Posted on by EAT

note to soul mate

For those of us who are for some reason pre-conditioned to seek out our “other half”—our “soul-mate”—such that we are lonely and miserable without her or him, there is a great and sudden freedom that comes from just letting go of the entire soul-mate paradigm, and all the festering desires and expectations that infest it. The moment you realize and accept that some magical other is not actually the answer to solving the problem of an ever crushing loneliness, you become open to finding other ways to deal with and address it.

This happened for me the night I left the Devil’s Tower National Monument on my way to Vermont as I camped off the beaten path alone in the last range of mountains before dropping down into and across the Great Plains of South Dakota. I have no idea why it happened, it just did. And so I wrote this small note.

note to soul mate

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Well, from Evanston, WY, where I posted my previous entry, I went east on I80 to Rock Springs. Then I went north on Hwy 191 to SR (State Route) 28, north east to Hwy 287, north through Lander to SR 798, north east through Riverton up Hwy 26 through Shoshoni, north on Hwy 20 a few miles to Boysen State Park, where I slept the night five feet from the windy waters of Boysen Reservoir.

In the morning I woke and continued up Hwy 20 through Worland, east on Hwy 16 through Buffalo onto I90, east to Hwy 14, north to SR 24, then north a handful of miles to Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower National Monument. Here I walked around the tower, an impressive site, and played my bansuri atop a hill on each side of the tower, facing the four winds, and then at the west facing bouldered base of the tower itself.

Though the park and trail were riddled with tourists, I found myself feeling secluded through my own process. On the east of the tower I played my bansuri in the woods, just out of site of the trail. I tried to play the wind, the trees, the environment. A new song came to me and I’ve been playing with it. I looked up to discover two teenage girls standing six feet from me. They had gone searching through the woods for the source of the music they heard. Faces bright and full of song, they shyly complimented my playing. They seemed to want to stay and talk to me, to find out what sort of creature walks into the woods with a bamboo flute to play for the spirits, but they couldn’t help looking over their shoulders after the sound of their names. And, after some hesitant smiling and wringing of hands, they returned to the trail.

The area was full of lava boulders that had eroded from the tower through the ages. I bounded along them like a mountain goat until I found each of the five spots that seemed right to me, then played for twenty or so minutes. South of the tower I played on a ridge top, standing on a boulder beneath a pine. In the distance a thunderstorm passed an occasional lightning bolt to the earth in complete silence. About when I was ready to leave, I looked up to notice an undecorated leather medicine bag hung from the tree I was under, just over my head. Upon seeing it I felt a tingle run through my body, head to foot. This felt significant.

With an hour of sunlight to spare I left the park and continued north on SR 24 past Hulett where it turned east, looking for a road into the national park there where I could pitch my tent for the night. I found a spot, beautiful, green, peaceful, bustling with insect and animal life. I knew that I’d find nothing of the sort the next day as I went east across South Dakota, so I relished this lush haven.

Before the sun broke free of the ridge top I had my tent collapsed and everything ready to go, and I got back to SR 24 and continued east into South Dakota to Hwy 85, a couple of miles through to the north side of Belle Fourche, where I got a truck stop shower. From here I went east on Hwy 212 through Faith, to Gettysburg, where I stopped to get something to eat. The café owners informed me that Hwy 212 was closed further east, and that there was a 45 minute detour around it. I found a 20 minute detour option. At Lebanon I went north on SR 47 to SR 20, east to SR 37, south back down to Hwy 212 at Dolland. Then east to within 5 miles of Watertown where I camped at Sandy Shore State Recreation Area, a thin strip of campsites hardly off the road.

This morning I woke just as the sun peaked over the flat horizon, large and orange, and packed up to continue my venture, east on Hwy 212 into Minnesota to Montevideo, east on SR 7 over to SR 23, and north to Paynesville, where I found a coffee house to type and post this.

I have an idea where I’ll be going tonight before I camp again, but I’d rather not say. I never know until I go. The road unfolds as I drive, and I choose my way moment by moment. Detailed plans are for people who have no faith in adventure.

Posted on by EAT

Nevada Sunset

Presently I’m sitting in an extremely noisy restaurant in Evanston, Wyoming that’s situated next to a motel that has WiFi. Just stopped to have a salad and type in a haiku I journaled last night, a few miles east of Winnemucca, Nevada.

