Ripples

Under the Awning of Fall, solitary, with golden streams silently dispatched into space, I walked and shared an hour. Wandering, perhaps I could glimpse a tiny corner of this day, further from human law, outside in the greater Halls, a place where beauty and chance encounters are found. And so, on the side of a tiny stream, inside the leafy screen of yellow and red, the gentle touch of raindrops played upon the flow. I stood awhile, watched as ripples formed, each taking turns in being born. Each successive drop of rain etched new patterns on the flat surface of water. All were different, yet the same in their origin; Inside each ripple's center was quiet, while the waves expanded outwards and then dissolved. Odd assortments of leaves hugged the sides of the bank and the smells of earth was most distinct. Yet all was in a flux, as another season of time had come.

Seeing the Mountain

Tucked in small corners, hidden from the road, the portals of chance sometimes open to inquiry new scenic views. And I had found one of many such places. Rather than using the tourist looking glass, I prefer exploring a place and finding more than just a look. That's right, many people just look, then keep going, never knowing what they've missed. "Oh look, there's Mt. Mckinley! Ok, take a picture quick, because we have to be at the campground ( babysat by Park Hosts) before ten" They usually have a book or pamphlet or slick brochure ( with lots of advertisements); someone has printed a glossy brochure telling the adventure group what to do, what to see, what to think and what to feel. Soon, a whole tribe of followers crashes in to specially developed sites along the highway. They take their city manners and their comfort-loving minds to bag more miles and names of places, only to return unchanged. But the secret really is this: we have to learn to SEE, to FEEL, and to KNOW by our own questioning and sensing and searching; not by going over the same old ground. But people don't have to leave the road to experience the depths of wonder.

They only have to throw out the demands of other voices; ones that live in preconceptions--they have to learn to see like a child again. While fishing for trout one day, I stopped along the river to rest and eat. The magnificence of high peaks and the silty flow of the river loomed up large and real. But as I "looked" about ( I am guilty too!), the attraction suddenly shifted to a tiny window of sight. On the far side of the gold-streaked hills, a range of mountains, barely visible behind a shrinking line of hill, a light blue edge of a glacier had formed in a niche of a mountain. I had not really examined this place before. Since the larger strokes of the McKinley Range shut out the delicate tracings of other less imposing views, not paying deeper attention robbed me of another experience. Soon I was looking closer with my binoculars, glassing from side to side, up and back over the rock faces, cracks, avalanche chutes, furtive hills, and the glacier half hidden in a deeper valley. My eyes wandered, slowed in passing over each new form while weaving together the lines of the ridges, shapes of the foreground all the way back to the upper sky. Soon the effects of light and shadow, as well as the dynamics of rhythms and relationships became a visual dialog. Then I imagined that I was up there looking back to where I now sat. Now way up high or on a glacier below a thousand foot slab, feeling the icy blast of wind, the power of Seeing felt good. My mind took wing, soaring around the basin of glacial time, watching the Past to the Present move like a frame of pictures over the ten thousand years of changes. I became a mountaineer, finding the best line of approach to climb each section of rock. I even built an imaginary road to cross the river, ascend the hills to a higher viewpoint for a better location, then rafted down the river back to where I now sat. This I knew was just the beginning of Seeing. The rest would come with practice, in finding new pathways leading from the obvious to the unknown.

Nebesna Road

Fall Season, a time of passing fancy, of embellished schemes across the land. And here the days pass in shortened bursts, celebrating in festive notes. Even the black gnats, lusting for my blood, feel the coolness settling in. We share the same quickening on this early September afternoon. So the chill wanders through the air, making appetites numb in the sinking of the sun. But still, when looking through the black Spruce fields, down the slopes of shrubs, ringed by yellow sedge, I see the glory shining in the blue lake mirrors. Further out, deeper within shadowed folds, a silver stream murmurs in relief from the heat now gone. Half way in, half way done, along this 40 miles of road, softly plumed by dust, the comings and goings of time are known. On the sides of the valley, the foothills climb to the spired tops of weathered rock, of dark castled walls. And rising even higher, the Wrangel-St. Elias towers steep and still, closer to the sun and glorying longer in its light, exists in a realm few of us will ever know. A moment here contains the world and the fire that burns inside--a season of myself and the road beyond.

