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.

(North Fork of the Teannaway, 2005)

(No. 98 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Each summer my old backpacking buddy Bruce and I spend most of a week further refining the art of “alpine loafing.”  This term refers to a sustained state of deep repose in God’s Country—for which one has to pay considerable dues in getting to and from.  Bruce usually pushes us in the direction of steeper and longer climbs.  Most often my role is to keep the equation balanced in favor of loafing over grunting. 

It’s always interesting to see where we get to and how we got there.  Sooner or later, we consistently manage to enter the loaf zone.  Invariably we are surprised, amazed at its restful quality, its beauty and power. 

This poem describes such a moment.

(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.)

Ariel and her husband, Dre, and I were backpacking in Teannaway River country last summer, just east of the Cascade crest. It was pouring on the Washington coast, and this was our dependably drier fallback location. We were climbing an old favorite of mine, the ridge above Bean Creek Basin, when the lovely stickseed, not yet identified, waved hello.

(No. 71 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Toleak Point lies south of La Push on the Olympic wilderness coast in northwest Washington State. I have regularly visited this coastline for many years, usually backpacking alone.

As the Heart Sutra clarifies, there is “no old age and death, and also no ending of old age and death.” Just so.

(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.)

(No. 93 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

The Upper Big Quilcene Trail leads to one of my favorite places in the eastern Olympic Mountains–Marmot Pass and beyond, to views of the interior Olympics. In addition to finding deep peace and beauty there, I have tested myself on the familiar trail many times–physically, mentally, and in other ways.

A couple of years ago I met an experienced old Olympics traveler slowly moving up the Big Quil. He was in his mid-80s, had recently had a shoulder replacement and heart bypass. He told me he climbs until he has to stop, well below the pass, draws a line across the trail with his hiking pole and says, “That’s it for today.”

(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.)

Here.

(No. 100 in a series of responses to Han-Shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Routes and Rocks, an early publication of The Mountaineers, was a marvel. Crafted by two zany (and ballsy) USGS field geologists, it is a soulful work of art, and a great guide to three quadrangles worth of the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area in the North Cascades. This is one of those sacred places of endless beauty that hones your soul. Having climbed into this vastness many times, I have exquisite memories of the place, many of which are fine candidates for my dying thought.

(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.)

2.
Spring breathes urgency
into an eruption of peonies
near my porch. Nearby,
Heavenly bamboo
shimmers in the sun
while my newly sown
chard and kale seeds
unfurl to the light.

3.
The distance
between us
sighs.

Carl Jung noted that an intimate relationship provides just about the best laboratory imaginable for furthering one’s development as a human. Though I had already paid some dues when I read Jung’s remark, I had only the glimmer of an understanding of just how difficult and painful that process would turn out to be.

Beyond attention, effortless airy
shadow inspects rock slides,
stubby grasses, dried
bluebells and asters.

Marmot monks,
stationed like signal fires,
rip the silence, lump
toward burrow holes.

Raptor vision,
swift shadow,
echoing whistles bring an urgent
scale to the land.
Forget pain in knees,
long day, heavy pack.
Breathe the distances,
find a place
to hide.

Quick!

I had been backpacking alone for several days in the northeast Olympic Mountains. On this, the final exhausting day, I was in a near trance when a red tail hawk changed me into an Olympic marmot.

Ariel, a year and a half old,
wrapped in lambskin
she calls Fuzzy,
speaks out loud to no one,

The clouds are the mountain’s
Fuzzy.

(No. 88 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)

Mt. Townsend is the closest of the Olympics peaks from my home on Bainbridge Island. I still climb it a time or two a year. One long ago summer day (in 1976), my wife, still-new daughter and I, and a friend/hired hand took a rare break from the log home building project on which we were largely focused. Daughter Ariel (now the webmaster of this site) still fit into her Snugli pack. Her baby care lambskin, then the hottest thing on the hip baby market (but now carrying warnings of SIDS risk if used before the baby can perform the Cobra asana), was our assurance that Air would be fine. I still have a last few square inches of that old lambskin in a file drawer.

I’ve never forgotten Ariel’s striking metaphor, probably an early indicator of the writer she turned out to be.

(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.)