Sugar cones & ponderosa pines stand here. They run down the hill to the river, up another hill and along the ridge forever. More ridges with more conifers rise and fall, distant, purple, hazy.
Ravens tumble through the air in quiet play. When they quork from tree tops it echoes out until another raven in the distance takes up the call.
The trees grow straight and tall, with eccentric branches thrust out pell-mell. Many wear staghorn lichen – florescent green.
When the river swells small stones spin in place, wearing holes in the granite embankments. In summer they fill with warm, dirty water away from the flow. Eventually they dry out leaving yellow pollen rings around the smooth sloping edges.
The night is thick with chirruping bats and silent stars. A few meteors seem to fall each hour of darkness.
A fine congregation of beings gather here. Life manifests as pine martin, rainbow trout, and spotted owl: prowling endlessly on down muffled wings – as cicada, yellow jacket, and wolf spider who spins a three-dimensional dome web between low branches – as incense cedar, thimble berry, and manzanita whose seeds only germinate when touched by fire, or when cooked by the inner heat of bear’s belly.
Beings rise in a 100,000 more combinations of sunlight, soil, water, and consciousness, whose names and habits are yet unknown to me – in these mountains and foothills they do dwell. Truly, The Song of the Sierras is sung by a beautiful choir of citizens.
Last week a colony of sea lions moved in next door. A bull and his harem of five females reside on the small rock island off shore of our cliffside home. They fish all day and fuck all night. The females bark and bark, and the male grunts, snorts, and chuckles like a self satisfied halfwit. They keep me up much of the night, since the tent walls of our yurt admit sounds in and out freely. At times it even seems quieter outside.
This is the first time in my life that I find myself so close to wilderness that I am actually annoyed by it. It is curiously comforting because the annoyance seems to me a mile-stone in a relationship with the wild growing fuller. The mists of romance have cleared, or are clearing, and though my love of sea lion, stellar jay, and adolescent crow remain unconditional, I am not so smitten as to ignore their faults, follies, and intrusive calls.
We are a family after all, a family of animals, a family of living beings, and family members often wear upon each other’s last nerve. I pray nightly for a high tide to come and put the pinnipeds off their love-play, and sometimes other members of our family join in the exhausted campaign for peace and quiet. I’ve heard an otter mewing from the kelp bed over and over, perhaps saying: “I’m trying to sleep, I’m trying to sleep!” And even a bobcat shrieking from the cliffs: “I hunt with my ears, shut up, shut up!” It seems I am not the only fussy little brother in the clan.
First we have to climb a chain-link fence, then creep under the structure of a bath-house, tie a long rope to its foundation and repel 100 feet down a steep cliff face to the rock beach. It feels like a prison break, or a James Bond movie… if James Bond was ever racing communists to reach the rotting carcass of a grey whale.
This cinematic opening marks my 3rd attempt to see the whale body up-close, it is Noël and Kelsey’s 2nd try. We strategically plan our assault for low tide, and unstrategically set out during the new moon, so there is actually very little difference between high and low tides. Halfway there the ocean stops us. Kelsey and I decide to swim past a barrier of rock and wave. Noël elects to stay behind so she can go for help if we become marooned or injured. She waits in a cove with bright green, mossy walls, thick like the pelt of a cold weather creature.
I’m so focused on the waves, and avoiding being battered by them, I actually don’t register the freezing temperature of the water until I am on the next stretch of shore. Now we start a steady trot over the rocks, with no time to waste. The human sense of smell is a running joke in the animal kingdom, but despite my handicap the odor of the dead whale comes into focus well before the image. We stripped down for the swim of course, but I kept my underwear on so they could be converted into a bandanna as we approached the putrescent threshold.
We chant in Sanskrit seed-syllables, and clap as we walk closer and closer. “Sa ta na ma, sa ta na ma:” birth, life, death, and rebirth.
Other than the smell, the first thing I notice are the birds, thirty or forty gulls rest on the whale, and a turkey vulture actually sits in its mouth, tearing strips from the tongue. Turkey vultures have the most powerful olfactory sense of any animal, ever; they can pinpoint small carrion from many miles away, and from high in the air. Comparatively I might as well not have nostrils, yet every cell in my body fights to keep its distance from the carcass, and the world’s greatest smeller is literally sitting inside the whale.
