Not that I was lost
as I climbed through
the rocks and meadowrue,
I just didn’t know
where I was going,
but every step felt
like a small arrival
and no one step
felt like a place to rest;
the trail was sometimes
too faint to trust
and my legs were tired
and dusty and I was
sweaty and sticky,
while on my face,
I could feel it,
the truest smile
opened like sky
above the horizon
as I moved higher
through each switchback,
the town below
smaller and smaller,
then gone.
Posts Tagged ‘hiking’
For Four Hours
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, nature, smiling, trail on July 3, 2023| 2 Comments »
Untamed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, hiking, love, mother, raspberries on August 21, 2022| 4 Comments »
We measure the afternoon in wild raspberries,
pulling to our mouths the abundant ripe fruits
like the feral beings we are.
Fingers stained red and lips stained red
and the moments stained red as love.
If it is not smart to speak of love,
then let me not be smart.
Let me speak of love that flourishes
like wild raspberries in a rainy summer.
Let me live into love as undomesticated
as these brambles that line the creeks.
Let me remember today
by the sweet and tart taste of wild berries,
how softly they fell into our palms.
Let me be eager for love
as the look on my daughter’s face
when she dragged me by the hand
back to the raspberry patch saying more, more.
Burst
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fruit, hiking, plum, ripening on August 3, 2021| 6 Comments »
So full of sugar,
the ripe plums
on the counter
begin to split
their skin—a sign
they’re beginning
the journey
to wine.
Sometimes,
like today,
hiking through
spruce forests and
wildflower meadows,
past beaver ponds
and through
clearings of chanterelles,
I, too, feel as if
I could split—
so filled with
the sweetness
of life I almost
explode,
tipsier by the moment
broken open
by joy.
Somewhere You Feel Free
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aster, belonging, hiking, mountains, widlflowers on July 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »
You belong among the wildflowers.
—Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”
Standing alone
in a high and steep meadow
surrounded by a million million
pale purple asters,
a person might be,
at least for a moment,
a many petaled thing,
might know the blue sky
in a new blue way;
might want to visit the self
as curious as a bee
stepping into the golden center
of things. What luck
to climb into beauty,
to stumble into
the self greater than the self,
to forget for a moment that worry,
that burden, that loss,
and simply purple, to wildly
purple, to purple with abandon,
to purple without thought,
to humbly purple,
to purple.
Porphyry Basin
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, hiking, skinny dipping on June 27, 2021| 2 Comments »
so oh slippery flesh song
of skinny oh dipping
into oh icy clear
of blue oh in the high
alpine lake, oh and oh
how the shiver oh
breath oh is oh
such wild thrill in the oh
can you oh even dream
of how good it is oh
to be oh just a few
more oh seconds
held by oh liquid snow
so oh yes so only
right oh here
and so oh yes so very
oh nakedly
yes oh alive
Hiking with Joan Through the Aspen Glades
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged avalanche, clarity, friendship, hiking on July 6, 2020| 3 Comments »
We speak the way old friends speak—
knowing each other’s stories,
the nuances and undertones.
She always knows just what to ask,
just how to nudge me toward
quiet revelation. I don’t do my best
to hide. In fact, it is easy
to speak of my brokenness.
We pause in a field
where the forest has been felled
in an avalanche—
the slender white trunks are strewn
in a chaotic jumble—
but oh, how clear the view.
After Hiking an Hour up the Mountain
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, love, meadow, summer on May 17, 2020| 2 Comments »
A big green meadow
opened in my heart
filled with dark purple larkspur
and fragrant sage—
and I stepped into it,
wondering how I had ever
stepped out of it—
come, meet me here,
here in the temple
of pulse and blue sky,
where everything
seems possible,
even love forever,
even love right now.
Bushwhack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged falling, hiking, journey, lesson, poem, poetry, road, walking on February 2, 2019| 2 Comments »
I followed the road as if it were a teacher.
It went up, I went up. It turned, I turned.
It was a long time before I relearned
that the road is not the only way to go.
The first day I walked away from the gravel,
I fell. That was the day I learned
staying upright is not what’s most important.
One Afternoon Hike
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, hiking, poem, poetry, Rachel Kellum on February 24, 2018| 1 Comment »
—for Rachel
between the cactus,
we walk, our conversation
daring to step wherever it wants
One Hiking Above Treeline
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, poem, poetry, wind, wonder on June 29, 2017| 4 Comments »
Going Round Trip
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, hiking, mountain, poem, poetry, snow on March 29, 2017| Leave a Comment »
After the first half mile
my shoes are soaked through
from post holing through knee deep snow.
There’s still a long way to go,
and the hike is for pleasure, after all,
so I decide it’s not so bad,
the squish of my socks,
the chill seeping in.
It’s just another way to remember
I’m alive, and though it’s slippery
and slushy, the trail,
and though I’m less nimble
than I’d wish to be,
look at that blue, blue sky,
and oh, my long shadow,
see how eagerly it leans to the east.
One Stumble
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, love, poem, poetry, trail on October 15, 2016| 1 Comment »
Two Hiking Above Treeline
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, mountain, poem, poetry on June 28, 2016| 2 Comments »
with every step
losing the need to struggle to say
what can’t be said
*
carving away
the women I’ve been until the only one left
is the one walking
Beneath the Dillon Pinnacles
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, loss of the separate self, poem, poetry, sage on September 18, 2015| 1 Comment »
Why I Love Long, Long Hikes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communication, hiking, poem, poetry on July 3, 2014| 3 Comments »
Today you told me
about how if you watch
an evening primrose
for twenty minutes in the evening,
you can watch it go
from closed to open.
Too slow to notice
if you don’t take your eyes
off the flower, you said, but
fast enough to be remarkable.
We were walking up, up
above tree line, moving
our bodies through the stiffness
of morning into the day’s
warmth, and I noticed how
as the miles went on
the chattier you got,
too slow to notice from moment
to moment, but by the end
of the day, there was nothing
we couldn’t say.