch them with a spoon.
They rose up like orcas breathing to the sky.


6/22/2009

AT THE 10,000' HUT

AT THE 10,000' HUT

The glacier rose up like a tongue
lolling out of the frigid mouth of the north.
I climbed over an ice wall
to trudge to the summit.
Ptarmigans, in half-summer plumage
chuckled in the undergrowth
of huckleberry and mountain heather.
The sun warmed us as our feet
crunched over rotten snow.

From the Olympics,
a sudden summer storm growled in,
threatening snow.
Dressed only in summer gear,
we were foolishly alone on the mountain.

The first sign of hypothermia
is the rhythmic rotation of frozen fingers
and your numb cheeks no longer sting.
Earlobes feel warm,
and your skin turns from red to blue.
The white patches of creamfat
like small islands adrift on your skin
are the first signs of frostbite.

Then, the overwhelming need to sleep,
euphoric warmth, and dreams—
a jumbled series of memories
out of proper sequence, take you in farther.
Soon, you reconstruct your memories
to fit the shapes of snowdrifts,
and you float into that warm tide of snow.

A thunderbolt cracked,
stirring the thick air and our senses.
Ptarmigans dove for cover
as snowflakes settled on their mottled backs.
We turned and ran down the mountain,
each gigantic stride brought us closer to home. 

At lower elevations, the snow turned to hail,
then to rain, whipping our legs,
as we descended to Paradise Lodge
nested on the slopes of Rainier
2,000 ft. below the hut, to safety.

6/82

slight revision

2/2017

Dream journal

Dream journal

I was visiting Port Townsend with my old friend Carolyn. We were sitting outside the ferry dock which had moved and was now near the late-night market, the Breadbasket.

A big battleship pulls up to port. It looks like the MV Coho out of Port Angeles. Iron clunkers with layers and layers of paint added on until the sides were visibly thicker than the original walls.

I'm waiting to find you, you're going to drive into town at some point during the day and if I sit here long enough, I know I'll find you. It's a matter of waiting. Because you have no phone, the only thing I can do is to wait. That is why we're sitting in the sun on a park bench.All roads pass through here.

Carolyn has an ex-lover living in Vancouver she wants to visit. We're just passing through. We're sitting in the morning sun and I tell her about you, my ex-lover I met when I was visiting last summer.

My ex-lover, DJ is a juggler. A street performer. He always uses his hands. Just as I'm telling her about him, I see DJ get off the boat and start walking towards town with a group of his friends. He's describing something to them with his hands. And they are all lost in conversation.

I yell out, hey, DJ! And he comes over surprised to see me. I could almost hear his mind clicking. What you doing here? Sure, I like her, was last summer. We talk, greet each other and are glad to see one another again.

Later, I'm on this hulk of a ship. The bottom has a trap door that opens out. It was an ex torpedo launch boat, now empty of cargo. Special pumps unload water after the floors are cleaned – we close the doors and pump the water out. The ship raises up out of the water because there's no ballast and the additional air in the hull makes it lighter like a balloon.

The ship is in danger of tipping over because it's top heavy, and too much out of the water. We're all standing out on the deck steadying the ship with our hands on the dock, doing okay until the glassine sea changes and becomes littered with debris.

The debris is made of the floating mussel shells and clams, and pumice rock floating on the waves. The waves rise higher in the sea churns. A carpet of stones,

Now we're off the boat, and to the right of us is an estero protected from the waves of the sea beyond the islands. The water is bath temperature and brilliant.

I have two books in my hands. One may be a Russian novel, or maybe a Bible, and the other is a text on critical thinking since Plato. They're big fat books. The kind that make your wrists hurt if you carry them with hand and thumb wrapped around the spine of the book.

I'm entering the water and both of my hands are filled with these books. For some reason clear only to my subconscious, I know I mustn't let go of these books, to lose them would be unpardonable. I am a keeper of these books.

The water sweeps me away and I am pulled toward the open sea.

I am able to keep my head out of the water but I can't use my hands to swim to safety because of the books.