Of course the difference is: what smells disgusting and dangerous to me, smells delicious and vital to the vulture… a bakery is to me, as a dead whale is to it. Eventually our presence inspires flight, and I marvel at the inherent poetry of wild cycles: that whale spent its whole life (50 or 60 years) swimming in the ocean, and now it’s flying.
The whale’s penis is draped over several large rocks, it would normally be internal, like most mammals, but apparently the muscular release or tension that accompanied death forced it out into the open. It is about the same size as my entire body. Yes indeed, this was a male whale.
Huge vertebrae stick out of the rot-widened blowhole. The internal decay is creating a lot of heat, as microorganisms do their good work, and steam billows out of the blowhole continuously, giving the impression that the whale is perpetually exhaling. And in a sense, he is, as he releases all of the minerals, molecules, and atoms that he has been holding onto, back into the world. Complete decomposition is the final breath, and the moment of absolute rebirth… when every cell is free to roam in the belly of a vulture, the primitive body of a microbe, or in particles through the air and sea.
We start walking on a narrow trail full of coffee berry and poison oak, and we stop short only a few yards in. The swollen innards of some small mammal lies in the middle of the path, next to them a clean picked, blood tinged skull, and a very small distance away the lower jaw. Everything else is gone. No hair, no bones, no flesh, no blood; just the lonely intestine of a recently eviscerated rabbit, and its empty skull.
It smells quite pungent, and our thoughts turn immediately to the huge whale corpse we are on our way to see. If this handful of carrion can smell so badly, surely we are in danger of asphyxiation if we can actually reach the whale.
Roughly a month ago a dead grey whale washed up on the rocky, isolated beach, a few miles south of my home. Everyday it grows tanner and tanner sitting stone still next to an old shipwreck. White water breaks nearby but misses the carcass entirely, it was deposited high on the beach during strong winds and Tsunami reinforced waves, truly, the whale body appeared dramatically right after an earthquake in Japan.
It could be a good or bad omen, these rabbit guts, either way it is remarkable. Kelsey sprinkles tobacco: a small offering. Sticky monkey flower, tall grass, lupin, and giant horsetail join us on the trail. After the tall grass and horsetail our pant legs are populated with ticks, five or ten species, some enormous. What a strange life, living on the end of a grass blade, waiting and waiting for some hot-blooded somebody to walk by. Once their dream is fulfilled, and they hitch a ride on three soft skinned apes, we just flick them off our pants in disgust. It is hard not to hate them, creepy little sanguinavores.
The trail washed out and was never rebuilt, so we repel the last forty feet. Our timing is not ideal, the tide is somewhere between high and low and will be getting higher soon. The steep wall to the east overflows with tiny mossy waterfalls, creating fresh water pools full of tadpoles, and (honest to God) a little patch of quicksand. We are forced by the encroaching ocean to climb over boulders and up crumbling rock faces past stinky cormorant nests. Two dead cormorants lie between rocks on our walk. One moldering right next to her nest, possibly not built far enough away from the pounding surf, a grim reminder that we must leave enough time for a return journey, lest we be battered in a narrow passage by the incoming tide.
This hike is full of crystals. Great bands of quartz run through the igneous rocks, so loose that big chunks can be removed by hand. Solid sulfur lies in little clumps, recently fallen out of the hillside, waiting for an alchemist’s invocation. And crystalline mineral deposits grow like a fungus on some of the boulders, tan and fleshy on the surface and then broken open in places to reveal shimmering cross-sections of pink and white.
Eventually we reach an impasse, two dangerous options: deep water and rough waves, or a steep and crumbling climb, which might not even get us over the ridge. Thwarted. The tide is really coming in now, so we’ve got to hustle. Running on slippery rocks that were dry on the approach. Occasionally we brace ourselves for potential wave death, but are mercifully spared. The salt spray in my face seems to say: “you might not be so lucky next time.” Thankfully the beach widens and the ocean is at bay, so to speak. The adrenaline drains away, and Noël spots an otter diving in the breakwater, body surfing, and smashing mollusks to smithereens on an anvil stone.
Before the long hike back we conduct spontaneous ceremony. First a little, gentle movement, improv Tai Chi, Kelsey chants at a distance. A raft of pelicans soar in from the south, they coast through the curl of a wave. I am moved to sing, exclaim in fact, to greet my soaring cousins with my power voice, my loudest and most resonant tones. A song takes shape, call and response between Noël and me, and then uncontrolled free-form shamanic verse. The tide surges in and a magic landscape is reveled, always there, just waiting for us to take a little time to tune in. The rocks and cliffs, the endless water, distant clouds, my friends and me, and all the beings: together again in a song.
