Boxes, Walls and Boundaries

We force them into boxes

And toss them up on shelves

We do it to each other

We do it to ourselves.

We think we really know them

And of all that lies inside

But boxes, walls and boundaries

Cannot halt the rising tide.

There really is no “other”,

No him nor her nor me

For all the world’s our brother

Struggling to be free.

An old dark world seeks sameness

Where fear and might make right

Yet a new world is emerging

With six billion unique lights.

Ravens In The Midst

Raven hovers above the bow

Duwamish natives paddle once placid waters long ago gouged by glaciers.

Jettisoned from their villages along Elliott Bay

They land ashore, once more,

Their homeland now a great seaport city, named after a long-dead chief

Bustling, teeming, loud, fast

Several generations now have passed.

Raven shaman, ghost-like, plies the currents in between,

Ebbs and flows from memory to dream.

The wake doesn’t have to drive the boat.

NOTES: This poem was inspired by a short documentary film that a friend had recently seen in Seattle, my own impressions of “The Emerald City” and the Puget Sound area, and a paraphrase of one of my favorite Wayne Dyer quotes.  Happy Solstice!

Hellgate Heaven

Homeless man pedals through Hellgate Canyon,

Late afternoon cloud shadows tumble and play on Jumbo’s hills.

Lone birch tree illuminates a side trail leading to a transient camp.

Trees scrape by and hang on, talus slopes hurtling more rocks in their path.

Magenta willows hug the water’s edge,

Hiding common mergansers fishing upstream.

Lone bald eagle swoops toward the river,

Misses its evening meal,

Ascends heavenward, empty-talloned yet free.

Clearcutting

A clearcut beckons at the forest edge,

Still standing stumps freely offer solace

 

Clouds climb and sprint across the clearing sky

Wind whips and whistles through barbed wire

 

Douglas Fir sentinels stand and sway,

Trunks scarred by fire and drought,

Bark peeled and bored by beetles,

hieroglyphics, indecipherable, left behind

 

Roots reach deep and strong into unknown earth

Yielding wisdom to all who listen, hear

and remember.

A Dream in the Forest

A cedar grove is a wonderful place to awaken from a dream. The details of this particular dream remain a little fuzzy, but I remember lying there on the deck, gazing at a Milky Way streaked sky, hearing the wind chimes tingle in the warm evening breeze, and feeling very much at peace.

The night before I had taken a final walk up the gulch past the cedars and Jennifer’s home in the woods. In 2003, the Blue Mountain Fire roared up this drainage. The wooden “treehouse” that sprouted from a retired blue bus as its foundation should have burned down then, but volunteer firefighters risked their lives to save this home and its surrounding stand of Western red cedar sentinels.

Walking up that gulch with Erik, we started noticing other things in this desolate, yet slowly regenerating forest. We checked out several large stumps, scattered unevenly in shadows cast by remaining dead snags, some revealing nearly 200 annual growth rings. Probably these Montana giants reached 100 feet high, comparable to those still standing and protecting Jennifer’s summer refuge. Probably they once housed families of red squirrels, or concealed pine martens intent on making a meal out of one.

We noted grand fir and Douglas fir and Western red cedar seedlings inching up between stumps, and Oregon grape, disintegrating fireweed, and purple thistle rioting in every direction. It seemed so chaotic out here, but there was a natural order to it, too. A  different environment was emerging, as were different lives. Jennifer was moving to town at the end of September, with new stewards soon arriving to watch over the treehouse home and its forest guardians.

At another friend’s house back in Missoula the following day, upon returning from “The Last Best Big Blue Bus Blast,” I sat in a different place in her newly renovated home, on a white sofa, now facing east, almost immediately startled by a painting I hadn’t noticed before. A picture of a mountain path leading through a regenerating patch of woods catapulted me back to the dream, and to the ghostly gulch beyond the cedar grove.

