Late July: Five Lakes Basin & Sand Ridge, Northern Sierra
A lake east of the east end of Sand Ridge, a sleeping site tucked under massive leaning glacial erratic propped on bedrock, bed of wood bits, bark, and cones.
Gravelly bed below a tilted erratic,
chilly restless night,
— ants in my hair
Nap on a granite slab
half in shade, you can never hear enough
sound of wind in the pines
Piko feared heights
went up the steep ridge on all fours.
But she went
Catching grasshoppers for bait
attaching them live to the hook
— I get used to it
a certain poet, needling
Allen Ginsberg by the campfire
“How come they all love you?”
Clumsy at first
my legs, feet, and eye learn again to leap,
skip through the jumbled rocks
Starting a glissade
down a steep snowfield
they say, “Gary, don’t!”
but I know my iceaxe
Diving in the perched lake, coming up
can see right over the outlet waterfall
distant peaks Sierra Buttes
Tired, quit climbing at a small pond
made camp, slept on a slab
til the moon rose
ice-scrape-ponds, scraggly pines,
long views, flower mud marshes,
so many places
for a wandering boulder to settle,
forever.
meat — packed in —
cooked on smoky coals
how did it taste?
Warm nights,
the lee of twisty pines —
high jets crossing the stars
Things spread out
rolling and unrolling, packing and unpacking,
— this painful impermanent world.
Exploring the Grouse Ridge — crossing through
manzanita mats from
peak to peak — scaring up grouse
Creek flowing out of Lake Fauchery
old white dog
caught in the fast current
— strong lads saved him
trail from Glacier Lake
KJ lifts her T-shirt
“look, I’m getting boobs”
two tiny points, age nine.
Down in the meadow
west end of Sand Ridge
the mosquitos bite everyone
but Nanao and me — why?
Sand Ridge
How you survived —
gravelly two mile lateral moraine of
sand and summer snow and hardy flowers
always combing the wind
that crosses range and valley from the sea.
Walk that backbone path
ghosts of the pleistocene icefields
stretching down and away,
both sides