Snow Spirits in the Mothership






















STEEP LINES FOR MY SON AT 40

The beacon in your hands
is better than it would be in mine.
You would find your father
in an avalance before he could find you.
You are a parable reversing the order of the world.
You bring back blessings
calling it treasure. What choices
you've made are clear,
and that's what it takes
to make a life, to be a man.

At 40, at 65, we shared
what we have, and what we've brought back.
Blessed separately and together.
Outback on skis.
Studying snow that falls in chunks.
Survival skills. Practical spirits,
away from last resorts.
You put nieces and nephews on skis.
You give them your voice.
You shape your father
into being the father
you've always wanted.
We go down the road
in the mothership,
another word you gave me
twenty years ago. Somewhere
in the music, Jimi Hendrix sings,
Mr. Businessman, you can't dress like me.
All this color in a world gone mad for business.
You make a life exploring
what can only be had with a sharp edge.
That extreme is one practical way
for your love to love this world.

Love, Dad
27 February 2011

 
DON'T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT

his grandson says.
How do you want me to talk,
he says,
Like this?
Yes.
Talk to me like Grandpa.

Jim Bodeen
27 February 2011

















AND THE WILDERNESS TAKES THEM, TOO

The grandkids call Paradise Basin the beautiful place. On the map it's the gateway to the Goat Rocks Wilderness. The geographical area of White Pass doubles in one year after an environmental fight lasting nearly a quarter of a century. The grandkids have it right. The Beautiful Place.

From what I can tell, what the child confronts here on skis is raw imagination.

It is not an easy entry. Boots are heavy. Kids can hardly navigate in heavy clothes on snow. No one will carry their skis. You can carry them. I'll show you. There are tears. You can go back. You don't have to ski. The child doesn't have to go to the bathroom either--but he will. She will. Maybe he'll make it. Maybe he won't. This is a crossing period for adults and children. The child is in charge. One doesn't get here overnight.

From the moment the child learns to turn across the fall line, she skis into the dream world. She is Alice, this is wonderland. He is any number of Super Heroes. A transformer. His coat, unzipped, is a cape following his skis. Thousands of acres of terrain, instantly available in the external world, exploding possibilities from within. Problems remain. Potty breaks, the moment of tension between parents and children tested around the family bathroom, takes place outside, in winter, where toilets hardly exist. And muscles, still shaping themselves while children sleep, are different in the morning. The muscles become new to the child on the mountain on skis. The illusion of safety remains, but this is the wilderness, this is the world the child knows from books and movies. The child skis into the wilderness, and from this moment, what happens happens to you, too.

This is the world the child enters stepping into his bindings. He is skiing away from the world he knows. The child is leaving others behind. Skiing with children changes one's relationship to power. The adult leads by cancelling himself out, he follows as he leads. He is with, and he is behind. He's in solidarity with rising and falling.

Elevation of White Pass is 4,000 feet. This is where the kids step onto their skis, where the Magic Carpet first pulled them up a 40-foot treadmill on snow, the first thing that must be mastered. This takes most of their third year. At four, they're still on the Magic Carpet, a year away from the Platter and their first chair lift. They leave lower lifts behind like childhood itself--hold on. Not quite. Childhood is what they re-enter. Many doors, many ways. Elevation gain is consumed in great gulps. The lower chair lift gains nearly 1,000 feet. The Great White Lift unloads skiers at 6,000 feet. A cross country slide/walk will take nearly twenty minutes to another series of lifts. They will ski and ride two chairlifts and the elevation gain will take them to 6,100 feet, leaving them just below the summit of Hogback Mountain. This is the world the child enters stepping into his skis.

The two five year-old kids ski on K-2 Indy's. They are 76 centimeters long. Twenty-nine inches. This is their second pair of skis. The first ones, plastic, have been handed down to their younger sisters. These short K-2's will transport these children over hundreds of acres of snow and trails in a single day. They will ski 10,000 feet of elevation.This is not a bragging parent here. I am staggered daily by the facts of the mountain, that any of us are here. Of what the mountain gives to a child.

Here's how we get there. One last ride on the Magic Carpet followed by a traverse to the Platter, which is a plate that fits between their legs, pulling them up the hill. The kids know what it means to traverse. They learned it getting here. They had to learn it in order to be transported. From the Magic Carpet the kids gain access to elevation needed to load on the chairlift which will take them part way up the mountain. An intermediate hill, 1,000 feet of elevation will take them down and over to the Great White, which takes them 1,500 feet to 6,000 feet over spectacular terrain. Unloading at the summit, the kids ski about 50 yards where the first descent will take them into Paradise Basin, nearly 1,000 acres of new trails and runs bordering the Goat Rocks Wilderness.

