Blackmare Lake

August 6, 2023

Mariposa lillies, Payette NF

This summer rolled into August and we found ourselves near Cascade, Idaho preparing for our last hitch together. At the behest of Idaho Fish & Wildlife the five of us would head into the Payette National Forest for 9 days. Thankfully they outfitted us with pack mules. Had we carried 8 nights worth of food and tools out upon our backs they’d have found my body among the tobacco brush and huckleberry bushes.

My 22nd birthday came the Sunday right before we were slated to hike out. Three of us woke early at Warm Lake and went over to Trail Creek Hot Springs for a morning soak. There was a big rectangle pool with incredibly hot water, and a fancy little spigot you could turn to regulate the flow of cool creek water coming into the pool. But even with the creek water flowing in at full throttle the heat was something to get used to, and I’d periodically have to hop out of the hot pool to dredge myself in frigid creek flow. I wondered who it was that dragged all the pipes and cement and mortar down this steep hill to spruce up the hot spring. 

The rest of the day was spent gathering supplies for the hitch, prowling Cascade’s grocery store for bear creek soup packets and laying out our gear for Monday. The crew pulled out some cannolis for me—one of my favorite little treats. I’m sure they bought them in Boise and where they hid them in the truck for a day I’ll never know. But they were delicious, and I settled into my tent late once I was sure we were prepared for the extended workweek, reading the little birthday card they gave me.

Goose creek falls, Payette NF

Aug 7

The next day dawned. The mule packers got to work weighing and balancing and loading our gear onto the animals. Our project partner, Michael, gave us some apple slices to ply the mules and horses with. I hiked slow, trailing behind the rest of the crew as usual. A cool morning gave way to a hot midday upland hike, and when we got to our overgrown camp, six miles in from the trailhead, we spent hours hacking away and clearing out spaces to lay our tents and tarps out. Pushing back the overgrowth along the trail leading up to camp and the trail from camp to Blackmare Lake would be our mission for the duration of the hitch. 

Then the storm came, all six of us huddled beneath the kitchen tarp to escape the deluge. With luck on our side and Lily's tenacity we got a fire going after dinner when the rain died down, which helped dry and warm us. Looking back on my journal I seemed to be in a pretty low mood by the end of the night, being cold and wet from walking through waist-high brush to get a bucketful of water to put out the fire.

Aug 8

In my hammock around 10 at night I remembered two currant fruits hanging from a bush, dark and shiny like a cow's eyes. Which brought me back to our previous project overlooking Hell's Canyon in the Payette NF, where I saw elk along the trail. That was the week before, and today we scratched out a different trail. I was on my knees, smelling the sweet scent of earthchunk i'd pried up with my hoe. Beautiful soil layers, laced with some sort of yellow fungal life.

I saw some beautiful mushrooms, one with a little green round leaf embedded in its smooth cap, and the veinskeleton of a decaying lead stuck to its neck. I swear I saw beneath the cap little moss fingers growing out of the flesh. I peeled up patches of moss from boulders along the trail--beneath the electric soft-green carpet is attached a thin layer of new dirt--made of fir needles, and a spruce cone stitched up in this bryophyte blanket. The complete confusion of a forest barely disturbed.

Painted lady landed in an alpine meadow.

Aug 9

Elijah is at the beach at Bald Head, North Carolina, where the sea turtles have left their eggs upon the sand. Today I am lopping swampy trail, a delight of life. Pull back & look close, kneel upon the squishy earth--see stalks of moss, little translucent electric petals shining with moisture. I ran a saw for the first time in over a month. Downed wood abounds, along with patches of huckleberries for us to pick through.

pink clouds beyond the campfire, dead mouse upon a big ole rotting tree. That chunk I cut out took four to push aside--the heart was still solid, throwing sweet smelling ribbons 

rings within, reality that gives you pause. Ate lunch by mycelium, strong web upon deadwood. Peek a distant peak

Aug 10, Thursday

I realized that pissing outside is a strong motif in my writing. Today I sawed like 14 fallen trees. Some were damn near soil already. Tapped and pried at the sloughing bark with the pulaski to find a grub curled up asleep in a rotting cubbyhole, and frantic hordes of ants and spiders crawling from the wounds I’ve made. Though pulpy, the faces where the saw chewed through still smelled sweetly of conifer.