A muddy hoof print, coyote scat filled with bones, a blood tinged feather. The world speaks with signs.
Crooked calligraphy in a mossy branch, a Stonehenge ring of toadstools, tall thistles bending into an archway. The world speaks in symbols.
A bumblebee rolling in a flower, bull sea lions slapping fat necks in combat, a rattlesnake shedding its first skin. The world speaks in moments.
New growth on a charcoaly redwood; the full swing of the seasons; evaporation, clouds, rain, rivers, creeks, and oceans: the complete water-table. The world speaks in circles.
A wave rolling in, hail on gravel, a boulder rumbling down stream, a rockslide, thunder. Wind: through dry grass, among eucalyptus branches, whistling past a cliff face. Ice cracking, brush under foot, wingbeats. The world speaks.
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This World Literature is the subject of much writing and contemplation, by myself and countless others, stretching back long before a crude wall divided the world of man and the world of nature. Indeed many of us write and think about the wild because its presence in our lives is like a phantom limb, long gone, but still felt – and, of course, the stump is obvious.
The Wild is a vast physical place, and it is a habitat for mind as much as body. I see Wilderness as a knowledge system, not to be deconstructed, rather to be experienced in its completeness. Each being, thing, or event in the wild, is the wild. Every anything is a sentence in a chapter in a story, and each sentence stands alone, a complete tale told perhaps with a single syllable. In this wild library books are nested within books within words within letters. The headwaters of creation flow infinitely in all directions. The present moment is experienced in all places simultaneously. The axis of the Universe turns on every point in the Universe. Aha!
It goes without saying, the library is full of adventure and wisdom – cost of admission is careful attention, a peaceful mind, respect, and playfulness. And you have to leave human chatter at the threshold, like all libraries, it’s best to be quiet.
From the trail we clamber down to the beach. Garnet tinged, purple sand flows through the normal white stuff. Violet brush strokes swirl around green jade look-a-like rocks. Not an average beach.
Noël finds a perfect little abalone shell on the sand, slaps it in my hand and calls it my paycheck. A big rock shelf means radical tidepools, some deep and wide enough to paddle around in. Vast hermit crab and anemone civilizations have thrived in these shallows for centuries, and yet no monuments or temples have been erected, at least none that I can discern. Maybe the temples are in the shells, or maybe the whole place is a temple.
A seaweed-filled ravine cuts right down the middle of the rock jetty. It seems just the right kind of place to find another abalone shell, and lo-and-behold there’s a great big one a few feet away. When I tell Noël that I saw the shell before I actually saw it, she says matter-of-factly “why does that surprise you at this point?” Sometimes I forget about the world’s majik until it is dropped right in my lap.
Around the bend we find a tiny cave. We sing inside it, playing with the tones, feeling out which ones resonate in the space. The song brings on slow languid movement, and rock on rock drumming. Every sound and sign just right for the moment. Good shamanism, which is to say: good playful and loving engagement with the spirit of that place, with our spirits in that place. A fine gesture of cave/man love.
We’re all smiles when we get out, I hope the cave smiles too. I stare at the sky and it subtly flashes, kind of a “yes” flash, affirmative pulse from the sunset. Behind us a weird mark is set in the sky. A vertical cloud line, like the vapor trail from a plane, but upright, like a rocket’s trail. An optical illusion, a meteor, a spaceship? The trail/cloud is gone in a few minutes, evidence wiped clean by the wind. Aliens, meteors or men: the Sky is indifferent, and, come to think of it, so am I. Cavesongs seem so much more important.
The trail fills up with scattering bunnies for the hike back. Polyphonic owl hoots sound majikally from a eucalyptus grove, a three-tone hoot that boggles my mind. My first thought is of a giant spectral owl. Eventually the mystery unravels. There are really three owls hooting in different pitches. Somehow they managed to call out in perfect unison, giving the impression of a supernatural hoot. Amazingly this happened twice in a row before the band broke up.
A skunk waddles at full speed in front of us, zigzagging – evasive tactics. He leaves just a splash of mercaptan (skunk spray) behind him, just in case there was any confusion. “Don’t know if you noticed the stripes chums… can’t be too careful.”