We stop and look at Hogback across the way. I point my ski pole at a small-looking building across the mountain on the other side. "See that building? That's High Camp Lodge." The kids have been there. It's like a place they know from their movies. It's their first glimpse into how far they've traveled. "Is that the beautiful place, Grandpa?" "It's close, but that's one more ski run and one more chair lift further."

We descend for about a half mile. At a couple of points, I'll have to give them a pole and swing them. We're on our way to High Camp. We're on a journey of skis. Getting off the Quad taking us to just below the summit of Hogback Mountain, we are outback. At this point we're miles from where we started. We're way away. The distance that each of us have traveled to get here, is quite stunning. It's beautiful, too. I didn't name it. The kids did, in one first moment of awe. This is the place that the kids call The Beautiful Place.

Crossing over to the world of children. Being in their world, not their being in mine. It happens to all of us in many places. It doesn't have to be on a mountain. But what is a mountain? That's the thing. Where is the wilderness we need to enter with children? I'm crossing too. The adult crosses into children's lives. Their muscles. Their bladders. Out of my time and into their time. Their time in the wilderness. Where adults can't walk into another room. Here, no one can walk away. One doesn't know when their toes are cold until they tell you. One anticipates, but one doesn't know. When kids need a rest, they need a rest. This doesn't mean they're done. They'll want those skis again. They like to keep going. They're beginning to find nuances in the fall line. They're liking speed. They're finding trees, skiing bumps. They're eating snow. They're taking in the wilderness. The beautiful place. It's wild.

Jim Bodeen
26 Februay 2011


THE CHILD WHO FINDS A WAY

Her family shapes her spirit time,
giving her formulas and structure,
but her spirit walks alone and is hers,
given by what family can and can't give.
She walks with what must be called God
in a manner that can't be taught,
the strange way that can't be copied
but is old and ancient belonging to no religion.
She remains her age in all ways but this one.
As a pilgrim, she walks with pilgrims.
She is not a civilian in her prayers.
She carries her temple
in her backpack singing her way.

Jim Bodeen
26 February 2011


















SPIRIT TALK IN THE MOTHERSHIP
WITH GRANDCHILDREN RESUMES
THE NEXT MORNING ON THE CHAIRLIFT

The night before, watching a movie on sheep
farmers, and shepherding, after night skiing,
the child had said her prayers, and taught her grandfather
her prayer. Then she told him about her dream.
They had talked about dreams before,
and she hung dream-catchers by her beds,
the one in her house, with her mother,
and another by the bunk-bed
at her father's house. When I get a bad dream,
the grandfather says, I try to go back to sleep
and back into the dream. Then I know it's ok,
and I can look for something good
that I couldn't see when I was afraid.
They were riding the chairlift
called Great White, the one taking them
up over the rock cliff, in front of the great mountain.
I tried that, Grandpa, she says.
And I asked God to go with me,
but God wasn't there. I looked everywhere.
The only God the grandfather knows
won't release the grandfather through magic.
The chairlift ride is short, but the day is long.
His granddaughter, now five,
had been given adult work since she was three,
when she began walking her one year-old sister
to her father's on weekends. The girl's mother
had the gift of language and listening.
Her mother talked to her daughter
like she herself talked to God.
Mother and daughter carrying gifts of prayer
manifesting itself in the world as love.
Both of them carried the spirit of children,
God in the powerless, extreme crossover
as a way into the other.
One time God wasn't there, his granddaughter said.
You've got to go back to God, grandfather says.
It's your dream. You get to tell it your way.
That's the only way I know, the grandfather says.
You can't be afraid.
You've got to tell God he wasn't there.
Then they rode in silence and skied hundreds of acres of snow.

Jim Bodeen
20 February--25 February 2011


THOUSAND OF ACRES OF SNOW



















IT'S DEEP ENOUGH, STAN SAYS,
BUT IT'S NOT STEEP ENOUGH

He pops out of powder
up to his thighs. His beard a frozen
ice falls, worthy of photography or climbing.
I've been following his smooth lines

for beauty through a snow storm.
He won't turn 70 until next week,
and we haven't talked for a year.
You have a better memory than I do,

he says. It's a process, I say,
wanting him to talk about quad muscles
in deep snow. No helmet, no phone,
alone on the ridge at boundary ropes,

Stan's knees survive carpentry
and steep slopes. He snowboards.
This ski instructor takes kayak lessons now,
he's learning to turn his kayak

in the Y pool. They say
it's not necessary, but I turned myself over
in Wallula Lake, and now I think it is.
Let your skis do the work--Stan's

response to muscle talk. I thought
these skis would be my last ones and now
I'm looking at yours, he says, turning
into trees, singing back--Stay centered.