Aug 11

The crew is gathering around the smoldering fire watching uncut gems which will downloaded onto his phone. I am listening to the lovely rush of south fork Blackmare, which i bathed (half-assedly sat down and splashed myself) myself in after dishes. 

Today I sawed more. Methodically cut out big chunks, wider than I am tall sometimes, pushed ‘em out and watched them roll down and away, landing with a thunk or a splash in a creek. Before lunch, and older solo hiker came through, headed for a bushwhack to the lake. Oh, to have a lake all to yourself. I hope my sawing didn’t break his peace. The peace of lying on your back right on the dirt after lunch, stopping wherever shade is to be found. Of saw maintenance with a mountain view at the close of a day.

My summertime out west is dwindling, but for now life is simple. We gather sticks to stay warm, sweat as we swing tools in the sun, sit upon the rocky shallow bottom of a creek to get clean. The wet start to the hitch was a blessing as now these dry sunny days feel wonderful. I am growing to enjoy ripping the chainsaw which I couldn’t say for myself when I first learned how to use it this past winter. And I am stocking up on my serenity before going home to face the city and school. 

Cockroaches flee from the wood I pry apart. Paintbrushes stand guard along the trail corridor. Patches of moss upon boulders, the way great trees fall then crumble into soil which begets more trees, more life.

Aug 12

Huge dragonfly hanging out over camp, checkin’ out the fire. It’s come around for a couple nights now. Today I sawed some more big logs. One particularly difficult one was rotted bleach-white and suspended across the trail under a lot of downward pressure. Wedges didn’t work, and I was having a hard time just lining up the undercut and holding up the saw to cut from beneath. But eventually it came down.

After lunch in a shady little grove I was trying to head back to this big ole boy I was cutting up, and I got turned around in a meadow, the one choked with paintbrush near the larkspur-full drainage beneath the high rocky peak. I retraced my steps over and over again and finally found the entrance to the woods that I’d come out of.

Now in my hammock listening to Blackmare again. Recent nights it’s been hard to sleep, my mind races, thoughts fluttering towards the future. But today in the meadow: yarrow, paintbrush, aster. Dark beetle upon deadwood. Saw a scrub jay on the way up the mountain in the morning, and at the end of the day going back to camp I saw two in the same spat of trees. What’ve yall been up to all day?

summer’s end comes in the crisp coldnuss of these woods whenever the light leaves.

Tufts of moss which sink in like a cushion where I place my boot. Amber liquid froze up on the bark of trees—I collected pieces to throw in the fire, just to see what they’d do in the flames. The sweet smell of cut timber, and horsemint crushed underfoot. & the satisfaction of forcing movement from a big ole stubborn log—rock n’ roll baby!

I find little tufts of moss everywhere—stuck to my braid, snuck into my underwear, and the inside of my nasty work hoodie. 

Sunday, August 13

Almost done with reading EO Wilson’s Diversity of Life, which I have been working on since March. 

The dusk call of a scrub jay. Or some other screechy bird. And again, Blackmare.

I feel like such a damn far cry from the little lady I was 3 summers ago.

A playlist for backcountry yearning

Lover’s Rock - Sade

Swimming - Maple Glider

Shake This Frost - Tyler Childers

blue valentine - nina

Wildflowers - soccer mommy

Gentle on My Mind - Glen Campbell

I’ll be There in the Morning - Townes Van Zandt

Promises - Cleo Sol

Somehow I haven’t pulled a single tick off of myself out here. Just chipmunks scurrying across the backs of fallen logs and little ants in a frenzy.