The whirlpool inundates me and I still won't let go of the books. I start to swim in the books in my hands I use as paddles. They are only effective when I hold the spines and covers tightly closed as I raise my hands to make a stroke. The cramps in my wrist are unbearable. Fire shoots up the inside of my forearms as the ligaments knot into balls of oxygen-starved sinew.

I kick harder with my legs. They have the strength to get me through this turbulent water and I head toward shore. That opening maw of the ocean sucks at the gate of land wanting to devour anything in its path.

Some of the swimmers willingly forward. Others resist. I make it to the land and fall face forward on the shore. The beach is made of stones. The waterlogged books fall open with clumps of pages stuck together. It's as if the Bible were drowned. Pages stuck together and all those words locked within—and my friends are nowhere in sight.

9/29/1981
added 10/16

Port Townsend

This town, once the biggest port outside of New York in the 1890s, is where the Chinese had carved tunnels under the streets, some tunnels are still standing. Dock Street is gone now, Water Street is the main drag.

They had to call it uptown because the uppity ladies wouldn't shop here. Water Street, where the red light is now, is for the ferry traffic.

Across from the Town Tavern, is a building the old guy inherited on the condition that he improve it, but he was caught tunneling under Water Street. Some say he was headed for the bank. No one really knows for sure. The city fathers were upset when one day Water Street caved in right in front of his building.

The year before last, he had boarded up all the windows, and before that, all the metal Victorian cornices were taken off. This year, he's unboarding a few of the windows and is painting the sashes blue. Like the sky.

This town, once a whore's town, is now a literary town. All the poets are well read. It's still a whore's town. There are red lights shining on the streets at night and, after dark, the literary whores flood the streets like migrant workers in a tent city.

Tourists and Winnebagos with California license plates cautiously drive through town to the ferry dock. They come into the Town Tavern looking for something harder than the soft liquor license allows. And we stare at their improbable attire, women wearings nylons with shorts, and men in perma-press suits. All the old hippies here are working as bartenders, and caretakers. it's all a juggling act.

I keep coming back to this town like a bad penny. A friend of mine, Sharon Doubiago, moved here to escape a broken heart. Little do I know, that this year, my heart will be in the same repair shop. Hearts are not made of porcelain, but of grist and sinew and blood.

There's that poignant moment of initiation. We all recognize the place where broken hearts either mend, or evolve into some other plane.

Whore hearts, we're all whores with hearts of gold, the wrong color for blood. Gold, the correct color for lizard blood. As we sniff out the color-coded hearts of those around us, our lizard eyes narrow, we taste the air with our forked tongues, and we retreat into reptilian silence.

Tourists pour into the Town Tavern. You can tell what time of day it is by the number of disembarked people at the bar. Like the ebb and flow of waves, the oak and glass double-doors swing to and fro, as the tourist surging in from the ferry, feel the need to slake their great thirst.

The man I am having an affair with is having trouble finding the bedroom where he last left his heart. He thinks his capacity for love is greatly influenced by his capacity for pain. I'm a transient blow-in. There's the bond that ties us all together, here in this town of whores. Down at the bar, we paint it red.

August, 1981

WHIDBY ISLAND

The bloodless limit of the red tide reaches me, in the mountains.

I'm waiting for sickness to come after eating oysters and clams. 

The seaweed bobs like the heads of otters  in the inlet. 

Dizzy, the next day my fingers grown numb. 

Such a clear day. Hurricane Ridge in perfect sunlight. 

Not such a good day to die after all.

Mountain goat fur caught on some brush 

and hillside so steep you could step out one foot 

and land a hundred feet below. I nearly did.

The mountain goats and the two kids lying down 

are white on white snowfields

The kids, white against a white sky 

white T-shirts of young boys 

the bleached bones of logs in sand. 

The mast of the sailboat pierces the gray sky. 

Whidby Island cliffs, like the sides of beached whales. 

