Category Archives: Mountain Poetics

North Bali Sunset

Sunset with some cumulus on the western horizon, alto above. Red, orange, yellow above the horizon, with green and blue dipping down in between; magenta above (or is it more indigo and violet?). Venus is there, the Southern Cross, Scorpio; wind continues from the south east.

Other Side of the Ridge

Up beyond the lakes of Bali—especially Beratan—there is a ridge line where you can look back down upon the lakes, or keep going down from there on the other side to the ocean on the north side beyond. It’s like the lip at the top of a crater. And here, on the north side of the ridge, there is water that still flows; from where exactly, I don’t know—on first glance it seems higher than the lake below. But it flows down none the less, through the narrow valleys in little rivulets and waterfalls. People use it to irrigate hydrangeas—they’re also growing bananas, coffee, pineapples, bamboo. And further down—on the slightly wider, flatter lands—they’re growing rice: the Subak system here, or so I’m told, too. 

One island organism.

Three Mountains Clear

Most days in Bali it’s hard to see as far as the horizon—there is a softness to the light, a watering down. Most days the mountains are in cloud. But not today—today all three mountains are clearly seen from Sanur; always there, but this day seen…like Western Australia seen.

The Way Water Drains in Bali

Sanur and the water is draining slowly from the beach of small limestone coral pieces. It runs out on the outgoing tide in a kind of cross-ways patchwork almost parallell to the shoreline—and it gathers in the ridges left behind. Or almost—there is still a slight downward movement to the next intersecting line—to the next valley amongst the ridges, which takes the water gradually lower and further out to see, following the main line of the tide: criss-crossing, slowly moving, gathering, slipping, watering all. 

And I can’t help being reminded, now, of the way the water moves down the whole island of Bali from the lakes and mountains in the north, slowly across all the rice paddies, gradually flowing lower, all of it managed, as it makes its way, slowly, out to sea…before it rises again, and gathers into clouds, which form and sometimes fall as rain over the mountains again.

Elk

In a half-asleep, half-awake daze of driving away from the Salmon River, Idaho, after five days, we come up over a rise and see a whole country spread out before us, early evening. And then, off by the edge of the road on the other side, a mother elk and young, which is one thing, but how my cousin reacted was what I noticed most. He hunts them at another time of year, shoots them with bow and arrow. Something about the way he saw them that struck me. Some other kind of connection.

To Santa Fe

Drive Taos to Santa Fe New Mexico. After the sharp peaks of Colorado, and the tall sharp Ponderosa pines, here we find the slightly rounder peaks of high desert, and the more rounded Juniper pines; everything dryer, more worn down; softer rocks? We find a cold spring by the Rio Grande while looking for a hot one. And as usual the clouds build up more cumulus in the afternoon.