I had set out to cut out every log on the path to the lake, but as the day wore on it became clear that there was a lot left to do and I would have to content myself with having done the best I could. Around 4 I decided to just hike on up and check out the lake like our project partner suggested we do. I stashed the saw and chaps and pulaski and headed up the steep trail. Passed some big ole blowdowns, oof—good luck to the next trail crew. Shallow streams with sandy bottoms crossed the trail, which came out of the woods onto ground that was exposed rock. Breathless, I knew I’d made it when I gazed up the hill and saw blue sky flat above the trees. Henry and Lily had passed me on their way back down, and I found Madison and Will up by the blue water.

Up on the flat of the lakeshore there was a bleached ole animal skull and rusted coffee cans with labels from decades past. The ground was worn flat from campers through the years—though the overgrowth we’d been battling for the past week suggested for some reason the visitors waned as years rolled on. 

The water was clear, and I dipped my hand in to feel its coolness. Rocky peaks rimmed it and great white boulders which fell from the peaks stood along the bank. So many noteworthy boulders along the trail—a spat of quartz embedded in one tugged at my gaze.

The trek back to camp was a different story. I didn’t get back til 6:30, saw upon my shoulder, all tuckered out. But filled with a sense of accomplishment for our crew’s work. As I sawed my diddly darnedest with the MS261 the rest of the crew lopped and handsawed and chopped the trail out to daylight it all the way up to the lake.

Yee

Aug 14

Hot day. Heat that smooths out the brain; my mind completely unwrinkled by the time i finished saw maintenance. All we had to do today was carve out 1/4 of a mile of tread leading up to camp. Tough going, as the hardy grass clumps’ stubborn roots resisted the whacks of our toolheads. But we accomplished what Michael would’ve wanted for the steep slope. The sun was blazing by noon, and we headed back to camp before 2. 

Then I gave the chainsaw one last wipe down and some final licks. And then I headed to the southern creek crossing to wash off. 

I was so groggy and drowsy by then. Made dinner with Henry, finished Diversity of Life and read some of his copy of The Sun Also Rises. After dinner I laid on the trampled ground by the fire and Lily and I droned on about the future, school and such—while I watched the swaying trees surrounding camp, whose crowns were touched by evening sun. Now the sun is gone and it is chilly, but it is not entirely dark. 

I am uncertain about some things. And concerned that once home I’ll be again consumed by that weariness and wariness, and that yearning to be elsewhere. 

But most I can do is intend to savor the present once I’m back in Kentucky.

Idaho Conservation Corps, Orange Crew, Summer ‘23 <3

:P

Last summer, near Walker, CA

Two entries from late June, starting out on the PCT backcountry crew. This was back when we were training somewhere off highway 395, and my writing had space to breathe in the boredom of time passing in camp as we went through wilderness first aid and crew member training before the season really picked up.

6/27/2022

The way a piney floor warms, cut sparsely by a gentle breeze. Time to time, the wind picks up, a sheet of sound moves through these mountains. Fallen pine cones scatter amongst the needles. We pry off a scale, snap each in half to reveal the ribs beneath the woody surface. 

Just past 6 I headed up the ridge and bore right for a view of the valley going wide, out to the town in the flat. Trying to understand my position between these slopes. These ravaged slopes–a sliding mess of ash, of downed pines, and the greenery fighting to stake a claim on this severe slope. 

Twin babbling creeks, a spindly lupine taken root. The placement of boulders. The ones I sat amongst to shelter feebly from the wind. And the puzzling, rounded ones I saw high upon a steeper slope, left of where I chose to go. 

6/28/22

My sleep broke up into little anxious shards. This morning I got up at 5:20 to mount the ridge again. Walking up along the scree I was morning light thrown upon the far slopes. The sun was somewhere, hidden. 

Now it’s just before 10 and I’m in bed, fly open, spread wide to see the luscious array of stars upon the dark. I am tired.

Tired day. I took a wretched nap after lunch laying in the bed of needles by the babbling creek. Warm sun and flies danced upon my face. There and now a delicious rousing breeze would push through the valley. 