Both in the dream and in the painting, the early summer image looked so lush and soft as opposed to the stark landscape through which we had walked the evening before. Sunlight filtered toward the forest floor; new growth rose toward the heavens.

What struck me most about the picture, though, was a spirit-like depiction of a person walking down that peaceful path. You could see a faint, halo-like outline of his otherwise transparent body, with no other demarcation between where his life ended, and where that of the forest began.

The forest, perhaps like the transparent man, had been challenged by fire, disease, decay, and other events. Their intertwining lives were regenerating in spite of it all, perhaps both following archetypal patterns of growth and succession and adaptation to change.  Maybe, if it all worked out, both would become towering and fully sentient, inspiring wisdom for those just getting started, and yielding sustenance for those who would follow.  I wasn’t dreaming after all.

Glacial Magic

I’m staring at a photo of a stunning mountain lake taken ten Septembers ago;  the sun streams in through a south-facing window here at home, through which I watch Flo-Jo the cat slaying late summer grasshoppers.

The greens, the purples, the high contrast between moisture-laden clouds and cerulean skies, the shadows dancing across the lake and nearby mountains in this image make me want to pack up the car and head north, back to Kintla Lake. Again. Even though we just got back from there two nights ago.

I felt that same powerful pull last week as well-the urge to get outside, now, while the weather is still conducive for warmer weather activities and exploration. The pull grows stronger daily, and more undeniable.

Less than a week after we inner tubed down the Clark Fork River on a hot late summer day, frost coated the tent left out overnight to dry following our somewhat soggy two-day journey to Kintla Lake in Glacier National Park. At the end of that urban float trip, as we waded across a final side channel, golden cottonwood leaves, trapped by underwater branches, shivered and shook, foreshadowing what we would also do once the sun slipped behind the Bitterroot Mountains. An osprey, silhouetted in a towering dead tree, reminded us that he, too, would soon be making  seasonal adjustments, his being to head south for warmer climes.

The weather wasn’t nearly as conducive for taking beautiful landscape photos of Kintla Lake. Rain squalls raced and rumbled across white-capped waters. Snow dusted the mountain tops. Sunlight briefly illuminated shrouded peaks at the head of the lake, and the haunting call of common loons occasionally punctuated the silence.

The companionship and camaraderie were what made this second journey to Kintla especially memorable. I was sharing a special and powerful place in nature with someone most important in my life. Good conversation, comfortable silences, discovering wolf and bear scats, and seeing so many woodpecker species along the 13-mile plus hike made being back in this remote corner of Montana, in the North Fork of the Flathead River Valley, even more magical than on my first journey here in 1999.

“It feels like we’re at the end of the world up here,” I said to Erik, just before we reluctantly turned back toward the trailhead.

“Maybe,” said Erik, “this place is actually the beginning.”

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BACKGROUND NOTES:

Images of “Kintla Lake, Glacier National Park” and “Livingston Range, Montana” can be seen, and also purchased, at http://www.wildharephotos.com

Another one of my favorite Glacier area images is titled “North Fork of Flathead” and can be seen in one of my FaceBook albums. This image is also available for sale as a greeting card or larger print. Be sure to visit The Mercantile when in Polebridge, which is the social and commercial hub of the North Fork, and where my greeting cards can also be purchased.

The North Fork Preservation Association needs supporters from all over the world, especially in regard to ongoing mining and development pressures north of the border in British Columbia, Canada. The association’s mission is “to protect the natural resources that make the North Fork an unparalleled environment for wildlife and people”.

Please learn more and connect with them at www.gravel.org

Thank you!

To Be Continued…

It’s been over a week since returning from Yellowstone, with much to digest and reflect upon, and a co-mingling of homes and lives, so please check back within the next week for the next blog posting. See you then, and have a great Labor Day weekend, wherever you may be.

On The Road Again…

After cool and rainy weather that prevailed the first half of this most unusual August, heat, low humidity and clearer skies have returned, in time for a four-day road trip and weekend retreat in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains.