Nevada Sunset

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

I might have taken a picture of the scene that inspired this haiku, but I was distracted by some teenagers, who appeared seemingly out of thin air, and began peeling donuts in the off ramp intersection I was pulled off at, hoot’n and howl’n all the while. I thought I was in the middle of the desert, but I guess next to a major interstate you’re never really quite in the middle of nowhere. Once I get to Rock Springs, Wyoming, I’ll leave the interstate and wend forth on the long black strip toward Wyoming’s northeast corner, which is truly the middle of nowhere. I like nowheres.

Posted on by EAT

A Strange Anticipation

One of the poets to reach me as a teen is buried near Rutland, Vermont. Not sure why I have this itch to visit her place of rest, and to walk by the home where she once lived. It’s been nagging at me for a few years now. On Wednesday I begin my long drive to the other coast, where I will pay my respects.

I think I’ll sing a couple of her poems by her plot.

A Strange Anticipation

How is it I feel the slight wind even now,
          almost breathing on my thoughts, and
the gentle green resistance of grass
          beneath my tennis shoes?

How is it I sense a partial shade
          across the hairs of my neck,
cast by the whispering arms of a fir
          planted long before my time?

How is it I see through surrounding trees
          small white clouds, folding in silent
contrast across clear blue depths, and there
          your weather beaten stone?

Though I have yet to pay my respects, I feel
          an approaching familiarity.
I don’t know what compels me to drive so far,
          just to stand by your grave.

Maybe I hope to find a touch of your presence,
          still lingering behind.
Or perhaps some small piece of inspiration,
          left twinkling in the grass.

Posted on by EAT

dishrag

There’s something remarkably freeing about the complete and utter abolition of idealized romance. Disillusionment is only bitter when, for some reason, it is still believed that the original ideal could have or should have been realized. When it’s understood down to the last fiber that it couldn’t have and very likely shouldn’t have been realized, then disillusionment gives rise to a stillness of spirit, peace of heart, and ease of mind.

dishrag

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
Posted on by EAT

Perfect Moments

My first terza rima. So far as I know, terza rimas aren’t generally divided into parts like this, but the end-line scheme does follow the aba, bcb, …, yzy, zz format. However, I’m using end-line alliteration here instead of end-line rhyme. Is that wrong?

Perfect Moments

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Also the lines are all pretty much perfect pentameters. I haven’t cared too much whether or not they started off with a soft foot. So it’s a mix of iambic and trochaic pentameters, strictly speaking.

What inspired this? Well my ex-intimate creature talked of these “perfect moments”, and claimed to have had more of them during her time spent with me than she had known over the course of her life. Well, I liked the idea and wanted to explore it. So I’ve thought back through the time we spent together and tried to figure out where and when she could have had these perfect moments, and to capture some of them—hopefully all—as best I could.

Posted on by EAT

black hole

And what made the outdoor security light stay on for a moment longer than it normally does? What made me look down when I normally don’t? I’ve never been able to grasp such moments of fortune.

black hole

hung in the darkness
darkness moves eight spindly legs
amassing darkness

But there it was, its strong erratic web strewn across the narrow path, just above ankle height. And she in the middle, upside down, about twice the size of a silver dollar. I swear I have never even heard of a black widow reaching such size.

The security light went out, and the large creature returned to darkness. I stepped backward to trigger the motion sensor, slowly, and after a few steps it came back into view again, unmoved.

Suddenly I felt a fear of unpredictable things. I felt a spider’s web when I opened the gate to the backyard I walk through to reach my cottage. And now I wondered what sort of creature might have spun it. How many of these large black widows might be lurking about the pathway? I’ve walked down this path in the dark without a light so many times with never a thought of such hazard.

That will never be the case again.

The odd thing is, I can’t easily bring myself to kill a black widow.

Once when I spent the night at a little known hieroglyph site in a California desert, a large black widow appeared above me in the night. I was sleeping on the floor of a body length recess in a rock outcropping. This rock and those around it possessed many hieroglyphic symbols inscribed long before the white man came.

Something bade me stay put and face my fear of the darkness–the darkness of night, the mystery of the hieroglyphs, of the spider that appeared above me in the night, the future. And so I did. I turned off my flashlight and stared at its silhouette in the darkness, the slightest hint of starlight reflected off its enameled abdomen.

I drifted in and out of sleep dreaming of long black legs, a twitching abdomen–dark gray chevron wide across its front, fangs and mouth parts. Each time I awoke I shone my light up and there it was, still unmoved.