The Feeling

Once into the depths of the forest, among the barriers of alder and willows, buried in the grasses and fireweed, the eyes diminish in power to look around. Now, the more primitive senses of hearing and smell and feeling come alive. I slip deeper inside the colors of Fall, dropping down the hill, and moving along a shelf to the bottomland. Here are more shrubs and thick walls of grass; a place of blind struggle for reaching the stream a half-mile away. Still, the sense of tingling awareness grows, where the ooze and smells of rotting leaves reveal the ditches and canals of the beaver dam. I search for a crossing, pushing through the willows and tangled mess beneath my feet. The logs are slippery, old, and half immesed in the swamp, but offer a better way than hip deep in the methane smell of a bog. Beyond is a open area between the fallen cottonwoods and alder runs. But this opening is filled with devils club: they look like a weathered sea of tossing yellow-brown leaves, mounted on grey stalks of thorns, tearing at each step. But after awhile, my body finds the way, moving carefully through less painfull spaces, and finally reaching the stream. On the bank, a lone blue flower peeks through dried leaves; a Mathusela that has lived beyond its peers, who have long since disappeared. At least the openess of the stream with its gravel bars is a welcome sight. And here dead fish are scattered up and down the length and sides. The strong aroma of dead fish attracts birds and insects to the feast. But still I see no sign of bear. Because hunting season is here, the bears perhaps have gone elsewhere, into more hidden places. Meanwhile in the stream, lines of dog and silver salmon, now near death, swim feebly in the current or settle into pools, waiting for the end. One such pool attracts me. It's a deep hole dug out by the constant motion of water from two sides. I think to myself, " This is the place. Here is where the trout will be." I can feel it as I cast out the line and hook into yawning hole. The current takes the spinner to the spot where the trout feeds. The fish strikes, surfaces and jumps. Then I reel it in onto the gravel beach. Now I have my fish and can proceed to the mouth for a look. I start off again, rounding a corner where a couple of hundred yards downstream, where a junction meets, a moose carcass lies in the middle of the stream, washed over by water. Nearby, a raven flies off, wings filled with air and sound, but still no sign of a bear. The carcass can be a danger if a hungry beast is guarding it. I stop, look, listen, smell and wait. Nothing. Then I continue, moving around the corners wide, looking down each long straight-a-way carefully. Now, I come to a narrow run. On both sides a thickness of alder froms a green wall. But I know, just a few feet inside, a bear trail winds down a pathway in the brush. I take this route to avoid making noise. The afternoon is warm now, but the heat of summer is gone, especially when a cloud comes between the sun and land below. However, the golds of leaves and reflected blues of sky makes the chill seem like an accent from a painted scene. I stop and sit on a fallen log to take in the beauty and color of this place. The sound of the water is relaxing to the mind. Even the warmth that comes and goes, the smell of dead fish--mixing like a gourmet recipe of delight-- is a rare dish indeed. Soon the mood changes and I head on down, along turns and shaded pools, until I reach the mouth. Here, the river joins up, pouring a silty mix where both meet. In the wide sweep of the river plain, my eyes can see and feel again the open spaces. The clouds above the mountains, mattress soft, hang rim-lit in the sun, and seem content to pass the hours like contented cows against a blue-meadowed sky. But further south, an ominous strand of fingered clouds, seem to grown in size. I look once more over the silver waters, up the rivers course, and high up into the glacial heights, where rock towers and ribbed sides look small to the naked eye. After a long moment, I put on my pack and gun, and with fishing pole in hand turn back and return to the beaver dam. A feeling passes over me. I see a route through the tangled jungle: fields of ferns in fallen brown heaps, now an open pathway through the bottom land. I move faster now, easing up the slopes, avoiding entanglements. Soon I am back to the road. The day has given me a sense of contentment, of being touched by the elements of water, air, and earth. But still, another crossing of moments remains. Along the road, with the sun angled low to the horizon, a meadow and lake are lit up in with a golden passage of color. I stop. Then, I get out and look out into the distance near the margins of the meadow. Something moves in the grass. The shape grows larger. Then I know, it's a bear. Funny, I think, that most of the day when I was in a place where a bear might be, I have found it by surprise near the road. I watch and click pictures of the final act.

