The Cyclist

Just off the highway at the trailhead
parking lot where you exchange your
hiking boots for sneakers post-clamber
uphill on a mountain trail distinguished
by a deep tangle of tree roots and
tumbled rocks and where a roaring
mountain stream was host to the 
larvae of pestilential black flies and
giant Yellow Admirals descending
onto misty pools gathering on the
forest floor under a blue sky and sun
filtering through the forest canopy
where tree masts swayed and clacked
under the urgent influence of the wind
you suddenly notice the appearance
of a cyclist studying the posted trail
map and you ask whether he means
to cycle the circuit. It would be a
boastful feat even for a skilled cyclist
and the fellow beside the bicycle was
more grey and paunch than most of
his breed. Thus begins a conversation
so you swiftly learn where he is from
his pledged yearly pilgrimage on two
wheels and his face-beaming pride of
having reached the venerable age of 77.

The Sodden Forest

The great cleavage in the granite
base speaks of the antiquity of
nature's design in sloughing boulders
down mountainsides to rest evermore
in perpetuity where a raging mountain
stream forged the bedrock to a
passage tumbling over boulders
and through great crevices as the
mountain spews its snowmelt into
crystal-clear runs of sweet water
renewing the forest below spurring
vigorous new growth, the incessant
spray suffusing the atmosphere
inciting lichen to clasp tree trunks
and rich mosses to colonize the
boulders surrounding the sparkling
forest lake rimmed with ferns and
an understory of dogwood and
moose maple flourishing under a
canopy of pine and hemlock, oak
and venerable giant yellow birch.

Storyteller

At first glance, a heavyset amorphous
impression and you look away for
here there is nothing to see, could be
either gender, man or woman in a
service occupation there to tend to
your interest in an occupation that
extols the virtue of servitude in the
fawning expression that the client
is always right. Wrong. Yes, their job
is to please the customer's whims and
wants through gentle, some might say
obsequious guidance. But this woman
for such she was; homely, ungainly
possessed a voice of her very own
and nor did she hesitate to inform
of such, expounding, explaining
hazarding the fine balance of the
privileged client-server relationship.
Discreet counsel clearly not her
style as she confidently launched
her well-travelled persona while
expeditiously doing service to her
employment. And you found your
attention swerving from the product
of sale to the cadence of her voice and
the utterly unrelated topic of her choice
not yours, giving unstinting attention
to her casual but deep exposition of
an experienced mind in the body of
one who has met fortune head on in
a display of virtuosic storytelling.

Wildflowers

A high wind hustled scalloped
white clouds through a periwinkle
blue sky where the sun sat
roguishly on a throne little used
these past days when rain
thundered over the mountains
leaving the forest below sodden
its trees engulfed in green excess.
The forest trail is well steeped
in muck, runoff from the forest floor
saturated beyond capacity. Wild
rhododendron and azalea past
bloom give way to bright white
bunchberries, daisies and perky
partridgeberry creeping between
mountain sorrel. Buttercups
yellow and orange hawkweed
glow their invitation to Yellow
Admirals floating from one
bright flowerhead to the next.
Brittle old yellow birch have
fallen, their rotting trunks
caught in mid-air descent by
newer, hale trunks supporting
the ancients' fall, while others
lie prostrate across the trail;
duck, clamber or skirt.

Mountain Trail

The rain, steady and light falling from
the grey cloud cover stalled over the
mountain tops, has created a bright
vista of luminous green the darkness
of the forest interior fails to eclipse
and the forest glows. The time-worn
trails snaking up the sodden mountain
sides are slick with moss on boulders
and lichen stretched over tree trunks
hanging from branches of elderly
forest giants. Their roots interlace
among the terraced, rock-strewn
passage along the roaring, swollen
mountain stream rushing its frantic
passage to the river below. Birds flit
silently between branches, occasionally
halting to trill delight in the day's
unfolding drama. Two hikers carefully
descend as the trail winds away from
the stream, taking care on the boggy
forest floor with its deeply entrenched
network of roots and stones littering
the granite mantle of the mountain.

We Asked

It had been a long drive to one of the
more picturesque towns on our usual
bi-yearly circuit around the precincts 
of the vast and beautiful national forest
and we expected as we walked through
the entrance of the group shop to see
her smiling welcoming face as always
we have. But no, someone else eager
to be helpful was there. The woman
who over the years revealed her life 
and her thoughts to us over the years
is now a shadow of how she once
appeared, we are informed. Her body
has succumbed and is on the cusp of
vanishing but her spirit remains intact 
for the time she now has remaining.
She had known something was not
quite as it should be yet felt that
giving it no credence would deny its
maliciously destructive power. But
cancer refuses to be denied conquests.

 

Rampant Mountain Stream

The light rain that insistently pattered its
way over the landscape could not account 
for the ferocity of the mountain stream as it
streamed and coursed down the mountainside
vehemently boiling and roiling its unopposed 
passage along the funneled trench in the 
rough-hewn granite carved in a primeval age
spuming and leaping in its mad dash from the 
gathered summits pointed skyward to reach
the river below, snaking through the forest 
greening the mountain. A late snow pack melt
and an inordinately rain-drenched spring 
conspired to flood the forest floor at the 
mountain's foot, scraping along the detritus 
of a climax forest, mist rising in the rain-
saturated atmosphere, thick plush green
moss upholstering the rockface as astride the 
the rapturous stream with its buoyantly
thunderous chorus, beech, hemlock, pines
and yellow birch rise, their leaf-and-needle 
mass a symphony of radiant green shades 
in a seasonal renewal, drenched with the
spray of the stream's boisterous passage.