A fox dashes across the highway as we drive home, barely more than a flash in the headlights. Our last visitation from the twilight kingdom. Goodnight Majik.
Rainbow, the dog, is attracted to the site long before we are. I only notice it because he does. A ring of fur, evidence of a deeply penetrating event. Speculation begins at once. A rabbit? A fox? Some manner of weasel? Couldn’t be a house cat, not this far up the trail. Allan pokes a bendy stick into the ground in the center of the ring. “Well whatever you were, we honor you.” Something we clearly should have done first.
Imagine is we stopped at a fatal car accident and acted like this. “Those look like a banker’s shoes to me. Yeah, but look at that ink stain on his shirt pocket, I think he was an English teacher. Well whatever you did, may God love and keep you.”
From that place on that trail one bodily life was extended and one bodily life ended. Maybe that’s all we need to know. It’s certainly enough information for reverence.
In the end we decided it was probably a bobcat.
When I go to the water it happens to be low tide, what wonder! I walk my favorite stretch of pools and beach: where cormorants dip, harbor seals prostrate on rocks, and anemones abound. When the water is at its most withdrawn, when the tides inhale deeply, big pools are formed way out between rocks usually invisible. They are little oceans of their own, sand bottomed, clear and calm. Sea grass sways softly.
A barely dead gumboot chiton lies belly/foot up in a small pool, and hermit crabs diligently dine there, she is meal and table and the gumboot will disappear by tiny clawfull. Ah detrivores, how I admire the scavengers of this (and every) ecosystem. They live like kings and do no harm. I wouldn’t be surprised to find “waste not, want not” hanging cross-stitched on the inside of a crab shell, or behind a bark beetle’s wing.
Under a stone above the water line there is a bright purple rock crab, about the size of my fist. Sneaking my hand around his claws I actually manage to pick him up. Black eyes sit on opposite sides of his body, he seems to grimace, even though he lacks a face, he reminds me somehow of an old sorcerer, maybe he is. I must admit I want to eat him. I get an ancient hungry feeling often at the tide pools; they are teaming with slow moving, high calorie life, that is nearly alledible raw… Today I nearly sucked a limpet right out of its shell.
There are a lot of stranded creatures under the rocks above the water, and when I move I can hear them scuttle to find a safer place, totally unseen. I am picking up trash, but thinking of abalone shells, it is my custom to ask my totem (the sea otter) for a shell or two for my home alter, she usually obliges.
Next to a tin-can-top there is a shiny fragment of abalone, quite lovely, but just a little piece, so I toss it in the water. The water ripples out, and just below the rings there is a beautiful and big abalone the size of my whole hand, sitting plain as day on the sand. Of course it had been cracked by an otter, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. After I scoop it up I find another iridescent shell to my left wedged between two rocks, smaller, but whole. Then in a pool to my right I see another abalone, shiny side down, with a bright turquoise outer shell, which is completely new to me, I have only ever known them to be red or black. Overjoyed by the trinity I try to collect this Holy Ghost, but when I get my hand around it’s shell the abalone sucks down tight to the rock, it is alive, and won’t budge for anything! I can almost feel that playful otter swim up behind me and say “you can’t have it all at once.” So that turquoise abalone sits on its own alter, a future sacrifice, like everyone else.
My brother and I sit and watch the fire late into the night. Put a stick in and watch the smoke unfurl, wrap around our fingers, float to the moon. The wood sings, clicks, crackles, squeals, and pings. We like the song too.
Mostly we sit quietly but eventually we pontificate on the pleasures of fire… the feeling of safety and warmth… the endless variations of smoke, flame, ember, and sound… and our ancient friendship.
I am reminded of something my friend said a few months ago, he said “there’s a reason an orange tastes sweet to me, and a reason I can look at a waterfall for hours, it’s because we grew up together.” My brother agreed it was a beautiful way of saying it. So the world is relationships, some old, some newer. Our relationship with fire certainly qualifies as ancient.
An almost full moon, high in the early morning, lights up our camp completely. Mars is closer this night to me and the planet than it has been since man named it and began to follow its movements. “Close” but still very very far, just a big white spot. Despite the distance Mars and I grew up together too.
Though Mar’s song is subtle and his dance much slower than the fire, people have watched and listened. Even though I must seem absurdly fast, tiny, and brief, Mars sees me too. Old friends talking again.
