WESTERN LARCH, new spring needles (Larix occidentalis) [ click photo for next . . . ]

The Western Larch, one of the most beautiful trees in
any season,is native is the mountains of the Northwest. In the
Wallowas, it grows in an altitude bandwidth from about 1400 to
2200 m., depending on exposition. It is well-known as the only
deciduous coniferous tree, with its needles turning from green
to yellow to brilliant larch golden brown with the coming cold
of mountain October. Less well-known, because far fewer people
are there to witness it, is luminous light green of the clusters
of fresh needles as they emerge in spring. I always think that
such youthful beauty helps me better understand the complementary
beauty, if more in a solemn, of the death of winter which prepares
the ground for such vibrant display of the cheerfully new and
hopeful.

Larches are indeed a tree to live by, in any season. For their
distinctive popping sound and sweet fragrance of their wood
burning in autumn hearth For the fresh shoots I like to add
to my spring tea, said by students of Native American
ethnobotany, to be good for the voice and laryngitis.



On the road in the American Northwest.


Perhaps poems are simply paths
we make in walking, sometimes,
even when headed the wrong way;

These things—gifts, one picks
up and passes on,
along the way.




MAPS WITHOUT BORDERS

Clouds are not spheres.
Swarms are not triangles.
Waves are not squares.

The stars of the calm mountain night
come as they always have, and
I no longer know what century it is.

Thoughts rising on the sound of rushing water
and afternoon winds, far too warm for May.


VI.22.2012 Little Eagle Meadow,
Eagle Cap Wilderness

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w/ my black & white photography [opens in new window]








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All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1999-2012 picture-poems.com
(created: IX.18.2012)