Whidby Island. The odor of salt tang in the air 

the almost overbearing odor.
A seagull cruises overhead
Red light/white light revolves 

on a red roof and white lighthouse.
Red of firebird rocks
Another seagull tackles the kelp

while I wait for symptoms of red tide.
The Cascades and the Coast Mountains 

meet head-on and collided into islands.
Kitsat Peninsula and the Gitsat Indians.

Once I hitch-hiked to K'san with totem carver, Vernon Stevens.
Old Terrace, Middle Terrace, Terrace and Kasan are all the same place. Gitsat Indians are becoming carvers of tolem polls once again. Argellite frogs with discrete price tags bark out place names: Puyallup, Dosewallops, Sequim Squim.
A diver walked down to the water throwing back the days catch. Segulls surround him like old men.

Kathleene West, a tired poet friend 

says to me three times 

I am just a fisherman's wife living in Port Townsend
I am a fisherman's wife.
I am the wife of a fisherman, 

waiting at home. 

I am tired of waiting.

I am tired of writing.

A slight breeze stirs the water in the cove, 

rippling water like watered silk. 

My neck hurts from an old whiplash.

For your body, I need Mr. Badger, the skeleton maker, to help me.
Thank you Leslie Silko, thank you Mr. Badger.
I'm a writer's ghost writing nothing because I'm not writing poetry.

The wings push mostly downward when the blackbird flies across the sky.

I met a man whose real name was Don John or John Don. Either way he writes a patch of blue opening up like an eye.

The sky imitates the blue of glaciers and blue hidden eyes of the north snow people.

The sea is quiet. No tongues lapping at the shore. These are the Straits of Juan de Fuca. If I sleep on the beach, will the water know the coast is but a thin line?

Argillite frogs with discrete price tags 

bark out place names: Puyallop,

Dosewallops, Squim, Sequim.

Bill Stafford's hat is soft like the slack corners of his mouth. From the brim a feather trembles, loosened from a bird years ago. The eyes reflect the talons still. Like me, Bill worked with kids in schools. PITS. Says there's more material for kids to write with in poetry than structured prose he said.

Waves of horses butcher your dreams. Marina Albert says. 

Language there's a secret language hidden within the language, the effect of syllables upon us.

The tribal influence would be the door
Among those who know. Not a chance to change is evident.

july? Aug 1981

10/15/2015

I can't make out most of the craft notes, and they're scattered in amid the prose. It reads like nonsense. Can't even read most of it. Maybe I'll revise it, whip it into shape. Or not.

Flora & Fauna Notes

Woolly mammoth tusks like ribs of a beached boat.

The tide becomes delayed
among the many islands and fjords. 

Gravitational pull of the sea and especially the moon, 

causes a bulging of the oceans
traveling along the world in a great wave. 

The crest of this wave is high tide
the trough is low tide.

Tidal range is greatest at Prince Rupert
and the Powell River where flood tides
from the north and south meet and drift. Tidal bore.

Acorn barnacles stand on their heads
and kick food into their mouths with feathery feet
Purple crabs are like porcelain, clams have 32 blue eyes.
Seaweed absorbs nutrients directly from the water.
Roots hold fast, piddock clams, great sculpins.

List the islands fjords and shelters inlets along this coast,

home for thousands of waterbirds. Common snipe.

The Fraser River drains one quarter of BC 

I have been to Salt Spring Island, and Mount Vesuvius.
I'm going down the road to Ganges.
All roads lead to Ganges on Salt Spring Island. 

Offshore islands have fewer species of plants and animals
different from the mainland.
The Queen Charlotte Islands,
continental slope, continental shelf,
continental drift on the edge
of the continental shelf of North America 

Backbone of mountains rises up
from the western shore the Queen Charlottes 

I am remembering the trumpeter swans and snow geese at Mount Lassen,
and carpenter ants, spotted slugs,  

the Georgia Straits, the way the ship rocked.

Sitka spruce, willow,
Douglas firs are not the final stage of a coastal rain forest,
deepening leaf litter, climax rainforest

the wet climate of mountains facing the sea 

the stableness of the vegetation
can only be attained after a thousand fire-free years 

tideland spruce can withstand constant wind
and saltspray of the exposed coastline.
Sitka spruce, a protective buffer

Lions of the Sea
Glaciers never reached Triangle Island
burrowing seabirds.