Granite and Limestone formations appear suddenly in striking variety, some piled high like cave filled monuments, others half buried and striated, looking like an alien spacecraft that crash landed 20 million years ago and calcified.
We’ve heard tale of swimming holes and wild rivers here, but there are no signs or maps. Gallant and drunk-driving rednecks show us the way, intent on a swim themselves in a pool called “The Hippy Hole”.
We drive on toward a trailhead in search of “Fish Camp”, or possibly a fabled place beyond full of fossils. Peeing next to the car, a lizard runs down a tree to my right and positions himself directly in my urine stream, I shift, and he dashes right back into my urine. New species discovered: Piss Lizard.
Packs shouldered we march clumsily along a narrow path carved into the steep hillside. Poison Oak, Foxtails, Yarrow, Sticky Monkey Flowers, and huge Succulents watch us hike. Bellow us the Manzanita is burnt out, charcoaled branches with Morning Glory vines twisting up their brittle frames. The Morning Glory seems to rise lovingly, consoling the Manzanita with an embrace and flowers for their gravesite. Unknown yellow flowers are the most abundant; because of them the mountain in the distance is as yellow as a pollen pile.
Winding down to the river we loose the trail completely, it may indeed have eroded well enough away. We make camp on a sandy plot. Later that night we see a Bumblebee walking in the dark in the sand, caught in our headlamp light, “go to bed Bumble!”
Our fire is fed by loose wood stuck in the branches and cricks of nearby trees, deposited there by the river at its fullest, or possibly in a small flood. Our bellies are fed with canned fish, ironically packed in. The Mosquitos are fed by Noël. My imagination is fed by the splashing of the river over the rocks… I swear I can hear something wading through the water. Evidence in the morning proves me less of a fool, I find deep hoof-prints in a nearby bank leading into the water and not out.
Two spiders perform a shadow show on our tent roof in the AM light. One a Daddy Long Legs trundling toward a more venomous relative, only after basically running into his cousin did Daddy realize he was there, and Long Legs high stepped it away at top speed.
When the sun makes it over the eastern hills and hits the pools: naked swimming, what could be finer. We break camp easily and in silence, division of labor dividing itself. A snake lies in the trail, absorbing solar energy, after becoming aware of us it slowly slithers directly towards us. It is curious and unafraid, possibly because the shape of man is still unknown to some creatures in this untrammeled country. It was massive though, four feet long, and thick, so I deterred it with my walking stick and strong talk, it stopped advancing and left the trail without haste.
Because of dinner plans with friends back in the semi-civilized world, we hike back at the relatively insane time of high noon, no shadows, no shade, it’s at least 100 degrees. Having lived and walked in the desert Noël is well prepared, I however am facing new challenges. We have to ration the drinking water purified by (camp) fire this morning, but I would slug it all if I could. A brook babbling through the trail sings to me, so I soak my kerchief there, wring it out over my roasting body and tie it around my head. A new awareness dawns: although I have always proclaimed it my favorite beverage, I still haven’t been this close to understanding water’s preciousness, and the way its presence means strength and comfort. The phrase “water is life” is tossed about often, but seriously, yes. Water is also our eternal companion, our loving father-friend-mother-source-teacher. This was a good moment for me.
Back at the car. Stuffed in the left wing mirror we find a hand-drawn map to an excellent swimming hole found by the gallant redneck guides, extra credit. Snacks in the shade, and an air-conditioned drive back to the coast. The mind busies itself again, but something of the quiet, overflowing place remains. If we trek into the wild, the wild treks into us.
The Canyon (Financial) District
The Rock-Dove is a remarkable flier. She can adjust her short wings and tail within a fraction of a second to account for a strong and sudden gust of wind. Evolution insists on these precise adjustments and movements when you nest and fly and feed near the walls of cliffs and in canyons... These Doves must change with the wind that is channeled through the canyon, or bounce off the rock walls themselves. The city offers many of the same challenges, and the Rock Dove thrives here too, living under its urban nickname the Pigeon. The wind that blows down the canyon floor of the financial district is a force to reckon with, especially considering the way traffic enhances the danger and unpredictabilty. Yet a sudden blast of air from a bus speeding by is taken in stride, and the Rock Dove simply flaps on.
