After my stepfather’s sporting goods
store went bust in ‘55, my mother’s
school teacher salary barely supported us.
Dick finally found a bookkeeper job
at the territorial TB sanitarium,
north of Seward.
We moved from our trailer and shed
into a cramped staff apartment—
the arguments and shouting
never stopped.

My room was a closet
with a door
I’d close at night.
Radio to ear,
I’d listen
to Frankie Laine, Teresa Brewer, The Platters,
until the town’s only station
signed off before midnight
with a choral rendition
of the territorial song—
“The blue of the sea, the evening sky,
The mountain lakes, and the flow’rs nearby—“

I’d sing along, fly
amid delta clouds
of widgeons and pintails,
climb high ridges
to whistle with marmots,
nod off in fields of glacier lilies
lupine, paintbrush.

I journeyed back to Seward a few years ago, hiked down Fourth Avenue to the Alaska Shop, bought the souvenir mug I use daily–deep blue, Big Dipper and Polaris pointing true.

To that young man lying in the closet, I can only say, life got a whole lot better–but it took awhile.  Hang on, keep moving with the Arctic terns.

the county building.
He bemoans the budget, continued

layoffs, disappearances
of old friends.

Fluffy flakes begin to fall.
I lean to catch one

on my tongue, stop short—
they are down feathers.

We glance up,
spot a peregrine falcon

on a low tree branch.
The raptor clutches

a pigeon in its left talon, rips
flesh with hooked beak.

There are young to fledge
on a tower cornice.

Well, as they say, it’s a jungle out there.

Or, liberally extending M.L. King’s famous comment, “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

This, despite underlying patterns that may save our bacons for awhile.  For example, urban peregrines strike more pigeons with black rumps than white.

But for tonight, maybe I’ll just
cut one lovely stem
to cheer my dinner table.

________________________________

This red-osier dogwood is really something special.

I’m trying to write my way to healthiness in relationship with her, but may be in need of some green man, neo-paganism counseling.

Desolation Sound, British Columbia, 1978

(No. 48 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Sometimes the context in which you must ask, “What way from here?” moves fast, may sometimes entail choosing among competing dangers or unknowns. You just act. And there is life, right in that moment. When everyday time resumes, that moment may be followed by a big smile, the shakes, or just a heartfelt, “Thanks!”

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

Big Quil watershed, Olympic Mountains, October, 2000

(No. 69 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

There is no better water on the planet than that which flows so purely from The Source, located near Camp Mystery, just below Marmot Pass, in the northeast Olympics. A poet friend, who knows the area well, calls this little spring The Mother of All Waters.

The day started clear and warm. We ate a late lunch, took a long nap, woke in heavy fog. We could not find our way down the ridge, simple as it seemed. After drifting way off course, and finally realizing it, Dane and I spotted, hundreds of feet below, a trail segment through a brief opening in the fog. We took a quick compass reading and, in last light, eventually emerged from a steep, wooded hillside precisely at The Source.

The focused attention, relief, exhilaration and deep appreciation of this experience are with me to this day. Kwan Yin (Sanskrit: Avalokiteshvara– “She who hears the cries of the world”) was listening.  Isn’t she always?

Or, as Han-shan says, There it is, in the midst of Nothing!

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

Sucia, San Juan Islands, Washington

Viewing the natural world through a sexual lens is horny, humbling, unifying.  I’ve spent trips to the Southwest pursuing the Ultimate Yoni at the distant head of a desert stream, and had tantrically satisfying sexual experiences surrounded by fornicating frogs.  I hope you have, also.

Sometimes the experience catches me off guard, as it did on the occasion reported here.  Then, it has the power to cut through to the chthonic, and we stand revealed in our animal nature.

Eventually,
we blink.

Port Susan Bay, Mouth of the Stillaguamish

(No. 39 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Occasionally I join some birder friends from work for an early morning outing.  We’re fortunate to live in an area where this is easily done.  On this day we visited land newly managed by the Nature Conservancy at the mouth of the Stillaguamish River–one of many local rivers in what Robert Sund called “Ish River Country”.

Call the encounter with that Great Horned an epiphany, a kensho experience, or another word with which you’re comfortable.  Such moments are gifts, and we are never quite the same afterward.

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

Olympic Wilderness Coast, 2002

(No. 38 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

As Gary Snyder once observed, “when Han-shan talks about Cold Mountain, he means himself, his home, his state of mind.” Or, as Han-shan himself put it (in Red Pine’s translation of No. 82):

People ask the way to Cold Mountain
but roads don’t reach Cold Mountain
in summer the ice doesn’t melt
and the morning fog is too dense
how did someone like me arrive
our minds are not the same
if they were the same
you would be here

Snyder renders those last two lines as:

If your heart was like mine
You’d get it and be right here.

Right where, did he say?

Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

The mountain itself—
unchanging.

(No. 82 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Mt. Ellinor is in the southeastern Olympic Mountains, another favorite of us locals. It’s a steep climb, but there’s an improved trail to the top which makes it accessible. On this holiday a dramatic shift in weather occurred, catching many visitors ill-prepared.

Cold Mountain No. 82 (Burton Watson translation) is one of the most familiar of Han-shan’s poems:

People ask the way to Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain? There is no road that goes through.
Even in summer the ice doesn’t melt;
Though the sun comes out, the fog is blinding.
How can you hope to get there by aping me?
Your heart and mine are not alike.
If your heart were the same as mine,
Then you could journey to the very center!

More than almost any of Han-shan’s poems, this one should probably be approached as a koan, a sort of Zen teaching story that typically puts you between a rock and a hard spot, a box canyon with no way out. So a Zen teacher might demand, “Show me Cold Mountain!” As ever, it is right beneath your feet–even as you get the hell off Mt. Ellinor while the getting is good!

(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)

Outside my window
a varied thrush, dressed
for upland migration,
beckons. I step onto the porch,
hear a spotted towhee as it shuffles the ground;
note movement in the red stem dogwood—
someone with white eye streak, but not
a nuthatch. Now a strange
warbling from those cedars—
a traveler, not yet
revealed.

I have learned many things in varied realms from my daughter.  Of course, she serves as my tech advisor and is the webmistress of this blog.  She is, by some reckonings, a “cultural creative/early adapter.”  If the Zeitgeist has waves, Ariel somehow manages to surf the big forward curl.  I’d long noticed and forgiven her tendency to plug into Internet ethers several times each hour.  After all, it could be very useful (see Reality Check under 2007 archives).  But I wasn’t surprised when she decided the time had come to sign off a night a week.  Instantly the press picked up on this (she’s well connected to media), and once again she landed precisely in the cultural pocket.  

I was, myself, clicking away, mind off in virtual gabfests,  when the above mentioned thrush said Hey!