East Fork

for Louise Murie, 1912-2012

On the porch I think of her sitting here, husband perched on a ridge upriver, waiting for pups to emerge or adults to return to the den across the East Fork. Done with morning chores around the one-room cabin, she may have risen, walked down to the stream for water, and been stopped, as have I, by sweet scent of northern bedstraw, by rows of equisetum shimmering in morning light, by river beauties nodding fuchsia faces over clear-running waters. She may have wondered whether cinquefoil was related to rose, if gentian grew on other continents. So many blossoms at her feet; in one week I’ve seen fifty species. She collected, pressed roots, stems, leaves, flowers. Sent them to a friend in Maine, a lichen specialist in Norway, a botanist in Sweden. Louise among the first to classify the plants of Denali National Park, as Adolph was to study its sheep and wolves and bears, first to urge their protection. Pioneers, the Muries, like these river beauties I sit beside, watching the stream tug powdered leaves. In the Cathedral Range these flowers pour down either side of steep-falling waters, a long, billowing scarf. At Wonder Lake they fringe lakeside. Near Thoroughfare Pass they slip between rocks and willow. Fireweed their other common name as they’re the first flowering plant to colonize after fire, first to succeed after ice: they cling to granite walls revealed by receding glaciers. I porch-sit in evening light and watch their agreeing heads. In a few weeks, pink petals will fall, pistils will swell, split, and send puffs of seed like starlight out into the air to settle where wind carries pioneers: someplace new, undiscovered, and lit from within.