MUTED POWDER, December, late-afternoon light (XII.4.2011), [click photo for next . . . ]
MUTED POWDER, December, late-afternoon light (XII.4.2011), [click photo for next . . . ]
This is where I was doing fieldwork, Monday
afternoon, although the photograph above was made about
a year ago. We're looking North, downstream, into the great
Powder River Canyon, about 6 km upstream from
its confluence with the Snake.
I come here often. When I'm not up in autumn Wallowas
North of here, only but 20 km as the crow
flies, or doing hour after hour of digital darkroom
and webwork at my little Office in Eagle Valley, I bike
up here to get away from the highly tiring and demanding
24/7 timespace of the web's long and dirty tail
of non-stop commerce and self-promotion.
Here, in a space that the culture of Euro-Americans has
not been able to deal with very well, time moves very
much more slowly. The shadows are long, and the silences
deep, without the sound of cars or traffic anywhere nearby.
The plant ensemble in the image forground, a kind of
steppe dryland community, includes, Gray Rabbitbrush,
the native bunchgrasses, and, of course, the ever-dominant
Mountain Sagebrush.
This is country with an immense sense of freedom and breadth
of spirit. There's nothing like it in Europe. (And I do know
and love the European mountains. In some ways, I feel more at
home there with the indigenous Mountain Farmers and their
highly adapted, rooted, and rugged alpine lifestyle.)
When I'm hiking up here, I often think that the European mind,
when it was confronted with the greatness of the spirit of
this place, did not know what to do with it. That is, except dam
it. Except tying the rivers up in knot after knot. And putting up
barbed-wire fences that follow the most arbitrary and
fragmentary of lines.
Indeed, this is why I refuse to call it the Powder River.
It is for me the 'MUTED POWDER,' but an echo of its real
self. To do otherwise would be insult, I fear, like comparing
the fierce rhetoric of a Socrates or a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
to the contemporary disingenuous political oratory of
mere thinly-vieled corporate obfuscation and self-interest.
I love this (Muted) Powder River country. My prayer is only
that we might change course as a culture, and give up the ways
of force and violence which shape and condition
our relationships, whether between ourselves, or with
the living Earth. It is, after all, a change
which has the natural energy of logical necessity
behind it.
And well:—There's no way in Hell you can build a dam
around that!!
South Wallowas, near Oregon / Idaho Border . . .
RIVER & FOREST / FOREST & RIVER
River is to forest, what heart is to lungs.
We can dam one, and cut the other down,
but the body of the whole
—our body—
will wither and decay and fade away.
To heal one is to heal both.
All else is just so much more fragmentation,
just so much mere management:—
of folly.
from ON PATHS
THE SLIP
Coming down
a steep icy path,
a slip instantly corrected,
forgotten, moving on.
Why can’t I live like that?
ONE MORNING
One morning, the mountain farmer goes out
to milk his goats and never comes back;
A quiet stream leaps from the edge of a high
granite cliff and disappears into the late
summer air;
Sitting in an alpine meadow, more flowers
than grass, the sound of delicate bells
rings out,
wave after wave,
from the metal which sleeps in rocks.
THE PROFESSOR
Red socks tucked into
impeccable gray-green
knickers,
relaxed, confident,
with the refined fingers
of a concert pianist,
tapping with his cane,
he gives just the right
emphasis to his last remark:
“Beautiful mountains, these . . .
But, too many rocks!”
THE OTHER WAY AROUND
Walking down with his lambs,
about twenty of them, all male,
still covered with the crusty manure
of the winter barn,
round as a bear, dressed from
head to toe in 2nd-hand army
wool that he wears like fur,
standing in the middle of the
cold, fast-flowing stream,
big-bearded smile, he kicks
the lambs across, one by one,
puffing on his pipe all the while.
He tells me:
“My wife used to come here
with the goats as a child.”
“Once, they brought up
a priest from the village below
to bless this spring.”
“She’s always said, it’s the other way
around—it’s the spring that blesses us.”
THE BOTANICAL GARDENS
(1)
How nice: There’s Gentian!
And Anenome. Old friends—
on paid vacation.
(2)
After a while, I’ve noticed
that I tend to read
the signs first.
PILGRIMS
Not
yet
far
from
home
the
full
bus
drives
straight
across
the spring
with healing waters
without
a
name.
THE SPRING
The cowherd pointed
on the map and said,
“If you can find it,
you must visit this spring.
The water there is very mysterious.”
“Years ago, they wanted to sell it,
but it burst the bottles—
every time.”
THE WELL
At the village center
a woman fetches water
from a well.
She tells me,
“All my life
the flow of this water
has never changed.
“It was constant during the war
and when my sons did not return,
and it was constant during the time
they built the road and then the dam.
“Even during the Winter of ‘51
it did not freeze.
“But last Spring,
for the first time in my life,
it was silent of seven days
and then ran muddy for
weeks after that.
“This well
never did that
before.”
EVERY VALLEY REMEMBERS
Two neighbors working,
tapping out the blade,
the complementary rhythms of
2s and 3s.
Distance and a summer breeze
do strange things to sound,
the sharp tang of heavy hammer
on anvil planted on heavy rock,
the delicate edge moves slowly
round the tapping of the blade,
a new moon moving from East
to West.
Higher up the mountain, silver
consonants ricochet off nameless
steep granite walls . . .
Wide awake, noon rest finished,
these sounds—were not made today.
HERE
On the way,
many beautiful camps
offer themselves for the night.
But to know,
when to keep walking and
when to stay,
and, after stopping,
to know without a doubt
that this place, where one stands,
here
I am at home.| download mp3 ON PATHS, selected |
| download pdf of score of my harp music featured, MIST ON SNOWY MOUNTAIN |
The avian soloist featured above is the Old World Blackbird (Turdus merula),
related to the NA Swainson, Hermit & Spirit Thrushes, and
the European musician of musicians.
Featured gallery, 100 MINIATURES, a set of 100 black & white photographs. ONE image. ONE idea. ONE new way of looking . . .100 MINIATURES—online gallery
Each miniature is a kind of meditation on one idea & one image;
Each lasts 30 seconds; They play in random order;
The music is my BOREA Mix,
for hand-played ePecussion Orchestra.
[ mouse over for controls / lower right fro full-screen ]