Stevie, fielding, jake and I went up that scree-covered slope to see what there was. We went up and up to the left, where I’d never been, us in a rocky intermediate hilltop all surrounded by majestic slope. Jake reads my tarot. We sit upon the earth, I dip my hands into earth and ash melded together and the dust glitters upon my sooted skin. 

I am going down alone, watching my shadow cast down the hill, making big strides as the sweetest portion of day blooms into light. 

Today after class was over I set out on the trail leading out of our campsite. 

I watched the crown of light shrink upon the rocky ridges, and a haze of sweet evening light settled and morphed over Walker. Then back down. Bed down, bedtime.

Penstemon’s fiery plumage looking down the spine of a valley. Granite faces that beckon you to mount, to push further, that threaten to take your breath. The squirrel mewling in the newborn dawn. The fractallike patterns found in the arrangement of scales in the freefallen pinecones. Vibrant snowflower pulls life from a fungal system. A snakefly meanders through the deep furrows of spruce-bark. The land that still has so much to teach me. What will i learn this summer?

2 backcountry hitches along the elkhorn crest trail

North Fork John Day Wilderness

(hitch 1)

bounding up the elkhorn crest trail. I pulled a dead mosquito from the end of one of my braids. i know our paths will cross again. oh i've sang so many songs

to myself + the saxifrage, through some mountain pass

and the chipmunk at home in a field of granite

buttercup, marigold, and sandwort like lace over dirt. now the lake is dark and peepers cry to the wilderness

hailstorm in the wallowas

i saw it coming in the distance, rain coming down over the hills. the conceit in me thought the clouds wouldn't make it to the ridge. but the undeniable signs of a storm appeared as i bent over some tread--the eerie wind, the foreboding clouds. ethan and I crouched beneath some low-growing spruce as it came. it turned to hail, we waited among the trees, i hoped the crosscut saw would stay dry, then the precipitation dissipated.

everything dries eventually. i got up from my cowering stance, chilled to the bone, and my work pants and gloves were soaked. i threw my wet pack on, took up my tools with my rain-wrinkled fingers and went forth out onto the ridge, where sunlight shone once more promising an end to this discomfort. my calves pulse, i warm up. i stop to piss along the trail and find silky phacelia (uncommon!) growing among the rocks.

after a hailstorm

hellebore & heaven-sent, sun-slung n far-flung

(interlude) (lisa gave me a day off from the crew)

yeah. last night i was at morgan lake, i stayed up reading the book taylor sent me from colorado, which we found back in the pisgah and i'd forgotten she'd swore to mail it to me once she finished. and the sunset and serviceberry bush brought me back to the blackbirds.

the evening, this evening that was all mine, the loneliness I took for granted back in the south. just me and a super duty. 

i miss upstate sc

(hitch 2)

i pull a tick from the nape of my neck. i peer down into a scree-filled valley. my footsoles swell crack then peel along topographical looking lines. in my hammock i hear a baby goat cryin' up on a ledge. i saw one up there silhouetted against the colors of the sunset.

i got my crosscut B (bucking only) cert today. pulling teeth through a rotted belly--out crawled the ants from the punk.

the crumbling cliffside beneath a whitebark's shade is where I take my lunch break. our camp upon the lakeshore: sandwort amongst gravel amongst little boulders. a dark sheet of water pierced here and there by some ripling--the fish the osprey hunt for in their dramatic diving.

Sharing a home with an extended family of mountain goats.

and then the sky was more blue than pink, and night fell.

woman waiting

it was a strange feeling i had gazing out at those blue mountains, stacks of them piled up on the horizon, wondering when fielding would breeze by us on the trail. I'd known for a couple weeks that we would run into each other on the elkhorn crest. What a coincidence, that my crew would be assigned to a project along the trail he was thru-hiking. 

in the still moments i felt like a woman gazing out upon the plains during wartime not yet knowing she is a widow. I throw spadefuls of dirt down the cliffs, pause momentarily in the high-altitude heat, chewing on the sense of wild connectivity. Through this short span of just over a year that I’ve worked in conservation this nation has become a neighborhood. This trail is a hallway where i bump shoulders with those i shared a season of my life with. As I scrape slough the trail is a forum for my thoughts as they dig their heels into the past then flit to the possibilities of the future, bounding into the territory of daydreams. 