The Circle of Dreams

Human life moves in cycles like the earth, turning to complete itself. I feel these rhythms here on Taylor Mountain. Now, many years later, as I climb up the spongy ground of mosses and over the barren ground, my thoughts are joined by memories and emotions. Above me, the cirrus clouds stream in curving tracks across a washed out sky. Things seem so different now. I was 19 when I first came to the foothills of this place; in its ravines of willow I found flocks of ptarmagan to shoot and kill. They fluttered in the air and landed on nearby rocks, or clucked in nervous agitation along the ground as I sighted down the barrel of my gun. Many birds were taken that day, and I remember that it was Fall time when the land was dressed in bright colors and smelled of sweet decay. My innocence of place and time, not yet burdened by experience, gave me an intensity of being deeply alive. But it was the physical life of instinctual passions that animated the hunt. Thirty-five years later, the maturity of time and experience has extinguished much of the past. Now, the thoughts and moods of youth, once pure and strong, have faded behind a wall of words, caught like birds in a net; the beauty of nature, once felt with unconditioned joy, seems unreal behind the camera's eye. Today, the wind whispers a warning and blows continuously on the ridge, hinting of things to come. A hawk hovers above a pile of rocks, then flits away in search of food. But no ptarmagan can be found. It seems others have been here too. A shotgun shell lies spent on the soft earth. The noon hour sun flattens out the reddish hills, but other than the wind, the land is silent. So I turn, looking outwards to the south, feeling the warmth and chill as one, and know that something has survived the years-- the mystery of that old desire to wander and play in new fields of experience. Far off across the lines of blue hills, mixed in the smoke and haze, a large silvery lake unclaimed, unknown, waits. And the surge of old feelings come alive again. I wonder as I head back, what new riddle, what golden thread, will bring new surprise once I arrive? The link now formed, at first unseen when I was here before, has at last come full circle. On the way down the thought grows more intense--what lies beyond the lake?

The Burn

At the entrance to the Taylor Highway, the road climbs up and over a long ridge. From here the view is one of a blackened landscape; a place where fire has left burnt remains of a spuce forest. The land was once a green cover, but the fire swept through with inferno speed, moving up draws, over ridges, and around hills with a flaming appetite. Still, some tracts of black spurce survived the maelstrom, and remained intact in their sanctuaries of chance. Elsewhere, the spindly remains of charcoalized spruce reveal the naked shapes of the hills and ravines. Such a sight had a terrifying reality for the creatures which once lived here. Even for me, the miles of burnt earth speaks of Nature's power to create and destroy, and pity to those humans who might find themselves trapped on all sides in a raging furnance of flame.

Lost in Thought

"I don't Know." The rangy, lean hiker with a long beard and hair, and wire rimmed glasses, didn't stop. I had asked him a simple question, "where are you going"? The answer seemed to beg different interpretations: either he was trying to blow me off, or a deeper zen-like sleep walk guided him and his son up the trail into some never land. Usually, when I explore new areas, I have a general idea of weather, terrain, and direction. Maybe the hiker didn't even know the name of this place. For me, names are guide posts around which experience gathers, creating connections of awareness for new trips. But I must admit, I don't always go in with a complete plan of action; often times, I just open my thoughts to surprise and discovery. I have found that people and written records aren't always capable of revealing the most relevant features of a mountain climb; they will intepret what was important to themselves. Recently, I had read a trail guide to this hanging valley, but once I got there, the order of facts in the book seemed unreal, as though gotten second hand. But at least I had something for comparison. As I climbed up the slope over the first headwall, a rock-strewn trail cut a path through the talus. The trail finally vanished among the rocks and a wash out. Now, the next thing was to find the saddle and ridge written about in the book . They were there alright, but the writer didn't mention that the path was up a crumbling wall of loose rock, that the glacier had divided into two sections, and that the trek was among rotten remains of blackened dirt and hidden ice beneath. Nearby, also unmentioned, a waterfall spilled out from the cracks below this second section of ice. A steep peak held the glacial remnant in a bowl. Yes, it was a tricky route to the ridge. But today I headed up the other side of the valley, climbed the mountain opposite, to get a glimpse. Here too, the hill was covered by talus. However, it offered an easier climb along its side. Here, a small trail offered easy footing and solid ground. Just above were matted areas of alpine plants, built in levels above one another. The last stretch was loose material that formed the top. I climbed up along this narrow fringe, looking down every once in a while at the vertical drop into the valley below. Not a good place to fall. But at least now, I had a commanding view of the glacier, the valley, the headwall, and the ridge beyond. I could also see far down the larger valley where I had come in; a silvery thread of water wandered along the bottom, weaving a pathway through gouged out rock. On the lower sides, the colors mingled in bright greens, yellows,and reds too. Further down the lenghth, long wisps of fog drifted up, gathering like soft cotton in the air. Still, the afternoon sun blazed across the mountains, onto the glaciers, while trailing clouds threw shadows on the barren rocks of orange and black. I was lost in the moment, and I suppose, if someone was to ask me where I was going or what I was thinking, I would probably reply, "I don't know"...