Wonderland Trail Pocket Notebook

GLACIAL FLOUR

Fine particles in the water

Cloudy appearance

Like the Nisqually River

Glacial rivers

deposit sediment

on floor of stream bed

creating high spots

that divert water

causing river

to wind and braid

across the bed

causing the color

WINGSPAN

Hawk on high skyline

Tail cruise, in wind, wind produced

Certain disdain for shoulders

FIRES LEAVE LOCAL SKIES MURKY MESS

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?

WONDERLAND TRAIL RIGHT AWAY

A fork in the road—

not up, but down

to Devil’s Dream

Saying goodbye

to Karen

FIRST MILE

A gate

A threshold

a boardwalk of planks

Nobody, nothing,

urging a faster pace

You’re not out of the woods yet

Stop at all the gates

First break

shed layer

take water

remember not to forget

your gear

when you get up

threshold of gate,

tree, bridge, step,

people before me

Pyramid Creek

where I stop

in its rock bed

five feet across

an old log crossed

on water

five fingers of its root

exposed, a great

uprooted hand

carved now by weather

It’s like this

but it’s also a misread

of the map,

not yet

I don’t think about age

Young people on trail

bring time forward

Core and rind

Rumi says

if you are one

inspired

by divine breath

pick up your pack,

now,

you with good shoulders

Dry streambed

after dry streambed

The pack fits better

to the back, pulled higher

after adjusting straps

The Ranger asks,

Are you going to pack

that camera?
I say, I am.

Hydrated in a bonsai forest

pump two quarts water

One can see climate change

looking at trees

Warmer winters

greater growth,

smaller glaciers,

count the trees

Write the name

of the Ranger

who changes

your permit

allowing you

greater time

to look at

these small trees

The tent surrounded

by High Mountain Hemlock

helps one grieve

the fallen aged ones

in Chinese pots

taken from us

during heat spells

After breaking camp

Klapatche Peak

before leaving,

Tom Clark,

Air Force Special Ops

Five minutes!

Five minutes!

Enlisted, at 38,

becomes airborne

writing thesis on Colonel Wise

and Tan Son Nhut—

January, 1968, Tet—

I was returning from R&R,

skiing in Japan, Zao—

up where Basho walked—

Colonel Wise might have saved

my life—that’s when those GIs

started getting hit in big numbers

What remains of the beloved?—

always the first question.

Talking to myself

on the trail

Talking to myself

has never been better

If you’re looking

for conversation,

stop at the stream

for water

and take out

your notebook

Red bark

Red wood

Red light

Red bridge

Red way

Learn from your mistakes

Make them again

Make them new

Fail again,

and better

AFTER EXPOSURE WALK

Back in woods

Sun covered

Stop to take some water

Stay hydrated, old man

Not a place to shuck the pack though

Set on shelf to left

Uphill to release the weight

Don’t see the years

of brown-fir needles

underfoot,

turning into ball bearings

Damn near roll off trail

into forest below

Flies buzz a jet overhead

GOLDEN LAKE CAMPGROUND

All this reading of Rumi

so close in the pocket

to my hand, so ready

Hardly anything of Basho

Nothing at all of Jesus

Jesus in my head

Anything in one is in Jesus

And Basho

I know where Basho is

WALKING WITH JOHN MUIR

IN WONDERLAND

He keeps repeating,

What happened? What happened?

My unkind children!

After I saw you in Alaska

skipping through glaciers,

I knew—John,

Don’t come back—Don’t—

THE UNBALANCED PACK

What would you expect

from a left-handed hiker?

SOUND OF THE RIVER

Smell of the woods

Time to take water

So many pine cones

OLD GROWTH FOREST AT MOWICH RIVER

Dried peaches from Yakima

WHERE DID THE GLACIER BREAK—

THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT

IPSUT PASS

Dramatic descent

Walking with Taoist poets

Chinese mountain landscape

Cool after rain

Big trees ahead.

THE TROUBLE WITH BREAKING CAMP

THE PROBLEM WITH LANGUAGE

I tell the man who asks,

why I’m slow

breaking camp,

God talks to me

in the morning hours

I have to be there.

Nobody

should have to listen

to shit like this

but he asks

and truth be told

READING RUMI

balanced on a rock

and a trekking pole

just below Ipsut Pass,

Get the line breaks right

AT DICK’S CREEK CAMP ALONGSIDE CARBON GLACIER

WITH NO PERMIT TO STAY, I SQUEEZE MY ONE-MAN HUBBA TENT

IN BETWEEN FOUR TENTS WITH RANGER APPROVAL

Talk begins hours before daylight

on both sides of me,

We’re in a hole. Stay on your mattress.

You won’t get any wetter

than you already are.

I’ll try to dig a trough for water

Quietly, I feel for cameras

in corners of my tent—

Both dry as I am.

I don’t say a word

until after we get

on the trail with pictures

TWO DAYS INTO THE STORM

Mystic Lake Ridge Camp

Sunday morning

Ridge line crossing,

crossing water, fresh snow

Looking at Mountain in new white suit

This walking around the mountain

has given me this certainty—

to rest easy in the selfless life

because the self is gone

there is the geographical life,

the North Dakota root, but it too,

impermanent—living only in story—

and the other, canon of literature

and deepest well, there your ancestry lies,

this is the land where there is no small talk

and the smallest talk of all is all God

North Dakota boy walking in wind

BEAR ON TRAIL

I got a Nikon camera (Sing Loud with confidence)

Love to take your photograph

Honey don’t take my

Honey don’t take my

Honey don’t

Don’t

Don’t take my Koda

Away Away

AFTER SEEING FIRST BEAR

ON WONDERLAND TRAIL

That stump

sticking out from the big fir

will never again

be a stump

THREE DAYS OF LATE SUMMER RAIN

The mountain has fresh snow

It gets to show itself

and the wonderland changes

The mountain shows itself

and then it releases the water

clear and fresh and green rushing

gliding bedrock pure

Dried up streams get happy

and get going in their music

running like children

The music’s going at it

volume up all brass horns

Mountain itself again

TUESDAY BELOW SUMMERLAND

AFTER DAYS OF RAIN

No one on the trail

but me, where I stop

for water

before crossing the bridge

SUMMERLAND FLOWERS GONE TO SEED

IN FIRST DAYS OF SEPTEMBER

Stems burnt red from Sun

Show all the color

Watch birds in alpines

landing and leaving

in joyous harvest

observable in flight patterns

OVER RIDGE AT PANHANDLE GAP

TRAIL FOLLOWS THE MOUNTAIN

AROUND TO RIGHT

Sharp whistle

of marmot

signals to others something

in Marmot

of others—

sentries on rocks

two-legged on way

with walking stick

wearing hat,

blue Patagonia coat

Jim Bodeen 20 August 2015—2 September 2015

Wonderland Trail Pocket Notebook

Mount Rainier National Park