Lisa’s dog following Henry along the Elkhorn Crest Trail

Prairie smoke along rock creek trail, Wallowa-Whitman NF.

Alpine wildflowers abound. Silverleaf phacelia

Rhexia-leaf Indian paintbrush

Silky phacelia.

Redstem springbeauty

Alpine collomia sprouting out of talus below rock creek butte.

Near Salt Lick, KY

today we went up to tater knob fire tower to catch the sunset, after being dumb and smooth under the sun, stilled by the reflection of the rays of afternoon upon the surface of clear creek lake. i was coming down and crying and watching the red, the blazing final score of subnlight leaking out of the fabric of the sky. 

it's spring again. leaves are filling out, hills again claim their foliage. i saw a stand of irises among the dead leaves while i was looking for a tree to piss behind. coy cluster of curled purple-blue petals. we passed a group of amish boys with fishing rods and kayaks making their way down clear creek road. 

i feel like i have so much still to say. i fear if i dont get this out then my memories will fade with the relentless and corrosive passing of time. the force that weathers the faces of rock, that carves the licking river valley. the force that draws people to one another, then sours a bond.

i want to run away

i want to see a waterfall crash down upon broken boulders, slick & wet at the base. want to mount a boulder and dance wildly alone in the early morn light. i want to be made love to on the banks of the cumberland. i want to swell with the fruit of this earth. i want to weep because how will i ever get to know all my fellow forms of life, because the privilege of knowing about each being is so beyond me.

screaming and crying on a precipice before a gulch. looking to orions belt for guidance. finding nestled in that place where i think only static, interstate din, bird shit. 

the joy of finding a flower, a friend, by your foot in the woods, growing from a bed of detritus, shards of autumn-crisped leaves and cicada shells and copperhead skins and sloughed-off bark, life departed n decayed.  a friend, something familiar. The vast extended family of life upon this earth

life from trash, from the refuse of growth. refuse not wasted, but become a home. an incubator for new life. life in the underbelly. life where a snout prods, when the owner's attention is rapt at a dying sun. the way the final colors of a day stretch out over these hills.

they are thrumming with life, the frantic call of insects, with animals torn from their dens running to-and-fro, with swollen creeks rushing to collect in rivers, in ponds, and with the grace of time, the sea

a bluegill haunts my boyfriend. its scaled skin golden in the afternoon light. he fished and pebbles embedded in my skin as i stretched upon the rocky beach, occupying myself with an absence of thought.

- from sometime last april

tuesday, august 16th: PCT rock crew, final hitch, day 7

and there's waning days left. we shared reflections at dinner and i cried, for love, for the sadness of leaving

for the triumph of living

for a rat scurrying past nick's tent,

for a high scramble for a spot to pee, for a spat of shade in a low point for lunch.

for a final dip in Raymond lake,

for school starting in less than a week. For the others I will meet, so much I have to learn.

So long, these sweet breezes down to work, and brutal, hungry hikes back to camp, and the love of cool cool snowmelt from these peaks upon my skin.

To looking out at mountains when a cloud of shoveled dirt clears.

we gather, we part.

life is limitless. who does she hope to become? who will we find ourselves, in a year, five, a decade?

voices carry from the hill.

dusk passes. The birds are quiet and the lake is still.

a blessing of a year

This past year stretches out like a lake behind me. The lakes I’ve seen, drank from, slept by, walked along. Those I’ve befriended and will cherish. The flowers I’ve come to know, trees whose names this year i’ve learned–shaggy hickory, jagged sourwood, hardy laurel. 