Jim Bodeen
25 February 2011


"EVERYBODY KNOWS"--L. Cohen

"The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor." L. Cohen

Everybody who listens to Leonard Cohen knows.
We get the news. We know.
The ICE Raid up the road in Ellensburg.
We know.

Corexit comes up twice
in two short conversations in Paradise Basin.
Making eye contact. We know.

Jim Bodeen
25 February 2011


AFTER SKIING TWELVE DAYS IN FEBRUARY,
I ASK KAREN WHEN WE'LL HEAR ELECTION RESULTS

For what? she asks.
Mayor or city manager form of government.

That was decided weeks ago.

Jim Bodeen
24 February 2011


FIVE YEAR-OLD SKIERS

Cover thousand acres
Bicycles with training wheels
riding home sidewalks

Jim Bodeen
23 February 2011



SKIER'S HUMILITY

ASLEEP ON THE COUCH
WITH A CUP OF COFFEE
ON MY CHEST
 
It doesn't tip until after it's cooled.

Jim Bodeen
20 February 2011

BACK IN THE MOTHERSHIP AT HIGH FOREST CAMP
WITH MY GRANDSON AFTER SKIING ON HOGBACK,
JOSH SITS ON THE BED WITH BATMAN
WHILE I PUT SWEETGRASS INTO THE VCR

for Dan Peters

Isolated in beauty, the world can't compete
for the minds of children. Hey, Grandpa,
hop up here, climb across the edge.
I'm on top of the door. Yes, I'm Batman.
The 5-year old just skied 10,000 feet of backcountry.
We're listening to sheep farmers care for a thousand sheep.
Watching. Looking for Mama. Get that baby to his Mom.
Is that real, Grandpa? Josh asks, putting down Batman.
Hey, Junior, we got to find you some milk.
Josh repeats it, and laughs, in his big voice.
What is that? Those are all the Mama's babies?
Did I come out of Mama like that? Was Mama big? Like that tv?
What is that? Testicles? Testicles?
"Below the penis in a sack of skin. Like we have."
Like balls? Exactly. I like this movie.

Dreaming the mothership as a travel school,
there would be no teacher. "Hey, I just told you.
You're a tooting machine." Coco is the sheep dog.
A working dog working. Sadie's job is to get the ball.
"Hey, undercover man, let go of my toes!"
Grandpa, when I get old, I'll have a soft spot of skin just like you.
Setting up camp, sheepherders complain like soldiers,
talking like them. I wince knowing Josh's love
for the colorful word. My knee hurts. My dog won't leave camp.
My horse is rib and bones. My knee clicks.
Sheep are walking off cliffs and there's bears.
Cell phones in sheep camp hear us crying out.
Like prayers in the Hebrew Bible.
Josh asks who my Mom is.
He asks who's Grandma's mom.
I say a short prayer for both of us.
He's asleep when bears get shot coming into camp.
Into Sheep Camp. Into High Forest Camp.
Into the Mothership, a DreamTent away,
out of wind, a place to ski to, another word for home.

Jim Bodeen
19 February 2011


SAMMIE SAYS

We beat the moon to Grandma's house.

Jim Bodeen
19 February 2011


JOSH SKIS 8000 FEET FOR MS

"Do you want me to show you
a waterfall?" he asks. "Follow me,"
a 5-year old taking off on skis.
"Oh, Wow!"
he exclaims before water
falling into ice from snow,
in a snow fall, giving his heart
once more falling into wonder.

Jim Bodeen
16 February 2011


PRAYER FOR MY CHILDREN

--for Leah, Krista, & Tim

May the swim in these waters
be my spirituality and not yours.

May the edges of my skis
be sharp enough to separate us.

May the mountains given us
by the Creator give us all safe passage,

with equally difficult ascents.
May the dangers in descending

be matched with unerring practicality
and wild, wild stories that sustain.

