THINGS TO EAT IN BIG SUR

California quail, bay nuts, gray squirrels, ground squirrels, and raccoons. Acorns from black, tan and live oaks. Fiddleheads of ferns, stinging nettle, miner’s lettuce, coyote mint, yerba santa, and yerba buena. Rattlesnakes, and gopher snakes. Lizards: whip-tails, blue bellies and western fence. Yucca roots and yucca fruit. Blackberries, huckleberries, elderberries, and elderflowers. Abalone: red and black. Purple sea urchins, limpits, green-lipped muscles, turban snails, and gull eggs. Sea palm and chia seeds. Robins, great blue herons, egrets, fresh green pine-tips, and rattlesnake grass. Sea lions, harbor seals, eel, steelhead trout, crayfish, and purple crabs. Chantrelle and morel mushrooms. Termites, grasshoppers, crickets, and cicadas. Black-tailed deer and wild boar. Larval insects, bumble bee honey, and sea salt. Manzanita berries, pocket gophers, and redwood sorrel. 

PAPAYAS ARE WOMEN by KELSEY BARRETT

Papayas are women
Breasts and eggs on trees
Ripe when putrid yellow
We follow the Fijians
Hit them down in October with sticks
Upon Earth impact the innards reveal an ovarian sack of black
Papayas are women 

A Song for the High Sierras

My song will be lungs going empty & being filled

My boots slapping granite steps

Panting as we climb

I ask permission from the coniferous citizens to tread the trail – towering lodge-pole pine, stunted lupine & deadly Indian corn.

I seek a blessing from the sub-alpine congregation to ascend through rusty Sierra juniper, abundant heather & chubby white barked pine.

I am honored to sit with the guardians of the alpine – rugged arctic willow, innocuous lichens & mighty little grasses.

And I venerate the wild gods of this place – the coursing waters & roaring wind; the mycelium, the thunderstorm, the glacier.

I have come for a reunion with the black bear & pica, the osprey & the martin, the beaver & the dragonfly.

I have come to gather with the clouds & mountains, stands of trees & piles of stones.

And I have come to remember the wildness in my body & the glory of my home.

My song will be putting down my pack to swim

My calves pulled tight

And a sunburned smile on ancient peaks

photo by Hall Newbegin