Nothing in nature is static
the land, the sea, the climate,
the plants and animals of today
are nothing but a passage
a passing expression of a relentless process of change.

Earth air and water borne by the glacier
heated by the sun. Alpine tundra
dark dwarf willows
Northern Lakota and Plateau
the boreal forest, the montane forest
the grasslands, the dry interior, the bitteroots
the dense rain forest
and the Coast Forest in rain shadow
the Olympics, the more specific name wins
Salmonberry, salal, willow, blueberry, and western hemlock

What is this dice game played by the Micmac
500 years old
counting sticks, six round bone dice
made of walrus bone

wet piñata, loose hair
embroidery this willow cradle
has been decorated with silk ribbons
what about my silk shirt hanging on display 150 years from now? 

The value of trade silver
beaver was the standard of trade

called it the fire breaks to symbolize the meeting of chieftains

the cave of petroglyphs
long ago when the world was young
animals held their winter dances in caves.
animals changing into human form
and this so embarrassed them
that they gave man their dance 
In order that he not reveal their secrets.

Nootka Indian masks capture the initiate
Tshimshan and Kitsat want to call three eagles
to explain the universe.
Cosmology is the relationships between peoples
the supernatural is preserved symbolically
masks make the natural and supernatural world visible
they explain our relationship
and take hold

human life depends upon a healthy structured natural world 

to ensure balance Indians conducted ritual seasonal changes
crisis economic activity
the shaman kept the balance
between the three worlds
the soul capture
scattering of eagle down for peace
the potlatch
the seasons
the ceremonies
art makes the supernatural world visible

This is a lot of gibberish to clean up! I must've been planning to use it in some writing. 

Maryna Albert & DJ Hamilton (not my photo)

Maryna Albert & DJ Hamilton. I never did learn his name. He ran off and joined the Pickle family Circus

Puck Goat, Mt. Olympus, Lunasa (photos)

Mt.Olympus from Hurricane Ridge. From an old slide—early 1970s, or  1981?

On the northern slopes of Mount Olympus: the ancestral sweep of the mountain, shadows are suspended across entire valleys. Talus and wildflowers in blue are the only signs of life in this severe landscape.

I am taller than the subalpine spruce forest at my feet. Like Gulliver in a Liliputian landscape. I must be way above treeline. I can almost touch the sky.  Small juniper trees hug the ground, they spread out mat like, a living carpet at my feet. The trees may be diminutive, but their berries are full-size.

A melting cornice of of snow slides off the razorback ridge and makes a second ledge of snow, well on its way to becoming a glacier. Below me, a string of glacial melt pools in aquamarine and teal, decorated with chunks of snow, icebergs in the making. 

I had to take off my telephoto lens because the animals here have no fear. Marmots shuffle up to investigate my feet and they size me up. I guess they don't get too many hikers on this steep slope. Or I look like a big marmot to them.

The only way to escape these droves of flies, is to keep on walking, or stand against the wind. I keep on walking.

I've lost count of the miles. I've come farther on one day that most round trip hikes. I keep reminding myself I have to walk the same distance back again, that each step forward is the half-way mark back to the trailhead.

But a part of me never wants to return to that place I came from. So I keep on walking. I have run out of trail. Literally. I am half-way to Marathon. My race against my pain is still not won. So I push ever on. The talus rings like fine crystal in someone else's bed as I stumble over compacted shale.

I take in alpine roses, lupine, larkspur, rock cress, a veritable Turkish carpet. Wallflowers, cinquefoil, buckwheat, Indian paintbrush, sky pilot, phlox, stonecrop—it's a carpet bazaar. A concuspiance of flowers stands taller than the tallest juniper.

In this dainty landscape, butterflies soar like hawks, and birds are the size of bears. A complex mosaic of lichen and moss grows on the ground, black lettuce-like leaves with frothy petticoats of pale green, dresses the rocks.

