Along the trail to Laurel Lake
Resting,
with the back pack
leaned against a tree
in a shadowed stand of pines
beside a mountain meadow
filled with wild flowers
and fern.
We’ve bitten off a real challenge this time.
Wind rushes the needled limbs
and looses a dead cone that falls
from a lifeless top
to a thud
and burst of sun-lit dust
that glows
in its slow return
to the earth.
Between here and there
an orange and black butterfly
dances
across the trail.
*
Below Vernon Lake
We camp just off Falls Creek
in a slight semi-circle of small ponderosa pines
and a single western juniper, surrounded by miles
of scrape and moraine
--high sierra granite--
all of us held to this rock
by the same pull, each of us
giving all we have
to be here.
The steep ascent
and ten rugged miles
keeps the lake’s numbers of visitors low
but this trail-less stretch of stream demands more
and sees few beyond its long-time residents
--bear, rattler, rainbow trout.
Followed down stream,
its cuts and crevices, falls and bowls, gorges and pools,
the work of hundreds of years, thousands,
all still underway.
There’s intimacy here,
borne by the water, the light and the air,
a shared bond with the granite
that carries a message of passage,
of acceptance through participation
in a larger work
that reveals
a glistening streak of grace
in responsibility,
that speaks not of obligation,
but of responsiveness
and of care.
*
On any mountain
at some point,
no matter the company,
it all comes down to you
on the mountain,
on its terms.
Oh, I do not climb, just walk,
but even then, over and again, I arrive at that place
of listening--me listening
to my response
to the mountain’s entreaty--
without words,
through an inconceivable, yet somehow completely received
multitude of signals,
a totality of unmistakable, and yes, unavoidable
presence
that both overwhelms and embraces,
completely diminishes
and simultaneously offers
horizon-less possibilities
of unspeakable
beauty.
To respond repeatedly to the repeated call, these,
the movements of love,
where those who demur
may clearly articulate their many doubts,
but those of us who respond, cannot
adequately explain, except,
perhaps to point.