Eternally Bonded
The Rock Dove, although magnificent, is not the top of the canyon (city) food chain. Indeed they are (and have always been) culled by the Falcon; bonded eternally as bio-regional foes. I sat reading in Dolores Park (my surrogate wilderness) sometime last year, I looked up from my book coincidentally at a beautiful moment; the timeless wild was revealing twenty feet in front of me... I watched as a Falcon struck a pigeon from above. The force of the blow pushed the Pigeon into the grass, where it fought for its life, trying to get out from under the Falcon, as it in turn tried to hold on tearing feathers from the Pigeon's back, leaving little grey clouds behind them. Somehow the Pigeon managed to get out from under the Falcon and back into the air, it joined its fellows there, falling into evasive formation flying, confusing and frustrating the Falcon. The Falcon settled in a tree, quite close to me and rested for nearly an hour, I watched it the whole time in wonder. No doubt it was exhausted, and even more hungry.
(photo notes: from the internet)
“Let’s walk around that lake.” I said, or Dan said, or we both said. It was early evening in the endless arctic summer day on Å (pronounced: Oohah) an island in the Lofoten chain of islands/mountains in the Norwegian Sea. These mountains peak out of the ocean then run along its floor and don’t come up for air until Scotland. They are crumbling, and considered by some to be the oldest mountains in the world.
Å is an exotic vowel meaning “creek” in Norwegian, and there was indeed a tiny creek flowing out of the lake. I had a Nalgene™ water bottle 1/3rd full, Dan had nothing, and we walked. No camera, how strange, no lens or screen to capture the world, instead it captured us, and nearly killed us twice. We tromped through marsh, mud, bog, and giant wet sponge moss, and so our shoes were soaked through. Four waterfalls fell around the lake, high and thin and misting. They seemed to say: “be wet with us,” and smiled, so we were, and did.
Our rations were depleted already, the water drunk, I filled my bottle with water seeping through a rock face, percolating there for centuries, the world’s most effective Brita ™. It was very cold and very good. The mud became a giant sinkhole, impassible. We hiked up above it, and walked a cliff’s edge, nearly fell (both of us) and crawled the remainder.
Beyond the cliff a stand of stunted pine trees stopped us for a while, we rested and went back to the lake-shore. There was a rock-pile like a castle there, we climbed inside and cannon fire seemed to ring out from an enemy fortress, in reality it was the sound of an enormous boulder trundling off a cliff, rolling faster than anything and splashing down in the lake. Enormous sounds! Enormous splash! Enormous boulder, rolling right through the place where we stopped to fill my water bottle… twenty minutes between certain death by rogue crushing stone, and play in an imaginary fort.
Four hours later the stroll we took on whim was complete... lake looped. The sun was up, as always, but the only restaurant was closed, so we bought slices of cake from a glass display and drank beers on the pier™ for dinner.
A bat in the middle of the day flies over my family. A blessing, an omen.
- 10 / VIII / 09
Then bat shit on me in the night, that’s new to me… I’ve been dropped on by birds (song & sea), slipped on dog, marveled at mountain lion, and thrown cow… but never visited by bat scat. Later, lonely owl song far off, looking for companionship.
- 11 / VIII / 09
Thirty-three meteorites seen from the stone plateau of our camp, some with long tales stretching across a quarter of the bowl. Usually “shooting stars” cannot be confirmed, even by yourself, they are like a flash of spirit. Instead, tonight we wowed together (with who knows how many more on the dark side of the Earth). Wonder resounding at the movement way above us, connecting us to the farthest edge of our home.
- 12 / VIII / 09
Blue & white butterfly landed on my journal, I wrote this one second later.
- 13 / VIII / 09
Three ravens in formation fly over, low. Distinguished from crows by the sound of their wings, whoosh-whoosh (like a Pterodactyl), and the depth of their cry. Hours later from the top of a fur tree one raven calls another, its call is answered and together they circle in the air, one left the other right. Far off, just black specks, two more ravens mirror them exactly.
- 14 / VIII / 09
An owl again at nightfall, heard between meteorites, “only” five now. This time not so lonesome, the call is answered a half-octave higher. So they move tree-by-tree, calling out and listening with endless patience, seeking out their partner in song. Whether their corporeal forms ever met I can’t be sure, but their voices meet close to our camp… calling in different pitches in perfect unison. The over-tones ring off the rocks, the air in their bird-lungs vibrates intimacy. I hold my breath in gratitude.
- 15 / VIII / 09
photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker 2009, Sierra-Nevada Mountains