Early january Elijah and I went and saw hansons point on a day hike, he wore his liberty overalls, i said goodbye to my beloved escarpment. I left for California mid-january. At the airport I got into a ford F250 with 4 strangers and we headed out to Red Mountain, a dormant volcano in the mojave desert. The first day of that journey I saw a rainbow over the sand as we rolled along CA-395.

Red Mountain, CA @ sunset

Some things just stick in your mind. Coffee in the percolator by Castaic lake to start our days, the wind whipping wildly as we drove up and down those dirt roads, pounding barriers  and fenceposts into the loose earth. 

I wondered if it always looked like this. This chaparral, hardy bushes, what few trees around burnt. No–I remember the blue elder on the curve. And driving in the morning through san francisquito canyon, where the early morning sunlight filtered onto the eroded slopes where century plants rose up to meet the sky. I remember cowboy camping for the first time in Death Valley. Laying rapt beneath a blanket of stars, the arcs they made across the stage before me. I’d never seen so many shooting stars in a night before.

I came back to Kentucky on the cusp of spring, I returned to the palisades to see these cliffs in a new light. Coming home, to the spring blue-eyed marys and the celandine poppies and the squirrel corn hanging delicately on a line. To light spelling out the evening in the valley of a creek that feeds into the Kentucky River. 

Shleby and I went to Robinson Forest. Those many holy mornings chasing the sunrise, the cold singing its hymns to me as I hiked by headlamplight past gleaming spiders’ eyes, past the sleeping copperheads, past the laurels adorning the trail. I raced to the fire tower to meet the suns eye just as it opened above the forest. Two weeks I wish I could live over again. Sitting amongst the ticks and tanagers and catchweed bedstraw, training my ears to discern the disparate songs of the birds of eastern kentucky–watching a spider leap across the broad leaf of a trillium. 

sunset from the fire tower, robinson forest

I went home to Lexington, then Elijah and I hiked a hundred miles of the Sheltowee from Morehead to Heidelberg. Our first day up that parched ridge we entered a world of sassafras, curlicues of wild yam, poplars, patches of mayapples and st. John’s wort. Bloodroot & hickories standing proud. Wound our way down to Cave Run Lake and ended a long hard day with a dip. The next day was a mucky and rainy hell along the lakeshore slogging through a trail destroyed by hoof pockets. Some sweet smell greeting you on a roadwalk, a shoulder choked by vetches and daisies. Pipsissewa by a white oak splotched with sunlight at our campsite after Natural Bridge. A little glade packed with ferns, light pouring through a window in the canopy. These hallowed things, over and over again, arranged in pattern. 

friend!

the rock-strewn hallway of little sinking creek, approx. mile 97 along the sheltowee, lee county, KY

We stopped at the blue bridge over the Kentucky River, the river that runs through my dreams. 

Spent the next week swimming beneath and seeking southern waterfalls: Eagle Falls, Ozone Falls, Ramsey Cascades. In the smokies we began the hike to the cascades in the rain, and the salamanders had come out into the open, to be scooped up and admired by us. Us foreign and nylon-clad, simply visitors in their homes. 

Ozone falls!! we swim <3

June came to a close, I spent the summer solstice packing and flew out to Reno to work on the Pacific Crest Trail. Each night after dinner many of us went up the scree-covered slope by camp to see what there was. Jake read my tarot. We sat upon the earth, I dipped my hands into dirt and ash melded together, the dust glittered upon my sooted skin. The boys left me alone to go start dinner. I sat for a bit then went down alone, watching my shadow cast down the hill, making big strides as the sweetest portion of day bloomed into light. I miss that midyear mountain. 

On fourth of july, at lake tahoe the sunlight collected in a warbling channel upon the water. Two days later i braided my hair in the dark of a tent somewhere in the sierras for our first crew backpacking trip, where my brand-new georgia boots split open the skin of my heel.

my shadow & stevie's cast upon eroding rocks on the pathway to the summit of sonora peak. after dinner during our first hitch we came up to see the colors of sunset bearing down upon the slopes surrounding the pacific crest trail. the highest peak i've ever summitted.