Jim Bodeen
15 February 2011















Tim Bodeen says, "In Zen, you drop off all the stuff you don’t need--
your worries, fears, opinions, preconceptions, attachments
because you really don’t need them!" Photo in car by Tim Bodeen


THE REVERENT WAY SEEKS ITS OPTIONS

You can't say it all
Find many ways to not say
Native as one can

Jim Bodeen
14 January 2011


TOUCH TAKES THE PLACE OF LANGUAGE

O God-In-The-Knuckle, this is the ritual of the public hour covered by fresh snow. This is the story of children turning into fish. This is my mother curling into my arms disappearing. When the kids say, "Tell me that story again, Grandpa," I tell it again.

Jim Bodeen
January, 2011



BIG SUNSHINE

















GETTING TO HIGH CAMP

for Marissa and Sara, Light Keepers at High Camp

You can't see this place in bad weather.
A man in a ski suit told me the architect

had it wrong. He wanted a bar stool
with a view at the bottom of the hill.

High Camp is beauty in-between beauty.
High Camp is on a children's map

in a children's movie. Show me the way.
It's a light show. Find it between snowlight

and skylight. Go to any Mile Post marker.
Find the place between before

and after. Get your balance
and let go. Find your dream fall

and curl into something you'd forgotten.
Carry a book of poems in your pack

for re-assurance that you're here.
This is a real place. The architect had it right.

Jim Bodeen
14 February 2011



THE SO BIG VALENTINE FOR KAREN

For showing me the true response is no response,
and for confirming that, for this is listening,
for there is nothing to be done but that,
and that is all. To do more dams the river.

Jim Bodeen
14 February 2011
















SCAFFOLDING IN THE TEMPLE OF LIGHT

Big trees give themselves up
so we might find this place on skis
and rest in the light with the kids.
Not a shelter as much as a holding place for songlight.
Midweek it's a shape shifter for elders,
an elder-village with children, inner vision
from the spirit time. It's a walk-up
dream stair with clicking boot heels.
Impossible to resist, this light
comes from kindergarten.
You're the child walking through the door
getting another chance.
Someone sees you wearing your old smile.
You had forgotten you were this good.
You say something to a stranger
so strange you ignore your blush
in mid-breath, and keep whistling.
Everywhere I go, I'm going to let it shine.
It's raining blessings and you're not
ducking for cover.

Jim Bodeen
13 February 2011


BIG SUNSHINE

Cancels bad weather
Brings with it a chance of snow
Vitamin's fresh tracks

Jim Bodeen
13 February 2011

AN OUTSIDE CHANCE

















HOPE OUTSIDE THE EMPIR(ical)

Is there still hope
if nothing can be done?
I didn't say that. Maybe that's where it comes from.
OK. Let's see where it goes.
When nothing can be done.
Hope in the empire is different you know.
How so? Here it's all about results.
Hope's bottom line.
Like marketing. Marketing hope?
Marketing hope is big business, you bet.
But the world doesn't market hope.
Nope. Not at all. It's everywhere.
Elsewhere hope is.
Elsewhere, well, it's something else.
You might say closer.
Say more and those carrying it take offense.
You're not saying, you're not making a case for--
Yes, I probably am.

Jim Bodeen
8 February 2011--11 February 2011
Mothership



The Knuckle We Need



MOUNTAIN MAN ON PATROL
 
--for Johnny Williams
 
He comes here to set his edges.
Set and release. Finding what falls
in the fall line is his work.
He falls and rises.
He finds there is no difference
between falling and rising.
The joy of this discovery
sets him apart, alone on the summit.
The current running through his body is joy.
He is a sled for all that gets broken
on the mountain. He lives on the summit
in the in-between place, a snow trail
opening snow trails.
 
Jim Bodeen
1 March 2008--9 February 2011
 

ANOTHER SKI STORY FROM WHITE PASS

for Chris Roberts

Somehow Chris heard my name and connected--
we wouldn't have recognized each other--
but we skied here together student and teacher
more than 35 years ago--when Tom Mullen

and Nelson Bentley put together the ski program
for the Alternative school in Yakima.
Chris Roberts helps us on the lift
and stories uncover themselves in snow.

Thank those teachers. Tom, Ben & Sue.
You guys took us everywhere--
We saw the play "Equus" in Seattle
with Leonard Nimoy. I ski now

with my sons and grandson at White Pass.
I learned so much. I'm going to have Devon
with me tomorrow. I remember too.
"Equus." Nude actors. Students. Naked flesh,

nakedness as metaphor. Family life.
Before the curtain came down, I wanted
to walk, practice better parenting.
Our school. We called it The Place. Find

another way. Christ went back
to the big school, graduating with straight A's.
I watch him ski with his grandson.
I bring him cookies for remembering.

