Franconia Basin

Scoured aeons ago by a retreating ice age,
those grey, granite shelves stretching
across a mountain slope catch the eye as
an invitation to linger. The endless source
of streams and rivers below, a raging
torrent races with bellicose sound over
mountain-tossed boulders and granite
shelves alike, bursting with furious energy
dominating all other of nature's boundless
and wild elements here in this Notch.

Generations upon generations of people,
from the indigenous to the pioneering
stock who elbowed them aside, to the present
who come to gawk and gape at the spectacle
of raw natural resources, portion of a nation's
pride in such geological endowments, have
worn thin the soil through countless booted
treads, revealing a contorted network of
tree roots, clinging to sparse forest compost.

Ancient trees, towering and thickly-girded
pines, hemlock and yellow birch, proclaim
their regal presence by the very essence of
their scale. Lichens and mosses encasing
the original aged integuments in grey and
green armour, their high canopy sheltering
beneath their still-tender successors. And a
smattering of bracken, along with coltsfoot,
hawkweed and lilies. Here and there, felled trees,
their corpses and raw wounds testament to
ferocious weather events, passing through.

Those spectacularly breathtaking vistas of
rock ledges marching the slopes, mountain
streams tumbling fiercely over those ledges,
giants of the forest stretching into the distance,
the endless vista of ongoing neighbourly summits,
with the vast sky above, its hanging, lingering
white, grey and black clouds dominating
all they survey and beyond, into forests below.

Nature awes, inspires, entertains and informs us.
Offering haven to migrating birds and choice
homes to the creatures, large and small that
make their journeys from life to death within
its generous confines. For we whose brief
adventures of re-acquaintance with the splendid
nature of Nature, the touchstone of return at a
huge remove, from our immediate existential
reliance, becomes its own ineffable reward.