The night before our final hitch we found a campsite off Blue Lakes Rd. in Alpine County. I went on a walk and looked down to see a bald spate of rocks with a gully full of magenta flowers–it was the season of fireweed.

sunset view from near camp of our final PCT Rock Crew hitch--near Markleeville, CA

I came back home to kentucky’s sticky summer heat that made a dip in cold waters the most supreme mercy. One september day I sensed that the warm days must be numbered, and Ian and I puttered south for a final swim at Eagle Falls. The whole semester I struggled with feeling shut away from the world, caught between my deep-seated anxieties of doing poorly in school and my desire to run away, to find a trickling path of water or somewhere to gaze down on hills from in the woods. 

Winter solstice i returned to the same place I went to last. Pilot knob, me and Rae getting up to the overlook just in time to see the red eye of the sun go to hide behind the horizon. The first strong snow came down hard last week, and when it’d melted and the roads down to the edge of the county were not so treacherous I went down to raven run to see the falls i’d fallen in love with at 18 frozen over. Hushed hallways of snow. 

During finals I’d listen to door by Caroline Polanchek over and over again as the great halls of william t young grew wobbly with the burning of the 3 AM oil. Back in the city i'm just another girl with a sweater. I’ve opened up doors, and still i have hundreds more to choose from, open, close gently or slam shut, or lock entirely behind me. And now I’ve committed to leaving again, for most of this coming year. South Carolina for the spring and Idaho for the summer. I’m in a state of subdued panic at the uprootedness that will be mine. This is what I wanted–to run away–right?

My friend Erin, who I met this fall in dendrology, gave me a gorge pass that expired with the new year and I felt called to return for a sunset.. So a couple days ago I stood looking out from hansons point. Absentmindedly broke a section of twig off a spindly young tree. I turned to look at it, red thin branches growing tall among the little virginia pines and laurel bushes. I drew the twig to my nose and inhaled a sweet scent. The seed pods hung down like upturned ladies’ hands, like dried up clusters of many many faeries’ bells. 

I packed up, but dawdled by the overlook til the sky was all solid blue. Then I walked out, out the hallway of pines and young hemlocks that leads out the ridge to hansons point, down the rough trail into a valley through which a creek froze up at the nadir. But still the water traveled beneath the surface, appearing in dark blobs under the ice. I walked along the rough trail, by my boots i saw little haircaps mosses poking through the snow, and a tall frozen falls stole my heart when i slid down a snowy slope to take a better look. 

Frozen intermittent falls along the Rough Trail, Red River Gorge

New year’s eve Wyatt lured Elijah and I out to the gorge again–I’d thought my trip to hanson’s point was my last hurrah by the red river for a long while. I wanted to gaze up at the stars on this final night of the year, but the escarpment had other plans. All the way down mountain parkway fog flooded the roadway, and walking along KY 77 to the trailhead the corridor was ominous with mist, hushed and flanked by towering trunks and high cliff on one side. 

We scrambled up to cloudsplitter but there was no rope and I thought it would be a shame for the Wolfe County Search and Rescue squad to have to come out and pack my limpid body into a litter, so I stayed at the base while the boys gambled with their youth up on the precipice. We found a rockshelter looking down upon a valley and made ginger tea with my camp stove. 

Wyatt & Elijah, just below cloudsplitter

It was January 1st at this point. The mist gave way at times, the moon said hello. We made our way back down the trail and dawdled by Wyatt’s truck for hours. 

I love you like rhododendron loves a craggy valley, like a salamander loves a seep, like children love to play, the way spiders love to string their silk among the straps of my hammock. I will uproot again. I will learn–the names of the beings that call the forests home, how they interact, support and love each other, and how i can protect them. To the mountains i will gaze at, the creeks i will cross, the trees i will sit by and eat lunch beneath. Each year, each season–who does she hope to become?