Ranch Life

We keep a loaded rifle at all times. Always know where the animals are. Always know where the nearest exit gate is. Bison are a herd animal, and when they stampede, as is their wont, they are almost impossible to stop; it is a classic example of a self-perpetuating system. The ones in the middle have to keep running to keep ahead of the ones behind, so even though they can't see what's in front of them they'll keep pushing the ones in front, through anything: fences, streams, people. They'll trample the individual who stops to smell the flowers.

The tractor blows smokes rings into the whimsically blue sky, while 50 miles away, across the valley, thunderstorms perch like gargoyles on the mountains. But the only thunder comes from the lumbering bison as they re-enact the stampedes of their racial memory. When the daughter of the rancher talks about how "they mainly wander around in the north slope, but once one starts heading down this way they'll all follow..." I think she is talking about clouds before I realize she is talking about buffalo.

--

Crouched in the tall grass, sweating, I remember where I came from. The cavernous darkness of the barn, a shaft of sunlight from the open door, sparks flying from my slowly sharpened weapon. The sweat takes me back to Tucson, a place far away but with similar summer weather (monsoonal) and similar annual rainfall (about 10 inches). But here, on the West Slope of the Colorado Rockies, the streams gorged with snowmelt and mountain rain are only 13 miles away, not 1300, and their misty breath, siphoned through itenerant sprinklers, grows grass up to my chest. There are a hundred species in this artifical meadow (many grasses and forbs:great burdock, knapweed, red and white clover, alfalfa (purple, blue, and light blue), mullein, morning glory, milkweed, gumweed, western dock, chicory...) but one does not belong. Suddenly I lunge and my shovel strikes the root of the musk thistle. I move on while it lies there dying. I wander long and aimless...

I live for the woods

Bush alder and pentaphylooides floribunda graced the south bank, while grasses and sedges and --what's that? a decaying old mushroom --with a fringed ring -- psychedellic! Definately a Psilocybe. I took a deep whiff and the on-beyond-earthy smell, as usual, constricted my bowels and while my heart raced to keep up. I gasped and staggered back, but soon I overcame these time-tested instincts and so, with a cry of "no time, no time!" plunge-stepped off into the wilderness.

My explorations take me gradually upstream. It seemed as if the days were flowing by, and I spent whole lifetimes at each bend in the babbling brook. Do not the fish also cause erosion? The elk with their thrashing?

In a clearing where the buck elk stood
squared their hips and bellowed their mating cry
thrashed their still-tender antlers against the sticky-hard
and brittle-soft
bark and branches of the aspen,
Quaking.


On this mountain I am climbing to meet you. I stop under a Ponderosa while the rain passes, and eat of the clear pine sap, and browse oregon grapes packed thick about, gently brushing my ankles, and dream:

It is not possible to tread on the Magic Island, the plants grow so thick. Instead one must swing from limb to limb! Or from stalk to stalk. Let nature show herself as she will. Often a juicy stalk of food will appear in the morning. Trash is simply dropped, whereupon is promptly vanishes into the udnergrowth (Sometimes you can smell where a lot of people or animals have recently been). But to what purpose the song of the birds? The angry chatter of a chipmunk? The ecology of sound? A mossy world where nothing has any weight. The long rise and slow intermittant relapse. The sound of bubbles popping underwater. Quicksand in the river deltas; even the larger boulders rock gently as if they were floating. A caterpillar living on a bed of moss.

I speak for the woods
I live in the woods
I speak in the woods
I live for the woods

Lime Night Life Light

Ah, back to the hammock

cold paws, correct breathing

shoulders relaxed
writing in bed, flowers
scattered around
my dark shape
amid
innumerable dark shapes
under an empty sky
full of fluttering
moths
whose white noise fills up the valley
called to my reading
my lime night life light
a babbling brook of half-heard ideas
while
I roam, hourless,
over the mornings and afternoons
of possible lives not lived
and possible patterns
of impossible sciences

South Park, Colorado

Its best to be protected the first day out in the wilderness. Racing clouds and sun meant sunglasses useless. Plunging through underbrush - stop at the edge of a copse of woods. So unfortunately that meant boots. There was evidence of Plenty - the squirrels had more pine cones than they knew what to do with; many lay unchewed in the relative clearing under the canopy of Engelmann spruce boughs.
The edge of the woods, where the aspen grow shorter, scarred by the testosterone-fuled frenzy of male Elk. There were battles here, symbolic and real; the snorting cry of chivalry and desire. Scattered bones stand silent testament to those too old to be fleet of foot.