WHYCHUS CREEK TRAIL HIKE ON ALL SAINTS DAY

 

 WHYCHUS CREEK TRAIL HIKE ON ALL SAINTS DAY

Accessing the trailhead in parking lot ten miles out of Sisters.

After putting on my boots, checking my pack,

I look for a nearby rock to sit with the notebook.

The book of poems iin my hand, new, Jane Hirshfield’s

New and Selected Poems, The Asking.

Before setting out I sit with the book for an hour

in the bookstore. I am asking these poems

to open me to this hike, and I open the book

without thinking of where my eyes might land.

I have opened to this,

Three Times My Life Has Opened,

and I begin a blind transcription of the poem,

reading as I write the words

that are opening before me on the page.

Once to the fire that holds all

becomes the good fire, first step, walking this trail.

Walking the fire right through this parking lot,

a man appears, walking over to me sitting

on the rock. He introduces himself,

says his name is Curt, asking about the notebook.

How he brings up Pádraig Ó Tuama

when I’m reaching for the name of Irish theologian

Glenn Jordan, after saying no to John O’Donohue.

This is live on All Saints Day. Jordan

died four years ago. I’m carrying him on this hike.

Curt’s magnetized by the notebook, and poems.

He knows these pines, this Whychus Creek.

These rocks take the trail up and away

from the creek and back down to it.

I’m guided by a promise, too,

to retrieve small stones for Barry’s birthday.

An hour on the trail I still hear creek song.

It’s raining, and drops on my hat add

to the music of water. Percussion. This far in

I know that man who walked out of the fire

is Gary Snyder. I don’t make things up.

As a boy walking North Dakota coulees

I believed myself to be a Mandan Indian.

The Mandans taught me to break small branches

as I walked so that I might find my way back.

This is belief and practice.

I stop along the way making miniature cairns,

smaller than my fist, pick up a broken twig,

burnt, and hold it up. Root ball

of the ancient Bristlecone Pine.

 I’ve walked the Grove of the Patriarchs.

Setting it on the large stone,

photographing it, I almost miss

the tiny shelled seeds left by chipmunks.

I turn and turn the root branch

in my hand, asking, as I’ve been taught,

What is the front? What is the back?

The Iphone camera gathers it all,

and I place the miniature root

in the outside pocket of my pack.

Some cairns in the Arctic are twelve feet high.

Hiking, now, away from water,

nearing tree line, pausing

for a sandwich, two hikers

come around a large stone

from above, stop for a greeting.

A man and his wife.

Looking at me, he sees the tree

through the mesh in my pack.

What’s that? The man asks.

A tree, I say. It was in the fire.

A Ponderosa. When he looks

at his wife, she looks over at me.

No further talk. I will continue

until I descend again

to Wychus Creeek, where

I’ll search for those stones

I promised Barry.

 It is All Saints Day

and I remember my mother and father.

The world is on fire

and I am walking in woods

along Whychus Creek in Oregon

a fifteen minute drive out of Sisters.

Jim Bodeen

1 November 2023