In the pre-dawn light I saw it still. And after a few more times in and out of sleep, before the sun broke free of the valley’s west edge, I opened my eyes and it was gone. It returned to its place of mystery, to the dreaming. Even its web seemed gone.

And now I wonder where the connection lies between the circumstances surrounding my visit to that hieroglyphs site and the black widow last night. So many coincidences have been taking place lately, some of them of a dark, mysterious nature.

But the darkness doesn’t frighten me as once it did. It is the place from which we came, to which we return. It manifests all forms and is the well spring of infinite creativity.

I’ve been told that such coincidences may indicate that one is walking his songline. They are not ends in and of themselves, but indicators of what is–what already is. And what is can’t be expressed or grasped, but merely hinted at by these curious projections, these salient expressions of the dreaming.

Well I got some pictures of last night’s black widow. I’ll plan on moving it now that I know where it lives (under a domed piece of tiling that borders the pathway). But for the time being I’ll leave it alone and plan on having my light with me whenever I leave or enter my cottage. I might get a chance to take more pictures of it.

Posted on by EAT

On the Lost Coast Trail

I recently backpacked the Lost Coast Trail in the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. It was a peaceful, invigorating enterprise that spanned four days and led to new insights about myself and abilities. Upon returning I found myself tapping out some reflections and revising them into this poem.

On the Lost Coast Trail

I’ll walk now, on my own.
My legs are strong,
  my back sturdy.

I’ll heave this pack and learn.
The trail ahead is long
  but I understand now.

Each day out I’ll greet the dawn,
cook my meal in stainless steal
  and drink strong black tea.

The past is over.
Nostalgia is but a hollow wind,
  and I a new-grown wood.

My soul was never in your arms,
but in the high up leaves
  of swaying alders,

and in a stone moved loose
as I strode to rustle,
  roll, and bound from sight.

And again in the call of an eagle,
soaring below as I hiked
  into the haze of its canyon.

At night the stars will sing,
and I’ll listen. In time
  no thought will come of you.

I feel now my heart purling
down ferny creek beds
  to join the widest freedom,

and sifting through branches,
up storied hillsides,
  each rooted thing alive.

I’ll never pass your way again,
for I have unlocked my cage,
  and the trail unfolds before me.

Up until now It’s always taken someone else to motivate me into going backpacking. This isn’t because this isn’t what I wanted to do. I’m not really sure why this is. Maybe a lack of confidence in my abilities, that I could go out into the wilderness on my own lugging around a heavy pack and actually enjoy myself.

And enjoy myself I did. In fact, I went a lot further and with greater ease than I would have guessed possible for me. It looks like my several walks a week over the past year of no less than 2.5 to 3 miles has changed my biology some. It used to be very difficult for me to hike even two or three level, or soft grade, miles with a pack, but now I find I can hike six rugged up and down miles, pressing through underbrush and crawling under and over fallen trees with relative ease. I’ve changed in the past few years, and until now I couldn’t have grasped how much.

On my first night I stayed at Little Jackass Creek, about six miles in using a fire-road shortcut I know about. Turns out this is a hot spot for week-enders all around. When I got there, there was only one official campsite left (flat with enough cleared ground to safely operate a camp stove without setting everything ablaze). And a few more sets of people showed up after I did. The second night I spent at Wheeler Camp, four plus miles north of Little Jackass. There is a great lookout between Wheeler Camp and Little Jackass from the top of a flying buttress cliff face called Anderson Point that would terrify an acrophobe senseless. From here you can see for miles both up and down the coast, and of course several hundred feet just about straight down to tidal rock reefs below. The third night, about six miles south of Wheeler Camp, I spent at Anderson Creek, which was satisfying because I was the only person in the area that night. And the next morning I hiked the long way back about six miles to Usal Beach.

And so begins a newness of life that I hope will thrive vibrantly even in the face of certain death.

Posted on by EAT

Front

A friend asked me to write her sister a birthday poem. So after getting some information from her about details pertinent to the birthday person in question, this is what manifested.

Front

for Rachel

In the distance clouds amass
thunder rolls faintly through the air
In the fields an apple tree lifts
jeweled leaves anticipating dew
In the afternoon sun a rosebush lifts
buds to greet the coming storm
All around a whisper rises up
as oaks and pines chant the nearing rain