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?