I want to get down on my hands and knees to worship the tiny Japanese gardeners who live here. My hand orchestrates a symphony of striated scree alternated with grand sweeping swaths of flower gardens. Beauty before me as I walk.

A hummingbird hovers, checks me out, then dives off the edge of the cliff. He takes my breath away. I lay down and peer down into a pocket valley, blue pimpernel and sky pilot and sky are one thing.

Sometimes the junipers achieve enough height for a mouse to hide beneath them. They eye me curiously, and rotate seeds in their paws as they nibble at the edges of pine nuts. Dark mauve phalacea is like bruised skin, amid the pearly everlasting.

A talus crest is black with lichen and weathered varnish. Mount Olympus? I am lost traversing range after range, I am deep in the heart of these mountains, trying to escape my own depths.

A fresh rockslide area glows coppery pink against all that dark scree. A golden mantled marmot stand up to salute his allegiance to the wilderness. With his back to me, he whistles, then screams to the valley below. I am not the enemy. Friend of your friend.

Deer graze on the subalpine spruces, they devour this fragile landscape. I drowse in the warm sunlight. Pink and white pine heather bells shudder and nod in the breeze coming in from the west. Harbinger of sunset. 

I awaken with a start. Another deer appears, a buck, two-pronged with velvet, he eyes me, sniffs the air. Drops his head to pluck tender pine shoots. I was sleeping where the deer come to feed.

These steep talus slopes are held in place by the roots of flowers, no grass or moss or soil.

On Hurricane Ridge, and here, deep in the mountains, the Rocky Mountain goats eat the precious patches of soil. They're looking for salt, someone said. They paw at soil pockets, they eat the soil, they lick the stones, they lick the hiking path—searching for traces of lost salt. They are not a native species. My traitorous tears are made of salt. Perhaps displaced mountain goat will eat them.

The bleached bones of juniper, a skeleton hugs the rock outcropping. Patches of stonecrop form light cream-colored oases on the hillside. Life and death are one thing.

The intense purple of lupine, and the yellow of wallflower takes my breath away. The papery leaves of the pasqueflower tremble on the slightest breeze. I watch the antics of a furry jumping spider dressed in black and rust.

The sizzling heat rising up from the talus creates a shimmering horizonline. The edge of the ridge drops off from sight and all the flowers keep nodding their heads in the breeze, as if in agreement. There are so many flowers that I leave bruised footprints behind me. I keep walking up the path that follows the top of the ridge, hoping it will go on forever. It does not disappoint.

The path cuts along the side of a slope, so steep, it's like walking on the edge of a box. It drops a long way down, it's little more than a goat trail and it veers off to the left to the lake camp, set in shadows. To the right, are the valleys and ridges that lead up to Mount Olympus and to the Elwah River Valley.

The track is no longer a human path. I begin free-climbing towards the summit, inching closer to that elusive spine of ridge. I tell myself to be careful, don't trust the rotten rock.

Another hand grasp and toehold: I'm almost to the summit. Hair-raising. I've gone way past my limits. But still I push forward. I'm thinking this stuff is for the goats. What am I doing here, alone, so far from civilization? No one know where I am. But, having come this far, I want to look at the face of Mt. Olympus.

Silently, white. Above me a jagged shape looms. I take it in at eye level, powerful forelegs, and I look up to a white fur chest. Black horns and yellow eyes appear. Am I hallucinating?

His beard, and breath tells me he's real. Uh-oh. This Rocky Mountain goat coming down from Mt. Olympus has right-of-way. Cars going uphill may have right away, but then I'm not a car, and he has sharp black horns and the surefootedness of hooves.

The rules of right-of-way on a precipice is not to stop in a dangerous place. He has no hesitation as he advances toward me. There's literally no place to go. I back down the crevice, the small of my back tucked into the base of cliff that arcs down 2000 feet of scree. The angle of declination will not stop my descent into space. The angel of declination.

The goat hesitates, he looks at me. We make eye contact and we each make a silent pact. He has to pass right by my feet. There is nowhere else to go. I drop my gaze, and look down at my boots. I present no challenge, i make no eye contact. I empty my mind and I become wind, rock and sky. I come and go in peace, at will. We are one thing.