Each Friday we skied White Pass.
We had two 15 passenger vans.
Nelson rented us skis for a buck a kid.
No charge for lift tickets.

We dressed ourselves from Good Will.
Spot us anywhere on the Mountain.
Cascading new ways to be,
skis carving tracks into frozen hearts.

Chris Roberts skis the mountain
he climbed then--why I ski White Pass now.
When Chris says, Thank those teachers,
he thanks Nelson, part mountain himself.

Jim Bodeen
7 February 2011


















THE KNUCKLE  KIDS NEED

for Carl Poisel

Big Dog reaches down, gives a word
to the child on her skis
trying to walk the almost too slippery
last steps that get her to the lift--

Come on up here, he says,
lifting her over difficulty,
skis dangling, turning her,
saying, Stand straight, steadying

the moment of awkwardness
while waiting for the cable
holding the platter that will rest
between the buttocks, holding

skiers as the lift transports them
to the top. Steadying the child
with one arm, reaching for the cable
with the other, Big Dog pulls

the platter seat down adjusting
the height to the child. He gives her
one last knuckle, the knuckle of confidence
she needs, to keep her eyes up,

to keep skis straight over snow
while the lift pulls her up.
The hardest workers, these guys,
giving the knuckle we all need,

teaching children on snow.
Lifting, encouraging,
never giving up on the child.
Watching them come down, too,

when they finally get it, their joy,
at the end of the day.
How many hundreds of children
ski because Big Dog doesn't give up!

Jim Bodeen
5 February 2011


Now we can talk


MISSION RIDGE PARKING LOT

The mothership is a snow cave
with a Jensen stereo
and outside speakers. Sleep is a dream
crossing you with expectations
and the inner reaches of saxophones.

Oh, you're on your way, now.
Yes, sirrree, Bob. Try waking from this one.
Fall asleep with that ski cap
on your head, in the middle of reading
one of those Goddam poems,
you're just asking for it.

Jim Bodeen
Mission Ridge
9 February 2011


OLDER PHOTOGRAPHERS
ON ROB'S BIRTHDAY

Create more beauty
Camera's humility
Slowing man's shutter

Jim Bodeen
2 February 2011
























A DAY WITH NO SHADOWS

for John Place in Paradise Basin

The skier comes from mountain's shadow
in shadow's shape with tall trees.
It's Groundhog's Day,
and the groundhog's been seen and verified.
A man with a shadow and shadow's smile
sits with the skier breathing out
the last of the day's bright sunlight.
Groundhog's Day--the best holiday of the year.
No expectations but being here--
I've been celebrating this every year since 1958.

Spend a day giving yourself a little time,
and you get the day off. Sit with groundhogs
and no expectations. Do that and the story's yours,
the man says skiing out from his shadow.
The mountain's out and so is the sun.
This is a day with no clouds
and photography's digital miracles
open every pixel recording light in light.
No one can see a thing. Sunblind,
we wait for redemption arriving in shade.

Jim Bodeen
4 February 2011


HANGING ON A TREE

Stand alone in snow
Solidarity with self
Tremor filled bowl wake

Jim Bodeen
2 February 2011


SOLIDARITY'S CANDLE

Never wavers in wind
Light walking me to Karen
Fire from ringing bells

Jim Bodeen
3 February 2011




















THE NECESSARY TEMPERATURE

for Karen

We found ourselves
in snow. Faceted crystals
unbound in wind.

Jim Bodeen
2 February 2011


O GOD OF MY OWN UNDERSTANDING

for Ted Williams

The man steps out of his mimed voice
long enough so that we may see ourselves
as we are before returning to the others.
Before stepping away, he gives me an image
I will carry in every prayer to the end of my days.

Jim Bodeen
3 February 2011
















GOAT ROCKS WILDERNESS

Snow covers beauty
with beauty  A palimpsest
Wonder  Shh  Wonder

Jim Bodeen
2 February 2011


NOW WE CAN TALK

The last hour of light,
Lord, on this mountain is ours.
Others have gone home.

Jim Bodeen
1 February 2011






INSIDE OF OUTSIDE--OR OUTSIDE OF INSIDE

T. S. Eliot's good word
Renunciation
Objective correlative

Jim Bodeen
1 February 2011



BEFORE HOGBACK

Always underneath the light
Underneath the idea
What others leave behind

Wild places on Highway 12
Solidarity's clarity
Raven, Coyote, Eagle

Stand before mountain with skis
Lock into bindings over snow
For a handful of syllables

Jim Bodeen
3 February 2011