HIKING COWICHE REMEMBERING DAK TO

HIKING NORTHERN LOOP TRAIL

COWICHE CANYON, 14 NOVEMBER 2017

I. Ears for What's Coming

During the day-to-day life,

not just hours on the trail

solid with your trekking poles,

There ain't no man righteous,

no not one, Dylan live

from 1979, in my head

heading out. Sunny,

cold and windy. Photograph

sage on top before descending

to Cowiche Creek. Intersecting

creek and trail in canyon,

eat just-picked Yakima apple

down to seed caves, then eat

the seeds, all of it, watching

two hawks circling sky

shelling peanuts into paper bag

before starting back up.

A Merton quote from one friend

exploring Chuang Tzu's letter to Wu:

One thing is necessary. Merton quoting,

What is your original face before you were born?

And then an advent poem from an old pastor friend,

with a line from Barth,  with Jesus saying

the divine life is all, Without you

I do not care to be the Son of God.

Brilliant Barth. My defensive question

surfacing between steps, Did Barth

make it easier for professional clergy

to get rid of Bultmann? I don't know.

I call the hike a Van Walk for Morrison,

then after I unpack my lunch on a rock

above the canyon, change it, now

Van Sandwich. Sending an image

on my camera phone to a friend,

he writes back, Van Louse Stairway.

This every day music every day.

Below this rock

the bridge is out.

Counting syllables

fresh ground peanut butter

and apricot jam sandwich.

II. 50 Years Ago This Day : The Battle of Dak To

I've been incountry
at the 85th Evac Hospital

3 months,

a quarter of a tour, 90 days

to prepare for November

and the 33-day battle of Dak To.

Torn-up eyes and uniforms

mirroring what can't be said

coming off stretcher after stretcher

from chopper and planes.

Intimate stuff. Kon Tum Province

in the Central Highlands

in a series of never-ending battles.

Initiated again, emotionally shut-down

nurses lead medical teams

through acts of love, passion

unleashed and without measure.

Training and practice

enters collective primitive.

3 Nov 23 Nov, 1967 then, starting then.

Intimate in the

Central Highlands of South Vietnam.

The 110-hour fight for Hill 875.

Border battles to distract American

and South Vietnamese forces away from cities

in preparation for the Tet Offensive.

Today it can be seen on the Internet.

Search and destroy.

4th Division where my friend was

and the 173d Airborne Brigade--

Westy's fire brigade all shot up.

Intense fighting until the NVA

seemingly disappeared.

On one day November 23,

the day I would be married

the following year,

107 dead, 282 wounded.

The 4th Division too, my best friend's location.

So many different casualty counts--

here's one--208 dead, 645 wounded from the 173d.

Friendly fire alone killed 41 GIs on November 19th.

Earle Jackson, 173d medic who served on Hill 875:

"There is something gut-wrenching

about severely wounded men

that I will never forget.

It is that most become delirious and almost

always cry to their mothers."

All of this coming through us in men's eyes,

dead trees embedded in fear-filled faces,

torn and bloodied fragments of uniforms,

battle images that will make our country

one of the casualties. Wild terrain,

half the mosquitoes in the world

and a million leeches on sharp ridges covered with double

and sometimes triple canopy jungle

Dak To Vietnam photos,

Trees without limbs.

Trunks of a holocaust, a memorial in themselves.

The black and white photos in the museum in Saigon.

The dead journalists. Ho Chi Minh City.

Reliable ferocity. Dante's 3d Circle of Hell.

Karen takes me back for our 40th Anniversary

ten years ago today, 50 years ago, too, from today.

These are facts, and some of them, partially mine,

partly collective, adhering to each of us,

counting 50 years from that day to this one,

on a hike, eating apples. The love those nurses

gave to those incredibly young men

passed through us that November,

some like me, accessing possibility

beyond anything we had known.

Cost and blessing in clothes giving

themselves away each day

from hospital wards to sky flights,

up the Northern Loop Trail

of Cowiche Canyon.

Jim Bodeen

14-15 November 2017