He does not challenge me to a duel. He carefully passes me, his fur is silken snow. He is a young ram, ousted from the herd. So I know there will not be others following him.

So I follow him down the spine, back to where I came from. I am shaking, adrenalin, fear, a rite of passage. I'm taking photographs of his back. They're not as good as the one I got as he appeared over the horizon. I took photos first then realized the potential danger I was in. The camera is an extension of arm, an automatic reflex.

The goat is eating his dinner, he is pawing up the plants to get at the minuscule pockets of soil hoarded there. He eats the earth, craving salt. I smell of salt and tears. He is not afraid of me as long as I move slowly.

We stay like this, entranced for an hour or more, in the evening light, the goat and I, before I descend back down the mountain at twilight. Northern lights dancing in the distance.

Something truly memorable has happened. A wordless quest, answered. A heart mended. I return back down the mountain a different person than that grieving woman who left behind her sorrow in the fog shrouded dawn.

August 1, 1981
October 11, 2015
(Found in a journal, most of it is verbatim, I added the context when I retyped it.)

Anacortes

August 1 & 2

I'm at the Anacortes fair selling jewelry with Leo and Terry. We're watching the Bosco boys live. I catch their juggling act for the first time. It's rough. I don't mind. 

Terry says "every time I see you, you've moved a little farther north."

DJ hugs me. it's hard to pick up a welcome hello hug after a hard goodbye hug two days previously. He hugs me again. Just in case.

As the day wears on, their act improves. So do we. During stolen moments between their acts and my breaks, we go off in different directions at nightfall looking at each other questioningly. 

Next day, their act improves, and we know once again our friendship is solid and between breaks we hug and kiss and talk about northern tier, how that joke cost them potential money during the pass the hat, because Anacortes is a working town. 

They don't laugh at those kind of jokes. It doesn't matter. They juggle the clubs.

We pass each other at the fair we stop hug and kiss. Soon it's time for goodbye. He says, "I don't know whether to say goodbye or, see you next weekend."

"This time it's for real," I say. We can't seem to untangle our tongues. I give him a poem about kisses, and our act improves.

WHILE WAITING FOR THE ANACORTES FERRY

AT PARADISE MEADOWS

AT PARADISE MEADOWS

At the foot of Mt. Rainier

Chief Seattle sat pondering the face of the god. 

Did he know of what was to come? 

On the slopes of the mountain 

I bathe my feet in hot pools 

and wander in fields full of flowers. 

Larkspur, lupine and columbine.

These meadows were made by beavers 

felling alders to engineer the snowmelt into dams, 

this place where history seeps into my pores.

Tehama, like a breath 

the name of the mountain.

Snatches my mind away.

Circled in fog floating in a blue sky.

Underneath the mantle, the steady drip of rain 

shrouds the face of Tehema.

Across the sound, Chief Seattle, 

with his two wives following behind, 

was buried in his dugout canoe, 

in full view of the mountain.

Among the steaming pools and snowmelt 

I pick flowers on the slopes of paradise

wondering why it has to be so hard. 

The upheaval, and the price of beaver pelts,

smallpox decimating entire villages.

All that's left is the name of the mountain —

Like a breath, the name floats on the air—

Tehema, Rainier.

Tehema.

7/1981

 Port Townsend, Washington

added 10/16

minor revision/line breaks

ACROSS THE BLUE OF GLACIERS

ACROSS THE BLUE OF GLACIERS

A thin line of flowers stretches
across the blue of glaciers

Mountains meet head on
like rippling bones bleached gray

Glistening whales resurface among the ice flows

Their spume spraying great hunks of sky

Across the water  blue streaks on sparkling snow

The alcoholic snores of glaciers calving,
wraps around the heart like a blanket
as we snuggle in, summer nightfall on the tundra.

I am not a fisherman's wife
throwing back the day's catch

The snow is the color of roses,
red roses, and I dream of primordial suns.

7/1981
Port Townsend, Washington
added 10/16