Stay tuned, and I hope to post something early next week. If not, look for a posting upon my return from Yellowstone, where I will be a guest artist at the main Yellowstone General Store at Old Faithful in Yellowstone Park from August 26-28. Stop by and visit between 10 and 3 these days if you’re in the park, but wherever you may be, I hope you travel well.

Enjoy these last weeks of summer…

Coming Home to Montana

My nephew arrived home safely in North Carolina early this evening, with enough daylight and energy remaining to skateboard for the first time in nine days, connect on Facebook, text his friends, and eat a pork barbecue sandwich. I suspect he will be sleeping for the next 12 to 14 hours, something which happened perhaps twice during his week-long visit to Montana.

He did well in the three days we were in Glacier, given the intermittent or non-existent cell phone coverage that made the natural world that much more noticeable and accessible for both of us.

Emory got to see his bear, the first one a cinnamon-phase black bear that was way too close and way too comfortable with hikers along the Iceberg Lake Trail near Many Glacier. Hard to say whether the bear was simply food-motivated or hyperphagic at this time of year, but it took about 15 fellow hikers clapping and shouting at the bruin before he rambled off into a deeper thicket of cow parsnip downslope from where we first saw him. That evening, we saw a larger, darker-phased black bear pop up alongside the road by Saint Mary Lake, then vanish  beyond a veil of gold-turning grasses.

Other  highlights included hiking the Hidden Lake Trail from Logan Pass, across verdant alpine meadows overflowing with Indian paintbrush, purple aster, forget-me-nots, and Lewis’ monkeyflowers.

The wildlife was incredible  there, too: numerous small bands of mountain goats and their young, groups of bighorn sheep, thirteen-lined ground squirrels, hoary marmots, pikas, and a lone soaring golden eagle made this hike Emory’s favorite.

It might have also had to do with us just covering three miles round-trip to the overlook, as compared to the nearly ten-mile in and out hike to Iceberg Lake the day before, though we were both entranced watching ever-changing sculpted islands of ice drifting across this aquamarine tarn.

Closer to (my) home, we went berry picking and inner tubing with Erik  on Sunday, to two destinations that shall not be named. We hit a mother lode of huckleberries, which subsequently found their way into multiple bowls of vanilla ice cream, yogurt, and cereal, as well as home for Emory’s family to sample and savor.

Last night, on our final bike ride around town at dusk, we took a trail that led back to the University of Montana campus from a riverside route, and surprised two four-point mule deer bucks still in their summer velvet. Being mulies, they stepped off the trail about fifteen feet further into the woods, stared back at us, and then continued feeding, oblivious to two awe-struck humans happy to see something so wild and beautiful so close to home.

“Montana’s cool,” Emory exclaimed, as we sleepily headed to the airport for his flight home, way too early this morning. “I want to do a real wilderness backpacking trip next time I come out here.”

“You let me know when you’re coming, Emory. I’ll be ready.”

A Technological Time-Out

What a summer it has already been, and what a treat to have my 14-year-old nephew visiting here in Big Sky Country. Although we have barely left Missoula yet, it is fascinating to experience how he is discovering this new landscape.

We climbed Mount Jumbo a few days ago, and he was especially captivated by the shadows cast by clouds racing above us. He was also impressed that folks could sit outside the fence and watch the Missoula Osprey baseball team play for free, and that the spiciness of  the chicken wings we devoured last night was “not bad’ as compared to those served back home in North Carolina.

Tomorrow we head for Glacier Country. Emory hopes to see a bear, and I do, too, though from a very comfortable and safe distance. He’s also pretty keen on innertubing and huckleberry picking upon our return, and it is indeed all good and perfect, just like this year’s awesome summer weather in Montana. So far, no significant extended heat waves or large swaths of forest and grassland fires have predominated, and that’s another blessing, compared to two summers ago.

Time to pack up, and head out. See you next week at some point, and in the meantime, happy trails!