Category Archives: Mountain Poetics

St Louis Valley

Driving down through Gunnison, Colorado, then through a small valley with creek and red rock walls, over Buffalo Pass and eventually into the wide St Louis Valley—a rift valley, like the ones we have flown over recently in Africa. We stop at a roadside hot springs and sit in the almost boiling water, and look out at the desert with mountains behind. We pass through towns like Moffat and Crestone; drive by some piles of clear white sand at the foothills to the mountains. And all the while I can feel the opening-up-ness of the valley, the water, its springs. Amidst the industrial junk and flatness, there is a life—a watery life—ripped open and springing up still. We pass on to the Rio Grade Gorge, with its bridge, beyond the Taos Earthships. Down down into the valley we look, and see that water—more water—flowing out, and down, and on. Mexico on.

Crested Butte Circlings

Summertime Crested Butte, Colorado, some 22 years since I was last here working on a winter ski lift. And I have never seen it like this: snow only on the upper peaks, while down here near the base, and on the way to the old T-bar lift, all that lay beneath wintertime snow (and even springmelt) is now revealed, bright and shining green: long, tall grasses; aspens white truncked with round flickering and flitting green-to-gray leaves; dandelions large stemmed and leaved, rising to a big yellow flower or cosmic cluster of seed; yarrow stretching off along the ground in an infinite number of indentations like a rivery floodplain or liver system; small blue birds sitting on ropes courses; new trenches where they’re improving things along the line of lift. And then from slightly down the mountain I spy somethign dark against the pale blue of Sunday morning sky, gliding, rising, slowly circling, wider and wider, higher and higher—some kind of raptor—hawk maybe, brown mostly, circling up from out of the aspens, until here’s directly overhead, and the red of his tail is obvious. He circles around us standing on this one piece of open ground above the old T-bar and the nearby lift; round and round above us he circles, not flapping, merely gliding, not rising, just circling in the morning light; sun above, slightly to the north and east, rising ever higher over us, over the circling red tail, over that butted peak of the rocky mountain looking down. And we stand there in that circling moment, together, until we begin to move, or he does—circling off towards the west, and is gone.

Solstice Halos

Lyons, Colorado. Season of my cousin’s birthday; of northern summer solstice; of full moon approaching. We wake in the morning to a couple of cumulus and cirrus; about 30 degrees C; dry air; 5-6,000 feet; front range Rocky Mountains, with the flatlands of the prairies to the east. And up above, where the sun has risen over the ridge that reminds us of red dirt and green grass of post-rain Pilbara, the sun has slipped behind the clouds—and on their feathered edges they glow a halo of full-rainbow colours, all shimmering and pearly colour-spectrum light.

Beebidup Puddles

Somewhere near where the granite rocks replace some of the trees, just after rain, you’ll tend to see some puddles forming. We walk the lower trail and drink from the flowers of dripping bottlebrushes. And when I wonder if we’ve brought enough water, that’s when we see the puddles in front of us. The water has been caught by depressions in the rock—flowing down, if puddle is full, to lower ones—whole chains of puddles in some spots. I look for the highest ones in any area, take off my cap, bend down and kiss its surface, sucking through lips as I kiss it. It is clean and clear and fresh, maybe a few quartz pebbles on the bottom, reflecting nothing but clouds and sky and my own bending down to meet it.

Beebidup / Mt Lindsay Views to the West

We go on our wedding anniversary. Eleven years. Never been to Mt Lindsay and just went to check it out. Ended up hiking the whole thing. And from all the views on the way up, the way down, and at the peak, the thing that stays with me is the view to the west. So much forrest. Taking a selection, you could say no land has been cleared—all the way to where the sun will set—just the rising up-down of hills and lower areas, Mt Franklin somewhere near the furthest edge. When the sun comes out it casts shadows under the clouds, which blend with the dark green of trees, and sends them moving along the forrest bed. The whole thing is quiet, calm, though still with some wind, and alive. I wonder how many people might currently be in this whole spread of land, and reckon we could probably count them on not too many hands.

It’s a scene I’ll take with me into whatever city is next.

Antless Kathmandu

One thing I’ve reflected on from hiking the forested foothills of Kathmandu, is the obvious absence of ants. I don’t think I saw one. In the dried mud and high ridges, on the dusty roads, on the side of the ridges leaning down, not one. Here, in Australia, amid the sand of silica or limestone, they are almost always to be expected, cultivating the old land. In the upspringing claymud of the Himalayan foothills, nothing.

Landscapes

Earth and Air
In Perth basin a flat landscape of sand and limestone; a place of earth and air; birds, butterflies, insects and wildflowers of all colours; a place where light and earth breaks down, catabolic.

In Kathmandu valley foothills of clay; also earth and air; birds, butterflies, insects but colour less than Perth; light and earth is more upbuilding, anabolic.

In Himalayas mountains of granite; also earth and air; limited life; light catabolic, earth anabolic.

Water to Fire
In Bali an island from coast to mountains; water to fire; birds and insects almost muted; more life-filled.

Fire
The Phillipines from coast to mountains; country of fire and I.

Upbuilding Mountains

Arriving in another place—like this place, Kathmandu, with Himalayas visible beyond these forested foothills, their snow-capped peaks and grey rocks all hard and granite-like, while here, in the hills, the roads and cutaways are all dried clay—here it’s easy to contrast the difference to the flat sandy limestone of the Perth basin with everything, like rain, pulling down and away. Here, however, rising from the Kathmandu valley, up the first foothills, and up again all the way to the massive top-of-the-world peaks of the Himalayas it’s possible to be carried that way also inwardly. Up and up, rising from beneath your feet. One polarity, one extreme helps the other end of the spectrum be seen. One draws down, almost as if pulling the sun down into the earth, from the head, into the feet. While here, something rises up, not the earth exactly, but like some other kind of sun, from the earth, from the feet to the head above.

Kathmandu Sun

Climbing the forested foothills above Kathmandu amongst the different varieties of pines, some rhododendrons, planted raspberries and even kiwi fruit, walking a ridgeline, it’s easy to hear and sometimes find with the eyes a whole range of different birds—from black kites circling high above, eight together some days, swallows darting through the canopy, small birds with white eyes, tiny birds they call tits, grey-headed warblers, long-tailed minivets bright as glowing coals in the nighttime fires, small birds with yellow breasts, blackbirds, crows, other long-tailed friends—all out with the morning sun, singing, darting, sitting on branches above the ridge, diving down the other side, belonging, it seems, to the outing of the sun. And then maybe you’ll see bees smaller and larger, black and yellow on raspberry and other flowers. And maybe on the ground, on tiny white flowers there’ll be a butterfly orange or white, or even one I saw a bluey grey, fluttering quickly to finally slowly alight on flower, folding up the outerside of its now brown wings, disappearing almost, leaflike, only to fly on in a small blue cloud again. Or maybe there’ll be a tiny ladybug red and black on large green leaf, or even folding up its wings after landing on the dusty clay soil. All of them much harder to find on cloudy, colder days. But on this, sunny warm day of early spring, they seem to have been called up and out—seem to have risen from the dark and the cold and the shadows…with the morning sun. 

Beings of higher places, it seems, alighting on all the trees and plants which wait for their arrival, tethered as they are to Earth.