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| Kaikora Beach sunrise in early October. A benefit of uncomfortable sleeping arrangements. |
I've kept up the practice of reading poetry in the mornings, more or less. Lately, it's been Gary Snyder, who writes about things that are sacred to me: the mountains, deserts, and empty places of the Western U.S., wonder, compassion, community, friendship.
There's a feeling that I can't explain tying me to my home and to the wild places I've visited there: the Dearborn River and her headwaters in the Scapegoat, the Bitterroots, the Pintlers, the Wallawas, the Sawtooths, southern Utah and the great American desert, to name a few. My concept of home grows.
And then there's our community and extended family in Missoula, Helena, Butte, and beyond.
And there are places I've yet to see. For example, did you know about the 4000+ year-old bristle cone pines in Great Basin National Park, eastern Nevada, Earth's oldest living beings? I must make a pilgrimage.
Below is a poem of Snyder's from a remarkable book of his called Mountains and Rivers Without End. Somehow, it calls forth several of my dearest held values and makes me miss home.
CROSS-LEGG'D
for Carole
Cross-legg'd under the low tent roof,
dim light, dinner done
drinking tea. We live
in old dry west
lift shirts bare skin
lean touch lips--
old touches.
Love made, poems, makyngs,
always new, same stuff
life after life
as though Milarepa
four times built a tower of stone
like each time was the first.
Our love is mixed with
rocks and streams,
a heartbeat, a breath, a gaze
makes place in the dizzy eddy.
Living this old clear way
--a sizzle of ash and embers.
Scratchy breeze on the tent fly
one sip tea, hunch on bones,
we two be here what comes.
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| At Split Beach near Aramoana |
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