Friday Poem: "At The Snow Line, Turning Thirty"

This poem goes back many years to a time when I was still figuring out who I am and what to do with my life. I was on a class excursion with my students from George Mason University's New Century College (now the Sch0ol of Integrative Studies) for a course on ecology and writing. We were seeking a black bear den high in the Shenandoahs, where the park rangers were weighing and tagging that year's cubs who were about to emerge into the world.

I was notoriously unprepared for camping in the mountains – I had only a pair of Chuck Taylors to hike in, and my sleeping bag was so thin that I sat up all night by the dying campfire. I still marvel that I survived the weekend, given that I spent much of it shivering, slipping and falling. What got me through was holding a wild black bear cub as the rangers gave him the once-over.

The Scottish word "birl" in the last stanza is commonly used in logrolling competitions. I have no idea how I learned that.

At the Snow Line, Turning Thirty

You’ve climbed nearly to the top,
and we know what it all is from here,
so turn, pause.  The self-repeating patterns

of life this high: underfoot, crumbling pages
of slate, earth-time’s register, opened
at last.  Slide a sheaf under your heel

and kick yourself up on a boulder.
The lichen: mint green, in flecks
like duckweed on dark water;

rust – flaked, warty, peeling;
bubbled gray, clinging in patches;
olive cracked like knuckle-skin.

Look closer, you’ll see mud-splat,
green stick, cocoa knobs,
bright red cups like holly berries.

Below, the tannin of leaves,
packed, unblown, leather and tobacco
bunching against the hemlock’s

bristles, the bulges of mountain
laurel, with leaves like dead tongues
that lick you shivery when you pass.

Across the valley, plain now
in these un-summer woods,
rocks on the opposite slopes

blur the green and bark-brown,
graying into the distant ridges
that ripple out like wake

from the surfacing spine 
of the Shenandoahs.
You’ll need sea legs to keep up

this walk.  Don’t slip, don’t get birled
by these stony waves.  Remember 
them as they are, before they break, before you do.

This poem originally appeared in the chapbook Techniques of Avalanche Survival: Poems.