Rock to soft moss after all day of rain.
Sitting by the fire for hours.
Walking into the meadow flat for more wood
under dry spruce groves
where nothing grows and needles fill the alcoves.
Then laying for seven hours at night
to hear barred owls fly across the lake, telling tall tales
and land on an island in the lake, to raise their children...
"Once, long ago, all animals were people, and (hoot)
there were no people."
Back in myth time, as the owls grow larger with each word they say
living still in myth time.
Up 2000' to Lost Lake, and down to camp.
Rain came again and stoking the fire
to boil white fir for tea
all day long.
Mist like muslin clings to peaks.
Blue steel cup, somewhat rusty, that Jacob uses to drink.
Piles of wood and stacks of branches our currency
to transform to light and heat.
The fire only thing that seemed real that day
the rest of the world locked in mist, far away
myth time.
Hundreds of bats against the ink blue sky at night.
Downpour and small lake formed
under Teal & Jacob's tent.
Cursing the high use of the area, but falling asleep easily
to the rain, feeling warm
wishing I was
nowhere else.
Wake first in morning, like on special days.
Watch orange mist make swirls and spiral into the air for an hour
the light change on the lake, and listen to silence.
Sun gets up and there is hope again.
Two pikas squeak in a rockslide as I run up to a ridge coated in wildflowers, alone
but for four deer
making their way
down the trail—
One buck with fuzzy antlers pauses, lets me watch him
and parts the dew so I may pass.
At the ridge edge looking into another drainage
I spy a hanging meadow of green grass and spruce
—just a little farther, maybe an hour around that cornice,
then down into the cirque on rolly-polly rocks
then up a small ridge— and I'd be there
a place where I could both live, and die.
But back down the the soaking trail
to pick up my sweater off a stump.
then through a meadow filled with boulders and flowers
to my friends and family
and a long hike together
back to where we began.